Yeah, after the dust settles on the legal battle, I would love to hear the Canadian version of "This American Life" get the full backstory on this. Were these guys pals playing in the living room or at the bar, or was it between strangers at some kind of underground RPS parlor? The latter seems ridiculous, but so does the former, since I imagine it would involve the loser saying "C'mon man you can't be serious?" for weeks, at least.
I couldn't find more indepth coverage in the recent news, but here's a relatively lengthy article from 2017 (before the recently ruled-on appeal):
It doesn't go into the personal details (or link to the source court documents), but it does say that the men (both "experienced businessmen", which I assume means: "guys with expendable wealth") signed the notarized contract after the game:
> After the match, the winner had the loser sign a notarized recognition of debt contract that was secured by a hypothec (mortgage) over the loser’s house. The winner subsequently attempted to enforce the gambling debt and hypothec, leading to litigation.
I'm intrigued why the loser signed the notarized contract at all if he was planning to fight it in court.
The court argues it is a game of skill but follows up with:
> it seems evident … that the game also involves a large part of chance, so that it does not take 'only skill or bodily exertion on the part of the parties,'
They would have invalidated the bet even if wasn’t “excessive”. Presumably, the law also bans wagers on gambling activities, such as poker.
I love playing cards, but poker is just... not as much fun because there's too much luck involved compared to, say, Rummy-type games (like my biased favorite, the Brazilian Buraco: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buraco)
Law and the government are there to do what benefits the society that grants them their power. Blindly upholding contracts does not benefit the society that grants them their power.
("But look at all these other things they do that suck!" - yup, I'm there with you, but the purpose of government is to be just, which is not the same thing as clueless.)
Judges very much, all the time, deem whether a contract is exploitative or not. Valid contracts are signed between two parties where both are very much aware of what they're doing and fall within non-exploitative bounds.
You're not allowed to contract yourself into slavery no matter how much you want to. Indentured servitude is similarly illegal. You also can't charge someone a billion percent interest on a payday loan.
Now, granted, some people see the absurd levels of modern student debt as something not so far off from indentured servitude. But the point is that the government and judges absolutely draw lines between which contracts are permitted and not, for the express reason of protecting people from being led into terrible mistakes no matter how much they may want to. Kind of the same thinking behind certain drugs being illegal: the government trying to protect people from their worst impulses.
Of course, libertarians (as opposed to liberals and conservatives) think people should be able to contract whatever they want, hence the "liberty" in their name. But pretty much everyone else on the political spectrum thinks it's pretty essential to protect people from the absolute worst irrevocable things.
I took a semester of contract law, though I am not a lawyer either. I believe what you write is not accurate. I vaguely remember a case about someone who sold a refrigerator for four times it’s retail value to a low income couple, collected three times the value, and then sued for the remainder. The court would not enforce further payment. However I believe it would not reverse what was already paid either.
I probably have a lot about this wrong but I recall the professor saying “if that’s he bargain, that’s the bargain!” Is not a good description of contract law.
Contracts are important and generally are upheld. However there are limits to how much of the governments time, resources, and monopoly on physical force the courts will marshal to enforce contracts.
Not really. I can't contract you to do something illegal for me (e.g. kill somebody, even me!). Now, if you are saying that these kind of contracts SHOULD be valid, that's another thing but that's not the case at the moment (and rightly so, imo)
But you can't contract to do something illegal, and contracts must have consideration ("this for that"). Not sure what their test for excessiveness was.
Reminds me of predatory lending rules like charging more than X% interest is excessive.
Insanity can be written into contracts. Like an employer who states you aren't allowed to write code for anyone else for at least 5 years after termination.
>the Superior Court cancelled that mortgage in a 2017 decision, which was appealed by Michel Primeau, who beat Hooper in the game of rock paper scissors — and won the $517,000 wager.
Seems like the court itself decided to cancel the mortgage and the winner was the one who decided to appeal it in court.
Why is no one talking about the true jerk in this situation? The guy legally forcing the other to mortgage his house in order to give him $500k — because of rock, paper, scissors...
This does not hold true for the appellate court's decision:
> While it found the game may call up a certain measure of skill, "it seems evident … that the game also involves a large part of chance, so that it does not take 'only skill or bodily exertion on the part of the parties,'" the court concluded.
I fully agree that it's excessive, but I admit that I have no rational basis for that position. I wonder how they would make that claim, while also acknowledging that gambling exists.
You can lose 500k on roulette easily. That seems no less arbitrary
The rule with friends is to put money on the table immediately and agree on a deposit space/person until the outcome. Otherwise it is a sissy bet & thereby things we don't engage with. The whole betting ritual is a masculinity proxy and proposed solution is levering the fact that people that say A are willingly to agree on B at more at that moment in time than afterwards.
I think the fact that a mortgage was taken out to pay off the debt was used to argue the loser didn’t have adequate assets to cover the bet, and that it was excessive.
