Rock, Paper, Scissors

Oh to have the power to make two of the largest auction houses in the world bow down to a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

From yesterday's Vancouver Sun (and I am sure, other news outlets):

In possibly the highest stakes game of Rock Paper Scissors yet played, the world's two most prestigious auction houses were forced into sudden-death for the right to sell a $26-million art collection.
Experts from Sotheby's and Christie's settled the spoils in a tense game in a Tokyo office after the boss of a Japanese electronics company could not decide who should handle the sale of a collection including works by Cezanne, Picasso, and Van Gogh.
Both companies were annoyed by the strange request by Takashi Hashiyama, president of the Maspro Denkoh Corp., but, aware that the sale would bring the victor several million dollars in fees, rose to the challenge.
According to the New York Times , Sotheby's decided it was purely a game of chance and now admits it had "no strategy in mind."
However, Kanae Ishibashi, the president of Christie's in Japan, spent a weekend researching the psychology of the game on the internet and consulting friends.
They included Nicholas MacLean, the auction house's British head of modern art, whose two 11-year-old daughters fortunately turned out to be experts at the game. The pair, Flora and Alice, advised Christie's to choose scissors. "Everybody knows you start with scissors," Alice told the New York Times, while her sister added: "Rock is way too obvious, and scissors beats paper."
Two experts from each auction house sat at a long conference table at Maspro's offices and, watched by two Maspro accountants, were told that instead of the usual method of playing the game with hands, they were to write a single character in Japanese.
Christie's went with Scissors while Sotheby's chose Paper, meaning -- as the Maclean girls had predicted -- that Christie's had won.
Jonathan Rendell, the deputy chairman of Christie's in America, described the atmosphere in the room as 'difficult'. The paintings will be sold in New York on Wednesday.
According to Douglas Walker, the managing director of the World Rock Paper Scissors Society and co-author of The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide, starting out with Rock is a poor strategy becaise it's the most obvious play. "The clenched fist -- it's a strong image," Walker said from Toronto. "We see it especially in males." Walker said in the high-stakes game between Christie's and Sotheby's he would also have advised to play Scissors -- which is exactly what Christie's did to beat Sotheby's Paper. The reasoning goes like this: since rock was too obvious a first play, your opponent would likely play scissors or paper -- the latter a much more likely move given that art work was at stake. If your opponent also played scissors, then it would be a draw. If paper, you'd win.
Walker said the RPS game between the two auction houses was over the highest stakes that he'd ever heard of. Personally, the most expensive game of RPS he'd ever been involved with was over buying his house. He lost to his wife. "In the end, it turned out to be the right decision," he said. "As far as we're concerned, decisions made with RPS are always right. Resorting to such games of chance is not unheard of in Japan. "It probably looks strange to others but I believe that this is the best way to decide between two things that are equally good," said Maspro's chief, Hashiyama.