Sports in Hell (10 page)

I learned, too, that people take this very seriously. Women get manicures. Competitors dress up. A man named Antony Maanum of Overland Park, Kan., keeps his hands in oven mitts during tournaments. His hands are
just
that hot.

I learned that there are long, heated philosophical arguments at international RPS conventions over things like:

• Does Rock “smash” Scissors or merely “blunt” them?
  

• Can a pair of scissors really cut an entire piece of paper with one snip or should, in fact, it take two wins by Scissors to defeat Paper?
  

• Should prosthetic arms be allowed? (World RPS Society president Doug Walker says no. “It opens the possibility for infrared technology to send signals to the arm to instantly fire a throw a millisecond before it hits, giving it an unfair advantage,” he once wrote. No, he really did.)
  

You laugh, but the stakes can be enormous. Once, there was a fabulously wealthy Japanese electronics firm that decided to auction off its set of fabulously valuable paintings by Picasso, Van
Gogh, etc., which would produce a fabulous commission for the auction house that got the fabulous deal. The CEO heard proposals by the two biggie houses—Sotheby's and Christie's—and found both of them to be worthy. To settle the stalemate, he decided they should RPS for it. The auction houses sweated out what to do. Sotheby's decided it was just a game of chance and went with Paper. Christie's consulted the eleven-year-old twin daughters of an employee, who suggested Scissors because “everybody expects you to choose Rock.” Christie's won the contract and the millions.

“Chance?” Pah!

As the 2008 world championships grew close, I began forming my impenetrable strategies:

• Strategy #1: If my opponent is a woman who looks nervous, new, and/or drunk, I'll throw Rock on the first throw. I knew women like to throw Scissors. It's the female equivalent of Rock. Something to do with sewing.
  

• Strategy #2: To make my opponent think I'm nervous, new, and/or drunk, I'll do really stupid things like sputter, “Now wait, is it one, two, three, shoot? Or, one, two, three and you throw on three?” And they'll think, “What a Velveeta brain. He's throwing Rock.” And my Scissors will shred their Paper in one—not two—snips.
  

• Strategy #3: I'll watch for “double runs”—in other words, somebody throwing the same throw twice. For instance, if my opponent plays two straight Papers, I know he won't throw a third Paper. Most people, even the wisened, never throw three straight, so I can safely throw Rock. Will I be able to think that fast? Depends on how much I drink.
  

• Strategy #4: I'll take the advice of Graham Walker, also president of the World RPS Society (Doug's brother), who suggests an inspired strategy: Play the throw that would've lost to your opponent's last throw! He says inexperienced or drunk or scared players will subconsciously play the
  throw that beat their last one. “Therefore,” Walker writes, “if your opponent played Paper last throw, they will very often play Scissors, so you go Rock.” Genius!
  

• Strategy #5: I'll throw more Paper than a
  New York Times
  delivery boy. According to statistics kept by God knows who, Scissors gets thrown 29.6 percent of the time, which is 3.73 percent under what you'd expect, which is 33.3 percent, which means Paper is safer than other throws. Then again, the 2006 winner, Bob “The Rock” Cooper, won with Scissors, so maybe not.
  

• Strategy #6: I'll mind-numb. For instance, if you want your opponent to throw Scissors, you “seed” the throw. You say a few words that begin with that letter—scintillating, super, sick—and they will often throw Scissors! Hey, it's science! If I say to you, “OK, you ready? Ready to rock 'n' roll? Right on!” You're thinking Rock, am I right? Which I will humiliate with my powerful Paper and laugh deeply.
  

I was ready.

The night before the tournament, Toronto was whippy and freezing but the designated RPS bar was heating up with some of the more famous teams and faces of the sport. There was:

• David Bowie's Package
  

• Running with Scissors
  

• Fistful of Sneer
  

We met Scissors Sister, who came all the way from Australia. We met former world champion Master Roshambolah, who, as always, denied he was the world-famous Master Roshambolah and instead insisted he was the Midnight Rider. “Master Roshambolah doesn't enter these anymore,” he said in an odd accent.

