An Index to the Tripartite Mystery of Roshambo

Roshambo: It's a religion, it's conflict resolution, it's a cult of personality, it's a way of life, it's rocks and paper and scissors grooving up their thing.

A newsgroup, alt.religion.roshambo, is devoted to the worship of roshambo. There is much to learn from said worship (the current page being only a partial archive of the wisdom).

You must try your wits against the Roshambot. to test your RoshamboQ.

(You can also view some old rankings of how the bot did.)

• Frequently Asked Questions about Roshambo (by Perry B. Friedman)

  I should point out that a very frequently asked question I get now about Roshambo is along the lines of, "I thought it was that game on South Park where you kick each other in the nuts as hard as you can." Kids, kids -- that's a joke. Roshambo has always been another name for that Rock-Paper-Scissors game. (The name comes from "phonetic French for Rock Paper Scissors" or so we are told.) Stop taking cartoons so seriously.

• More about Personalities and Roshambo

• The Tripartite Nature of Traffic (by Dave Marshal)

• Press Release: Microsoft releases RoshamBob (tm) (by Josh Paley)

• The Power of III: an analysis of alt.religion.kibology personalities

• C Code for a simple Roshambo program (by Perry Friedman)

            _________
          -     |     -
        -       |       -
      /         |         \
    /           |           \
   |            |            |
  |     _----_  |  ________   |
 |  ---'   <__> | (_____   `---|
 |  ---._____/  |    (_____.---|
 |            /   \            |
 |         /  _   _  \         |
  |     /     || ||     \     |
   | /         ||||        \ |
    \         /\  |         /
      \      |\<\.|       /
        -     \_\/      -
          - _________ -

• The Second International RoShamBo Programming Competition (New!)
  Must-read. The challenge: Program a Roshambo Bot. The results are here. Much interesting insight into game theory and why the idea that the best strategy is to pick randomly is a myth.

• Grudge Match: Rock vs. Paper vs. Scissors (New!)
  Settling the matter for once and for all, grudge-match style.

• The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide
  Now here's some everday-Zen for you. Those pikers at the World RPS Society think they can take on the masters of Roshambo? But we have to give them credit for their good advice in the gambit section.

• The World Rock Paper Scissors League (New!)
  A big online tournament thing. A league for the thing below.

• Roshambo Rampage (New!)
  Play via e-mail!

• Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard (New!)
  Five-way Roshambo rules. A twist.

• Virtual Rock Paper Scissors (New!)
  Yet another version. Don't people have jobs to do?

• Scissors, Paper, Stone (New!)
  A British version, very flashy.

• Rock Paper Scisssors
  My own humble version of Roshambo.

• Rock, Paper, Scissors
  Just to show that everything on the web is available more than once: Paul Roub's version of the game Rock, Paper, Scissors. Much better than mine. And you can cheat.

• Tiltboys: Vegas Trips
  The Tiltboys are a group of gambling addicts; many of the founders of Roshambo are involved in these very long Vegas trip reports. Although the trip reports focus on poker, there's always plenty of hot Roshambo action. Judge for yourself:

  • Geeks in Las Vegas, Part 1
  • Geeks in Las Vegas, Part 2
  • Geeks in Las Vegas, Part 3
  • Geeks in Las Vegas, Part 4
    A four-part description (by Roshambo-founder Lenny Augustine) of the first Roshambo Vegas pilgrimage to be described on-line.

  • Vegas Pilgramage
    Phil Gordon's trip report for their second on-line adventure; much Roshambo insight.

  • Tiltboys in Vegas: Six Sigmas Out
    The third adventure to be described on-line; this one features Perry Friedman prominently. Amazing action, including a surreal craps play.

  • Sex Sigmas Out: Tiltboys in Panty Jose
    The fourth adventure, this one pushing at the nature of identity, the meaning of reverse-discrimination, the joy of Poker, and a tricky surprise at the end. Highly recommended. Great photography by Perry, ur, I mean Frieda. Not much Roshambo action however.

• The band "Roshambo" (New!)
  Wonder how they decide who plays what instrument? "Ready, Squeaky?" "Okay, Franky." "One-two-three -- Ai-yaa! Rock beats scissors, so my sticks will beat them drums." "Guess I'm playing bass again, damn you Franky."

• Aware Compilations
  "Aware" is some kind of record label, and on one of their compilation albums is the band "Roshambo." (I'm guessing its the same band as above, unless there are two bands in the world named "Roshambo" -- after all, there seem to be a dozen new bands which either have the word "Imperial" in their name or end in the letters "ica.")

• Official (Band) RoShamBo Website
  Another band named RoShamBo. They're everywhere. This one's in San Jose.

• 1620 Spruce SEGA RoShamBo Tournament
  I used to have no clue about this one, but then Lance Held, author of the page, described it for me:

  If 6 college students decide to buy a Sega Genesis together at the beginning of the year, how do you decide who gets to keep it when they all graduate? Simple, RoShamBo for it!

  Brilliant! An even better idea was to write a Web page about the experience. Oh, and I see they now have added the above description to the page itself. I won't spoil your fun by revealing that Lucky Lance was the winner of the Sega.

• Far Side Cartoon: Before Paper & Scissors
  The early days of Roshambo illustrated.

• Roshambo AVI
  Perry described this as:

  Finally had a chance to check this out. Very bizarre! It's two guys playing roshambo, but then the results are animated on the live action (like the winner's hand turns into a rock and he bops the other guy on the head repeatedly, etc.) Pretty weird and fairly interesting, but I don't know if it's worth the extremely long download time.

  I disagree: it's worth it. If you have an hour to spare on the download, go for it. A movie with sound and special effects of two guys who really know how to play Roshambo in a vivid style (five megs).