I suspect if it was Bill Gates vs. Larry Ellison they wouldn’t have been able to argue the wager was excessive.
Not the same thing. The hand gestures of the rock, paper, scissors game constitute the entirety of the result. whereas, the actions of the entire company over time, coupled with immeasurably complex interactions with the rest of the world, constitute the result of a stock trade.
You can choose to gamble with stock by buying and selling randomly, but that is a property of your behavior, not the entirety of the system.
I wonder if there's any legal prohibition against excessive bets in canada. Is there a law or doctrine that invalidates such contracts, or is it just courts saying "this doesn't look right to us, therefore it is invalid"
I'm interested in the backstory. How do two people decide to wager such amounts of money over rock paper scissors? Like were they bored or was there some serious reason such a casual game was chosen over a serious amount of money? Clearly the loser couldn't easily afford the amount they were wagering since he had to take out debt for it, which makes it even more confusing why this seemed like a prudent decision.
I can't find the source right now, but I remember reading about a court case centered around whether Bridge (the card game) is gambling or not due to the influence of chance on its outcome. It was settled by holding a string of games that pitched players with varying experience against each other and the outcome was that better skilled ones _always_ prevailed. And so the Bridge was ruled to be a game of skill.
Bridge is unfortunately rife with cheating at the highest levels. It's simply too easy to communicate information with your partner that you're not allowed to through subtle signals, and this is very hard to police except at the macro level using a statistical analysis of many games to determine if it seems like players are acting on more information than they should have. The only way to play Bridge without cheating is to isolate each player in a separate room, confiscate all electronics, and have them play on provided computers running electronic Bridge that only transmits bids and cards played. So never bet on Bridge.
> The only way to play Bridge without cheating is to isolate each player in a separate room, confiscate all electronics, and have them play on provided computers running electronic Bridge that only transmits bids and cards played.
You'll still have "cheating" in this scenario. The rules of bridge consider it to be cheating if partners have a bidding convention that they don't explain to the other team. It's stupid, but those are the official rules.
Neither a bridge or poker player, but these games that have both a huge mathematical and psychological component to their strategy seem to be obvious games of skill. Even blackjack with much stricter (loosing) probabilities IMO is a game of skill because "good" players will lose at a slower rate than bad ones (even without card counting).
Rock-paper-scissors just seems too simple to allow for any performance improvements that don't involve luck or cheating. For a judge to highlight "speed of execution" or "the sense of observation" doesn't make sense; this sounds like bridge players using secret signals, or a roulette player trying to squeeze their bet onto the board after the wheel has slowed - skill should be related to performance within the parameters of the game, not waiting for your opponent to throw scissors and changing to rock...
Fwiw when playing my wife at rock paper scissors I once won over 20 times in a row. The odds against this happening randomly are pretty extreme - but I know her very well and can read her well enough that it was possible. I think it's fair enough to say that there might be a psychological element there that could pull the game out of straight random chance.
One theory I have with RPS is if you say right before the game “I’m gonna play rock”, it may change the odds slightly to non-random. I’m not sure any sort of speech is within the bounds of a fair game though.
OK - then make these guys play 100 or 1000 games against each other and see if anything beyond the very small sample size is responsible for the difference in win. If the previous winner is superior at RPS he should show a statistical advantage over the loser.
I can insist that there is skill in coin toss too.
I think what we want to look at is how much luck/skill percent is there. If tennis was luck overpowering skill, it wouldn't be an international sport in my opinion.
So rock paper scissors is 90% luck + 10% skill. A kid can potentially beat a professional rock player. Same is not the case for tennis.
I want to know more about the circumstances that led up to this. What situation results in someone saying "I'll let you $500k I can beat you at Rock, Paper, Scissors..." And actually being willing to follow through?
It's really the same thing. Under what circumstances would you figure 'as a person who does what i say i will do, 500k is a reasonable amount to bet, even though I need to take out a mortgage'?
Readit News
Quebec courts are not arguing that Rock Paper Scissors is not a game of skill.
They only ruled that the bet was "excessive" which is against the law.
IANAL, but betting half a million dollars on three hand gestures qualifies as excessive imho.
I am thoroughly impressed that the loser actually made good on their commitment though and took out the mortgage on his house!
My friends would try every angle to weasel their way out of a $100 light hearted bet!
I couldn't find more indepth coverage in the recent news, but here's a relatively lengthy article from 2017 (before the recently ruled-on appeal):
https://www.fasken.com/en/knowledge/2017/12/can-you-legally-...
It doesn't go into the personal details (or link to the source court documents), but it does say that the men (both "experienced businessmen", which I assume means: "guys with expendable wealth") signed the notarized contract after the game:
> After the match, the winner had the loser sign a notarized recognition of debt contract that was secured by a hypothec (mortgage) over the loser’s house. The winner subsequently attempted to enforce the gambling debt and hypothec, leading to litigation.