Then we met a man who may have explained why. His name was Pete Lovering, a plain kind of man with a plain kind of face who was a walking cautionary tale. Lovering won it all in 2002—the first-ever RPS world championship—and then shrank from the enormity of what he'd done. Trying to live up to it became such a stone around his neck that he cracked under its weight. “The pressure just became too much,” Lovering said. “I'd practice more and just get worse.” He'd come to the RPS world championships and get eliminated in the first round year after year. “My kids would beat me constantly!” Then he muttered bitterly to no one in particular: “Them and their childlike minds.” Now he doesn't play at all. It was like seeing Koufax at twenty-five with no slider. He slunk off into the night with his cup of coffee—a human blunted scissors, a defeated exhibit of what a what-have-you-thrown-for-me-lately sport can do to a man.

We met the much-feared Norwegian team—a six-person outfit whose “federation” had publicly stated that its goal was a Norwegian world champion by 2010. OK, so it's not exactly JFK promising a moon landing within ten years, but it's something. Naturally, as a proud American, I couldn't help but take on their champion, a twenty-five-year-old smug blond kid in a blue blazer and tie, no less. I pretended to have no clue what I was doing, tricking him into believing I'd throw Rock. Then I threw Scissors and slashed his Paper. Stunned, he came back with a pathetic throw—Scissors, the throw that had beaten his last one—only to find my powerful Rock waiting for him. You should've seen his coach's face fall like a globally warmed ice floe, as if to say
Uh-oh. We came 5,000 miles for this?

My personal record at that point: 1–0.

Then I beat a Yahoo! girl who was giving out bottle openers if you beat her, which I did, although I think she was just happy to get rid of her approximately 1,000 bottle openers. (Personal record: 2–0.) I was feeling very good about myself until I met a woman from Philly named Mister Iz (pronounced quickly: “mysterious”) who cleaned me out in two throws (2–1).

“My strategy is: Whatever I'm thinking, I do the opposite,” Mister Iz explained. So if she's thinking she should throw Scissors, she throws its opposite, Paper. Or is its opposite Rock? Mister Iz didn't know. We didn't know. But since she'd just come from winning the Philadelphia city championship, she didn't want to know and instead guzzled a large portion of her beer, trying to shake the notion out of her brain. Maybe RPS is like golf or sex or Congress. The less thinking, the better.

Met the Minnesota Hustlers, too. They were two African American businessmen who bilk innocents for a hobby. They're that good. Word was that Tax Cut—so called for his penchant for throwing Paper, Paper, Scissors—had locked himself in a room and practiced against a mirror for an entire year. The duo's m.o. is to go into a bar—any bar—and dream up some dumb little argument with somebody there. For instance, if they see the guy getting the last Heineken, they'll say, “Oh, damn. I wanted that last Heineken!” The guy will feel bad, but they'll say, “Tell you what, why don't we Rock Paper Scissors for it?” Then they'll purposely lose. And then they'll say, “Dang! I KNOW I can beat you! Let me try again.” And they'll lose again. Then they'll say, “Let's bet five bucks.” Now the guy is feeling good and goes for it and wins and the trap is set.

Hustlers like them play “street,” which is first guy to win ten hands, one right after another. No stopping. No time to think. Speed throwing. “You lose the first couple just to see what kind of patterns they throw,” David (Tax Cut) Brookins said. “People will throw patterns and don't even know it. Soon as you have his pattern figured out, you bring down the hammer.”

I saw it happen right before my eyes. Tax Cut's partner, the Reverend, was playing another Philly guy, a biblically bearded guy named Rhymes with Sausage. Rhymes with Sausage got off to an early 3–0 lead, but then the Reverend came stomping back. At one point—as they were furiously throwing—the Reverend actually called four straight throws of Sausage's. Just absolutely nailed what he was going to throw. He'd holler them out as they were coming. He'd yell, “One, two, three, Paper!” and there, magically, would be
Paper on Sausage's right arm. Then, “One, two, three, Rock!” And there was Rock. Sausage was powerless. The guy was inside his cranium. Sausage looked like a guy who'd just been told an earwig is eating through his brain. Four in a row! The Rev won 10–7 and $10, Canadian. Telling you, the Reverend is unholy.

He asked if I wanted to try it. I started to reach for my wallet when I got a less-than-gentle poke in the ribs from TLC. I then declined. Smart girl.

She proved that again the next day during my pre-championship practice session (Note: Practice rounds do not count in one's personal record). We'd never played each other before. She'd done no research and yet she beat me about thirty out of forty. It was quite depressing. Her strategy? “I don't think,” she said. “My mind is clear. I just go totally random.”

