Two men in Quebec played a best-of-three Rock Paper Scissors match for C$517,000 in 2011. The loser signed a debt acknowledgment backed by a mortgage. When payment didn't follow, the winner took it to court. Nine years later, the Quebec Court of Appeal voided the debt and confirmed that nobody owed anybody anything.
The case is Hooper v. Primeau, and it sits in legal records as one of the more unusual examples of what happens when informal wagers meet the formal requirements of contract law.
Quebec civil law has specific rules about gambling debts. For a wager to be enforceable, courts generally look at whether the activity involves sufficient skill or physical exercise, and whether the amount bet is proportionate to the circumstances. Rock Paper Scissors failed both tests. The court found the game isn't sufficiently skill-based to qualify as a "skill game" wager under the Civil Code, and the amount — half a million dollars secured by a mortgage — was deemed excessive regardless of the skill question.
The mortgage wrinkle is the legally interesting part. The losing party had tried to structure the debt as a loan secured by property, presumably thinking a formal debt instrument would be easier to enforce than a gambling debt. The court wasn't having it. If the underlying obligation is void because the game is unenforceable, securing that obligation with a mortgage doesn't fix it. You can't back-door an invalid gambling debt by converting it into a secured loan.
From a competitive standpoint, the court's ruling that RPS lacks sufficient skill to sustain a legal wager is worth noting. The WRPSA's position is different: the game has a documentable and exploitable skill component, and the 2014 Zhejiang University research provides empirical support for that. But Quebec civil courts aren't applying game theory papers when they evaluate gambling debts. They're applying civil law thresholds, and half a million dollars on a three-round hand game doesn't meet them.
The practical lesson is boring but important: Rock Paper Scissors is a legitimate competition and a genuinely skill-influenced game, but it's a poor vehicle for legally binding high-stakes financial agreements. Use it for what it's designed for — fair, quick, binding-by-mutual-agreement decisions where the stakes stay reasonable. Leave the mortgage-backed wagers to contexts where the courts will actually help you collect.