I'm intrigued why the loser signed the notarized contract at all if he was planning to fight it in court.
> it seems evident … that the game also involves a large part of chance, so that it does not take 'only skill or bodily exertion on the part of the parties,'
They would have invalidated the bet even if wasn’t “excessive”. Presumably, the law also bans wagers on gambling activities, such as poker.
IANAL either but to me the law/government is there to uphold contracts. Not judge if they are smart or deemed a good idea.
("But look at all these other things they do that suck!" - yup, I'm there with you, but the purpose of government is to be just, which is not the same thing as clueless.)
Judges very much, all the time, deem whether a contract is exploitative or not. Valid contracts are signed between two parties where both are very much aware of what they're doing and fall within non-exploitative bounds.
You're not allowed to contract yourself into slavery no matter how much you want to. Indentured servitude is similarly illegal. You also can't charge someone a billion percent interest on a payday loan.
Now, granted, some people see the absurd levels of modern student debt as something not so far off from indentured servitude. But the point is that the government and judges absolutely draw lines between which contracts are permitted and not, for the express reason of protecting people from being led into terrible mistakes no matter how much they may want to. Kind of the same thinking behind certain drugs being illegal: the government trying to protect people from their worst impulses.
Of course, libertarians (as opposed to liberals and conservatives) think people should be able to contract whatever they want, hence the "liberty" in their name. But pretty much everyone else on the political spectrum thinks it's pretty essential to protect people from the absolute worst irrevocable things.
I probably have a lot about this wrong but I recall the professor saying “if that’s he bargain, that’s the bargain!” Is not a good description of contract law.
Contracts are important and generally are upheld. However there are limits to how much of the governments time, resources, and monopoly on physical force the courts will marshal to enforce contracts.
Reminds me of predatory lending rules like charging more than X% interest is excessive.
I mean, the guy went to court to weasel out of the bet.
>the Superior Court cancelled that mortgage in a 2017 decision, which was appealed by Michel Primeau, who beat Hooper in the game of rock paper scissors — and won the $517,000 wager.
Seems like the court itself decided to cancel the mortgage and the winner was the one who decided to appeal it in court.
> While it found the game may call up a certain measure of skill, "it seems evident … that the game also involves a large part of chance, so that it does not take 'only skill or bodily exertion on the part of the parties,'" the court concluded.
You can lose 500k on roulette easily. That seems no less arbitrary
To you it may be, but where do you draw the line though? Is $100,000 excessive? $10,000? $1,000? Tbh, $1,000 does actually sound excessive to me.
I would argue that the wager was for more than a necessary amount, and definitely not normal.
How often do you hear about half million dollar RPS games, really?
Well he didn't commit to it because he went to court to get out of it.
“But without government, who would break the contracts?!”
wouldn't this depend on income/assets of those involved?
I suspect if it was Bill Gates vs. Larry Ellison they wouldn’t have been able to argue the wager was excessive.
Good thing 'L' is not based on 'o' then.
How many finger (not even hand) gestures does it take to click "buy" on a stock broker's app?
You can choose to gamble with stock by buying and selling randomly, but that is a property of your behavior, not the entirety of the system.
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Dead Comment
I can't find the source right now, but I remember reading about a court case centered around whether Bridge (the card game) is gambling or not due to the influence of chance on its outcome. It was settled by holding a string of games that pitched players with varying experience against each other and the outcome was that better skilled ones _always_ prevailed. And so the Bridge was ruled to be a game of skill.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/07/the-cheating-p...
You'll still have "cheating" in this scenario. The rules of bridge consider it to be cheating if partners have a bidding convention that they don't explain to the other team. It's stupid, but those are the official rules.
Rock-paper-scissors just seems too simple to allow for any performance improvements that don't involve luck or cheating. For a judge to highlight "speed of execution" or "the sense of observation" doesn't make sense; this sounds like bridge players using secret signals, or a roulette player trying to squeeze their bet onto the board after the wheel has slowed - skill should be related to performance within the parameters of the game, not waiting for your opponent to throw scissors and changing to rock...
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-christies-soth...
> the sense of observation or the putting in place of a strategic sequence
The court can ask him to defeat 10 other people in that game consistently to prove that ? But then he could argue the others were also skilled ?
[0]: https://priceonomics.com/the-world-of-competitive-rock-paper...
edit: wait something looks odd at http://www.worldrps.com/ , is it really an internationally recognized competition ?
I think what we want to look at is how much luck/skill percent is there. If tennis was luck overpowering skill, it wouldn't be an international sport in my opinion.
So rock paper scissors is 90% luck + 10% skill. A kid can potentially beat a professional rock player. Same is not the case for tennis.
There's something to be amazed by, by this story, but it's not doing what you say you will.
This thread's...disappointing.