This library favors primary publisher and DOI links. It separates human hand-game research from biological systems that use an RPS-like non-transitive model, and it records limitations that are often lost when a study becomes a strategy tip.

WRPSA data observatory

A game count with a written denominator

WRPSA separately reports match records, played matches, settled rounds, and participant appearances. A played match is a completed record with two participants and at least one round containing both throws. Open sessions, cancellations, disputes, byes, and completed records without round evidence stay visible but do not enter that total.

Recorded match rows: 2,492
Played matches: 1,235
Settled rounds: 2,926
Human appearances: 1,250
Human vs human: 15
Human vs WRPSA AI: 1,220

Research governance and data-quality status
Measure	Count	Meaning
Completed results without round evidence	3	Reported as a quality exception and excluded from played matches.
Superseded records	0	Retained for audit, excluded from active played-match and research totals.
Unreviewed governance records	2,492	Excluded from research-eligible totals until a documented review.
Public dataset eligible	0	No participant-level dataset is released by this contract.

Explicit surface provenance

Surface derived from legacy fields

2,492

Explicit writer/version receipt

Legacy or missing writer identity

2,492

Played matches by recorded context

These are operational ledger counts, including records that have not been approved for research. They describe WRPSA activity and do not estimate play outside WRPSA.

Product surface
Value	Matches	Rounds
Classic	1,218	2,148
Online	13	59
Video	4	21

Game mode
Value	Matches	Rounds
Quick Play	1	8
Vs Ai	1,220	2,161
Vs Friend	14	59

Competition class
Value	Matches	Rounds
Casual	15	67
Unrated	1,220	2,161

Application writer
Value	Matches	Rounds
Legacy-Unknown	1,235	2,228

Contract rps-match-research-v2. Generated Sep 20, 2026, 9:24 PM UTC. Observed from Jul 29, 2026 through Sep 15, 2026. These figures describe WRPSA’s own ledger. No comparison with external datasets is implied.

Read the machine-readable methodology Research and citation policy

Citable aggregate releases

Reviewed dataset editions

Each edition freezes the measurement contract, aggregate counts, observation window, provenance coverage, citation, and exact JSON and CSV bytes. Another administrator must review the checksums before publication. Corrections remain linked as later editions; released files are never silently replaced.

No independently reviewed aggregate edition has been published yet. Live operational totals remain available above, but they are not presented as an immutable release.

What it tested: Whether repeated RPS play under random pair matching follows fully independent mixed-strategy behavior or shows population cycling and conditional responses.
Sample or system: 360 Zhejiang University students in 60 six-person groups, scheduled for 300 rounds each. One group was excluded from the reported action-frequency analysis, leaving 354 players there.
Finding: The experiment found population-level cycling and action-to-action dependence consistent with conditional response behavior, even though aggregate gesture frequencies were close to the one-third equilibrium.
Limitations: A laboratory student sample, payoff design, repeated opponents, and group protocol do not establish one universal rule for every casual or tournament opponent.

Batzilis, D., Jaffe, S., Levitt, S., List, J. A., & Picel, J. (2019). Behavior in Strategic Settings: Evidence from a Million Rock-Paper-Scissors Games. Games, 10(2), 18.

What it tested: How players use visible opponent history in a large online strategic setting and whether experience changes exploitation of that information.
Sample or system: The published analysis reports 334,661 players from an online RPS application and roughly one million games.
Finding: Players departed from independent randomization, used opponent history, and more experienced players exploited observable behavior more effectively.
Limitations: Application rules, interface cues, self-selection, and online behavior may not generalize directly to simultaneous in-person tournament play.

Cook, R., Bird, G., Lünser, G., Huck, S., & Heyes, C. (2011). Automatic imitation in a strategic context: players of rock-paper-scissors imitate opponents’ gestures. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 279, 780–786.

What it tested: Whether seeing an opponent’s developing gesture increases draws through automatic imitation.
Sample or system: A controlled sighted-versus-blindfolded RPS experiment; consult the paper for condition-level counts and analysis.
Finding: The original paper reported more draws when players could see an opponent’s gesture.
Limitations: A larger published replication and critique did not support the original conclusion. WRPSA treats the automatic-imitation claim as disputed rather than settled.
Related correction evidence: Aczel, Bago & Foldes (2012), replication and critique

Sinervo, B., & Lively, C. M. (1996). The rock-paper-scissors game and the evolution of alternative male strategies. Nature, 380, 240–243.

What it tested: Whether three side-blotched lizard mating strategies form a non-transitive cycle whose frequencies oscillate over time.
Sample or system: Field observations and parameter estimates covering six years of morph-frequency changes.
Finding: The model predicted oscillations, and the three male morph frequencies were observed to oscillate in the field.
Limitations: This is an evolutionary analogy to RPS’s non-transitive structure, not evidence about human gesture choice or tournament strategy.

Kerr, B., Riley, M. A., Feldman, M. W., & Bohannan, B. J. M. (2002). Local dispersal promotes biodiversity in a real-life game of rock-paper-scissors. Nature, 418, 171–174.

What it tested: Whether spatially localized interaction and dispersal preserve coexistence in a non-transitive three-population Escherichia coli community.
Sample or system: Controlled microbial communities compared across localized and larger-scale interaction conditions.
Finding: All three populations coexisted under localized interaction, while diversity was rapidly lost when interaction and dispersal occurred over larger spatial scales.
Limitations: The RPS framing describes ecological dominance relations. It is not a study of people playing the hand game.

Kikuchi, S., Iwata, K., Onishi, Y., et al. (2007). Prefrontal cerebral activity during a simple “rock, paper, scissors” task measured by the noninvasive near-infrared spectroscopy method. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 156(3), 199–208.

What it tested: Prefrontal oxygenation during modified “play to win” and inhibitory “play to lose” RPS tasks.
Sample or system: 15 healthy volunteers measured with near-infrared spectroscopy.
Finding: The lose task produced larger, laterally dominant prefrontal oxygenation changes than the win task.
Limitations: A small sample and modified computer-response task cannot establish broad claims about all brain regions, ordinary play, or readable physical tells.

For a careful explanation of what laboratory and behavioral findings can and cannot say about individual play, continue to Rock Paper Scissors psychology.

How to cite and correct this library

Cite the paper itself, not this summary, when making a research claim. If a DOI, sample, summary, or limitation is wrong or incomplete, submit the URL and supporting source through the contact page. The full standard is in the research and citation policy.