The most financially consequential Rock Paper Scissors match in recorded history lasted roughly two seconds and was worth approximately $2.2 million. Christie's beat Sotheby's in a single throw, winning the rights to auction a collection of Impressionist paintings owned by Takashi Hashiyama, CEO of the Japanese electronics company Maspro Denkoh.
The setup was unusual but not irrational. In 2005, Hashiyama was choosing between the two auction houses for a collection that included works by Cézanne, Picasso, Van Gogh, and Sisley. Both houses had made compelling presentations. He couldn't split the collection between them, and neither proposal was clearly superior. He told them to play one round of Rock Paper Scissors to settle it.
Christie's did not treat this as a coin flip. Their international director Nicholas Maclean consulted his 11-year-old twin daughters for advice. The daughters' reasoning: most people expect their opponent to open with Rock, so they throw Paper to counter it — which means Scissors is the optimal play against that anticipated Paper. It's a single layer of meta-game thinking, the kind of thing that sounds obvious in retrospect and that most adults simply don't apply when the pressure is on. Sotheby's chose Paper, presumably operating on pure chance. Christie's chose Scissors. Christie's won the auction.
The paintings sold. Cézanne's Les grands arbres au Jas de Bouffan went for $11.8 million. Alfred Sisley's La manufacture de Sevres sold for $1.6 million. Picasso's Boulevard de Clichy brought $1.7 million. Van Gogh's Vue de la chambre de l'artiste, rue Lepic went for $2.7 million. Christie's earned approximately $2.2 million in commissions from an auction secured by a match decided by advice from two children. It is the best documented return on strategic game theory ever applied by a preteen.
Michael Jordan's games occupy a different register. Jay Williams, who played alongside Jordan in the NBA, has discussed them publicly enough times that they belong in any honest accounting of high-stakes RPS. According to Williams, Jordan would bet $20,000 on single throws during locker room downtime, with at least one occasion reportedly reaching $100,000 for a single round. The specific amounts have varied slightly across retellings, but the core is consistent: Jordan treated every available format of competition as an opportunity to bet significant money and win it, and Rock Paper Scissors was not exempt from that approach.
The Quebec case sits at the opposite end of the outcome spectrum. Two men in Quebec wagered C$517,000 — secured by a mortgage — on a best-of-three RPS match in 2011. The loser refused to pay. The case went to court. In April 2020, the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld a lower court ruling that voided the debt, citing the excessive amount and the role of chance in the game.
The Christie's match and the Quebec case tell you opposite things about what Rock Paper Scissors can accomplish as a financial instrument. One produced a multi-million-dollar result that both parties honored and walked away from intact. The other produced a lawsuit that took nine years to resolve and ended with no money changing hands. The difference is not in the game. It's in whether the people involved were the kind of people who honor the outcome of a fair throw.