The Math Behind Everything All games

World rock paper scissors championship

Round

1 of 33

Players left

8,320,000,000

How it works

  1. Everyone on Earth, all 8,320,000,000 people, is in one knockout bracket.
  2. Each round you play one game of rock paper scissors against a new opponent. Ties are replayed.
  3. Win 33 in a row and you're world champion. Lose once and you're out.

Every opponent plays like a real person recorded in a 2014 study, habits included.

How the math works

The math

Your odds of winning all

Every game a coin flip
You win 60% of games
You win 75% of games

People fall into habits, like repeating a move after a win, so a player who reads them can win more than half their games.

Source: your opponents play like the 72 people recorded over 300 rounds each in Wang, Xu & Zhou (2014), using data from the stratEst R package. Each opponent follows one real player's habits after a win, tie or loss. People's habits in this game are also studied in Dyson et al. (2016). World population 8,320,000,000 (Worldometer, October 2026).