I didn't win, but I would've come close had I been there round 4 (and if I really took more time to think about 3 and 5), so here was my strategy:
×Round 1: I said sheet at first... my initial plan was to influence votes. Then after a while, I looked through the guide; I didn't really take any advice from it, and instead tried to think of ways to use it against people.
Then I tried to glorify picking paper by pointing out the guide and then saying paper myself. Basically, I wanted people to pick paper.
Then when I saw that we're picking a roll for each individual person, I figured that most people would look through the sign up topic and pick an appropriate roll according to what each person said. So instead, I rated players on
how I thought they would respond to me announcing paper.
Click here to view the secret text
×For those who I thought would think that I'm lying, I played Scissors.
For those who I thought would think I'd play what I say I would, I played Rock.
If I thought somebody might predict I'd follow the above two strategies, I picked Paper.
When unsure, I took out my TI-83+ and asked for a random integer 1-3.
Round 2: There was so much paper last round. And the new thread name was "
Scissors paper rock."
And then NiroZ told us to "
pick a rock, paper, or a scissor."
A scissor? Honestly, if you didn't already have a plan, how could you resist? For some unknown reason, you want to pick it. You feel it calling to you. It says, "
I am a scissor, and I want to be your friend."
So I picked
rock and waited to see how many people became friends with a scissor.
Round 3: I was swamped. I was barely ever home, and when I had time, I was stuck with lots and lots of homework. So I picked
random things.
Round 4: I tried to look at the above three vote counts and results and tried to analyze each person's strategy. Here's most of what I wanted to look for:
Click here to view the secret text
×
First and foremost, was there a simple pattern between the results of one round and the best strategy to use in the round that follows (I'll refer to this pattern simply as the "best strategy")?
Who used the "best strategy"? Who else had a consistent strategy and was doing well enough that they'd likely continue?
Who was picking the same stuff each round? Were they doing well?
Who had no apparent strategy and was doing poorly? Of those, who would likely seek the "best strategy" and try it? Who would try to use a strategy meant to defeat people using the "best strategy"?
Did any people seldom use one of the three choices? How have they done? If poorly, would they seek the "best strategy"?
It was so time consuming, I barely got any analyzing done. In the end,
I forgot to submit anything, even just filler plays!
Round 5:
I felt lucky. I picked random answers. But against all rationality, I felt confident. As if I had a chance (yay).
EDIT: Wait a minute, I picked all
paper.
...
Well, I'm not exactly famous for my memory.
Also known as ExpHP everywhere else.