Rock Paper Scissors went from a backyard tiebreaker to a documented competitive sport over the course of about twenty years, and the WRPSA's official handbook traces that transformation. Most people who've played the game casually have no idea that there's a body of serious competitive literature behind it. The handbook is where that literature gets organized.
The basics covered in the first section are still routinely missed by people who think they know the game: the statistical skew toward Rock as an opening throw, the documented prevalence of win-stay lose-shift behavior across inexperienced players, the physical priming signals that leak information before the reveal. These aren't advanced concepts. They're the floor of competitive awareness, and most casual players operate well below them.
The intermediate strategy sections get into gambit play — pre-planned sequences of three throws designed to produce specific outcomes against predictable opponents — and the psychological warfare of competitive match play: how to use your body language to prime your opponent, how to read priming from across the table, when to randomize and when to commit to a read.
The book was written when the World RPS Society was running annual championships in Toronto and the competitive infrastructure was at its peak. The strategies documented in it reflect genuine competitive development: patterns that emerged from years of tournament play, not theoretical constructs. Players who have worked through it systematically perform better in brackets than players who have the same number of throws but no organized framework for understanding what they're doing.
The WRPSA makes the core strategic content available through the site's resources section. The handbook covers it in the most complete organized form.