“But an MIT mathematician says that humans are incapable of random th—”

“
Totally
random,” she insisted.

The next night, the doors at the Steam Whistle Brewery opened to reveal what appeared to be a Star Wars convention crossed with a Hooters tryout.

It makes no sense, but, somehow, RPS draws crazy-hot women. Most of the RPS guys were skinny and pale and geekier than Pocket Protector Club. But they all had the right attitude for the thing, which was, drink hard, play hard, be ironic.

One guy was wearing a T-shirt that read: “I Rocked Your Mom.” One was wearing a jean jacket with the right sleeve cut off at the bicep. His throwing arm, I guessed. One girl's shirt said: “Paper Is the New Rock.” Another woman had on a tiara made of scissors. There was even a guy dressed like Edward Scissorhands. I was waiting for Rocky to show up. Helluva matchup.

Off to the left an entire team was doing warm-up exercises. I kid you not. Their captain was leading them through Rock lunges. Who knew?

I signed in and was given a number to pin to my shirt, the bottom of which was a ready-to-tear-off strip that said: “Currently Undefeated.” After the TLC thrashing, I did not have much hope that it would remain attached long.

Over 700 combatants would be competing, single elimination, $10,000 for first place, $1,500 for second, and $500 for third, with an additional $1,000 to the winner of the “street wars” competition. Each player was given ten “street bucks” with which to gamble against each other between matches. These were the “street wars.” Eventually, by the end of the night, somebody would have all of them, and the grand. I was thinking I should just go hand my street bucks to the Reverend now and eliminate the middlemen.

I went to Table N to find the seven others whom I would engage in hand-to-hand combat. Round One is actually two stages of matches, which meant that only two of the eight would move on to Round Two. One of the guys had on a big plastic-hair Johnny Bravo headpiece and was already well into replacing most of his blood with vodka. He was on Team Shocker. “We're just a bunch of idiots,” said their coach. “Except him. He's an idiot, too, but he's really good.”

Suddenly, the thing started and—I know this is hard to believe—I got squadrons of butterflies. “You think you won't,” Mister Iz had warned. “But when it's you standing across from your opponent and the ref is there and all the people are surrounding you, it's scary!”

That's exactly what I thought, except when I stood across from my opponent I noticed he was not standing. He was sitting in a wheelchair.

He had long hair, a green T-shirt, and was drinking a Steam Whistle. His name was Russell Kinkelaar, twenty-eight, from Lindsay, Canada. He'd been in the chair since he was four, when a drunk
driver hit him and his uncle. The uncle and the drunk died and Russell has been paralyzed from the waist down ever since.

Nice. If I lost, I was out. If I won, I'd have beaten some poor uncle-less guy in a wheelchair.

Now I was perspiring at the hairline. In the distance I could hear people doing cheers at some other table. And instead of concentrating on my first throw, I kept thinking, “What in hell does a Rock Paper Scissors cheer sound like?”

There was a drunk guy standing next to me, part of my pool. “You nervous?” I asked.

“Nah,” he slurred. “I come for the dollar beers. I drove all night, eight hours from New York, just to come to this.”

I stared at him. “Uh, the beers are five bucks.”

He looked at me like I'd told him he was drinking turpentine. Then he looked at his beer. “Dick nipples!” he said.

The referee called Russell and me forward. Thirty people gathered around to watch, and exactly one of them was rooting for me—TLC. And she was caving a little. “Well, wouldn't it be
nice
if he won?” she whispered. The ref drew us together. I sort of hunched over to be more down to his level. I heard somebody
tsk-tsk
. I guess this makes me an ass.

Nonetheless, I stuck with my plan, playing the rube. I asked the ref a few dumb questions. One was, “Is it best out of ten?” The other seven looked at me judgmentally. Then I threw Scissors, which cut his Paper nicely. The crowd groaned like I'd just put a kitty in a blender. I don't remember what the hell I threw after that, but I beat him in the first game, two out of three. Then he beat me two out of three. The crowd roared their approval. All tied. He spun his chair out away from me to steel himself (sorry—figure
of speech) and then back toward me. For the rubber game, I started with Paper, figuring wheelchair or no wheelchair, guys never open with Scissors with so many people watching, and I was right. My Paper clobbered his Rock. Then I threw Rock, for no reason at all—and he threw scissors and I was through Round One-A.