God's Imitator

The game continued.

After ’Rabbit’ Han Mengying battled one-on-one with 8 players, the first stage of the game had one last battle remaining.

Han Mengying tallied her gains.

In the process of battling the previous 8 players, she had netted 23,000 chips.

Adding the initial 10,000 given, plus the 20,000 exchanged with her own visa time, and deducting 2,000 spent on one oxygen replenishment, Han Mengying already had 51,000 chips in hand.

”Facts prove that no matter how much you try to accommodate ordinary people with ’fair games’, smart people can always find high win-rate methods.”

Han Mengying was very satisfied with this result.

She briefly reviewed her strategy.

Average players might think playing this game was all about luck, that which card the opponent played was random. Actually, it wasn’t at all.

Even in the original ’Rock Paper Scissors’, players’ move probabilities were different.In reality, the probability of the three moves was Rock > Paper > Scissors. This was related to the actions of the three moves and psychological factors.

When players were relatively nervous, they would subconsciously clench their fists in a self-protective state, so the probability of playing rock was highest.

Paper required opening the palm, which increased a person’s sense of insecurity. At the same time, scissors had the most complex action, so these two moves had lower probabilities.

Although ’Fool’s Game’ turned these three moves into three different cards, because patterns of these actions existed on the card faces, after seeing the patterns, players would still subconsciously produce certain psychological projections and to some extent continue the playing habits of the real version of ’Rock Paper Scissors’.

In other words, because they had played too much, seeing the ’rock’ pattern would subconsciously produce a sense of security, while the ’paper’ and ’scissors’ patterns would produce insecurity, causing players to be more inclined to play rock.

Of course, this psychological factor’s influence on moves wasn’t that large, possibly causing at most 5% to 10% deviation but in ’Fool’s Game’, players’ card plays could also be influenced by some other factors.

For example, players would subconsciously balance their hand composition.

When holding a fool deck, players had 3 rocks, 1 scissors, 1 paper in hand, so they would subconsciously play the cards they had more of first, leaving greater freedom for subsequent rounds.

This would stack with the previous factor, continuing to increase the probability of players playing ’Fool Card (Rock)’.

In other words, if you could tell the opponent was a novice who hadn’t deeply thought about the tricks in these cards, then after obtaining a fool deck, with dual factors stacking, the probability of the opponent playing rock first would greatly increase.

So Han Mengying could win directly by playing paper.

Additionally, when playing moves consecutively, players’ brains would unconsciously conserve cognitive resources and play in a specific repetitive sequence, especially in consecutive winning or losing states. Because the brain was still savoring the previous victory or failure in a short time, causing thinking to be occupied, the next decision was easier to predict.

People without experience would subconsciously imitate the opponent’s last move. This was absolutely wrong behavior.

So Han Mengying kept playing cards consecutively, not giving the opponent too much thinking time.

She didn’t deliberately urge, so it wouldn’t provoke the opponent’s vigilance too much. Once entering this subconscious card-playing state, Han Mengying could better predict the opponent’s behavior.

She precisely used this information gap. In the first round when both she and ’Gray Wolf’ held ’Fool Decks’, she won twice consecutively and made the subsequent three cards lose their suspense.

Moreover, Han Mengying also confirmed very important information during the match: in the first round, both sides held ’Fool Decks’.

When the second round came and Han Mengying obtained a ’Sage Deck’, she immediately deduced: both sides most likely had ’Sage Decks’.

The opponent in the second round obviously didn’t clearly realize this point. After obtaining a ’Sage Deck’, they mechanically applied their own experience from the previous round, thinking Han Mengying would most likely play rock first, so they played paper, the most abundant card in the ’Sage Deck’.

Han Mengying, knowing the opponent most likely also held a ’Sage Deck’, used scissors to win against the opponent’s paper again, once more establishing an advantage.

These strategies naturally weren’t 100% valid, but when the opponent wasn’t deliberately on guard, Han Mengying could still use these strategies to significantly increase her win rate.

The subsequent game progression indeed went as Han Mengying expected.

The first round was ’Fool Deck’ versus ’Fool Deck’.

The second round was ’Sage Deck’ versus ’Sage Deck’.

The third round was ’Fool Deck’ versus ’Sage Deck’.

The fourth round was ’Sage Deck’ versus ’Fool Deck’.

The game rules already stated that the first stage was the ’practice stage’, so the God’s Imitator who designed this game would definitely arrange for players to battle different decks.

If at the very beginning, ’Fool Decks’ and ’Sage Decks’ were completely randomly given, that wouldn’t be fair enough but for players like Han Mengying, conversely grasping the pattern allowed guessing what the opponent’s deck was and further predicting the opponent’s behavior.

So her earnings in the first four rounds were also the most.

However, in subsequent rounds, there was no longer such an obvious pattern. Sometimes it was ’Fool Deck’, sometimes ’Sage Deck’. Unable to accurately predict the opponent’s deck, the win rate declined slightly.

Moreover, Han Mengying also encountered two players who played cards completely randomly.

The first player was a bit dumber, playing cards randomly from five cards.

For such players, Han Mengying naturally also had methods. She chose to directly play paper.

Because whether it was fool deck or sage deck, the highest probability was rock or paper. Playing paper was most cost-effective at this time.

The second player was a bit smarter, playing cards randomly from three cards.

This strategy was obviously more effective.

Playing moves randomly, especially random moves after covering the eyes, could significantly increase the win rate in ’Rock Paper Scissors’ games. This was a definite conclusion with data support.

This was due to psychological processing influence.

For players not good at calculating, the more complex the psychology, the more interference factors it caused, leading to easier errors in making judgments and decisions.

Many people playing rock-paper-scissors could lose several rounds consecutively. This obviously wasn’t purely a luck reason, but also because they were affected by the dual influence of ’brain conserving cognitive resources’ and ’psychological processing’, easily having their behavior predicted by the opponent.

’Fool’s Game’ was the same. Players not looking at the card face, shuffling three cards randomly and playing, could also achieve an effect similar to covering the eyes.

This was a strategy biased toward defense, at least ensuring the first round’s result was completely left to luck, not being seen through by the opponent.

This way, Han Mengying’s strategy had no room to be used but regardless, players who could truly ensure completely random card play were an extreme minority, so Han Mengying overall still maintained good positive returns.

She naturally wouldn’t choose to repay debt now. After all, this bit of earnings couldn’t satisfy her. She still had to stay and continue entering the second stage to earn more chips.