囧研究：中國人發現石頭剪刀布致勝絕招！

The question of how to win at rock-paper-scissors has, believe it or not, plagued mathematicians and game theorists for some time. While they previously had devised a theoretical answer to the question, an experiment by Zhijian Wang at Zhejiang University in China (PDF) that used real players has revealed an interesting wrinkle to the original theory.
如何在石頭剪刀布的遊戲中取得勝利？這個問題長久以來一直困擾着數學家和博弈論理論家，信不信由你。前人已經就這個問題建立了一套理論，而中國浙江大學一位名叫王志堅的研究員則通過一項真人實驗對前人的理論進行了十分有趣的拓展。

In the experiment, Zhijian noticed that winning players tended to stick with their winning strategy, while losers tended to switch to the next strategy in the sequence of rock-paper-scissors, following what he calls "persistent cyclic flows".
在實驗過程中，王志堅發現，在石頭剪刀布的遊戲中，取勝的一方往往會堅持自己的求勝策略，而失敗的一方則往往會在新一輪中變換自己的遊戲策略，其中起作用的是一種“慣性循環”意識。

While the Nash Equilibrium should be the best strategy in real life, Zhijian found a decidedly different pattern when he and some other researchers recruited 72 students to play the game. They divided the students into 12 groups of six players and had them each play 300 rounds of rock-paper-scissors against each other. Zhijian also added a payout in proportion to the number of victories.
人們往往認爲“納什均衡原理”是現實生活中玩石頭剪刀布的最佳策略，而王志堅和自己的研究夥伴挑選了72位學生進行試驗，結果發現了一個與納什均衡具有明顯差異的致勝模式。他們將這些學生分成12個組，每組6人，讓每組的組員一對一玩300回合的石頭剪刀布。王志堅還根據遊戲獲勝的機率對學生們支付獎金。

The pattern that Zhijian discovered - winners repeating their strategy and losers moving to the next strategy in the sequence - is called a 'conditional response' in game theory. The researchers have theorised that the response may be hard-wired into the brain, a question they intend to investigate with further experiments.
王志堅發現的這個規律——重複自己遊戲模式的人獲勝，而下一局中變換另一遊戲模式的人失敗——在博弈論中被稱爲“條件反應”。研究者們作出設想，或許這種反應模式是深植在人的大腦結構中的，這個問題他們將進一步展開實驗進行研究。