Rookie's Rock

A shiver runs down your outstretched arm, as your knuckles bump against hers in mid-air. Otherwise you stand, steady and still, disbelieving. Would you ever have thought you’d get to be so close, close enough to see the goosebumps on her skin, to show her the ones on yours? Close enough to touch – with so much gravitas – the weight of your future and her fame pressing down on the horizontal plane where your small bones meet. Of course not. You never believed you’d still be here at this point. You signed up to this for a chance to see your hero, not race her. You signed up as soon as you heard that this year’s tournament would be held in town: $9.99 to get a glimpse from afar, but in person at last, of her formidable skill.

Many a livestream could not have prepared you for the wonder of watching her win, match after match in real life. And many a livestream you did watch, record, replay and pause, rewind and watch once more, in suspense each time anew – as if your body already had forgotten what your eyes just saw, what move she would go for, whether she’d win. To learn from the best, the world’s champion, the queen, you crouched for hours on end by your little bright screen, wrote down in your little black notebook all possible outcomes. Of which, it’s true, there’s not many: such is the nature of this game, its deceptive simplicity. The reason why people often fail to understand it, and as people are wont to when they fail to do so, call it all a question of luck. But not you. No, you wrote the outcomes down, then figured the recurrence rate for each of the three options in her play, and which one she usually goes for after a tie, after two ties, after three. Whether she insists upon her choice or changes it, and if she changes it, how much is she willing to risk, how far she’ll go. That’s how you taught yourself to play. In your little black notebook, you wrote down how often she sticks to her patterns, and the extent instead to which her moves mirror her opponents’ – how she’s always one step ahead. How she stares into their eyes and reads their next move there, how she reads into the future almost without fail.

And now here she is, staring into yours. You can hardly stand it. You try not to think about what your move will be, lest she see it. $20,000 are at stake, as well as the title. But that’s not a challenge, because you have no idea about your move, no strategy or game plan. You’ve won to the finals just waiting to lose – it is pure chance that got you this far, and yet you know there’s so much more to the game than that. You really shouldn’t be here. It is too soon for you to race her like this, you’ve not had enough practice, no expertise, no pose. You tremble and wonder if she’s close enough to feel it. If she is, she doesn’t show it: too professional to underestimate an amateur, her expression is as impassable as always. She pins you down with her gaze as once upon a time, a man of honour would have pinned down with his gaze the one who dared to challenge him to a duel. Time stretches. The audience roars. The referee screams and all at once it’s over.

You look down at her hand before you see yours. Scissors. Your notes come back to you in a flash. She goes with scissors 36% of the time. You’re more surprised to see you’ve gone with rock. A stable, sober option when you were feeling so unmoored. A rookie’s rock: cheeky, almost presumptuous in your position. Perhaps that’s why she didn’t see it coming either. You’ve lowered your arm from where it was, bumping her knuckles, you’ve turned your wrist and there it was – a choice. The best choice. The impact of it hits you all at once, a shower of pins and needles. The audience roars louder, the referee screams out your name as the winner. She comes around, shakes your hand and smiles. You’ve beat her. Your move goes down in history: someone will rewind it in their little bright screen, write it down in their little black notebook. They’ll admire you from afar, then up close, they’ll come to beat you with their arm outstretched, palm open, five fingers splayed, paper. But until then, you’re crowned: today begins your reign as rock paper scissors’ new queen.