Odds and Evens
I grew up with Rock, Scissors, Paper as the standard selection method among my family and friends. I was surprised to learn recently of another selection method that is just as easy, but somewhat more interesting: Odds and Evens, which turns out to be a variation of Morra.
There are two points that make Odds and Evens more interesting to me than Rock, Scissor, Paper. First, Odds and Evens has a variation called “Ones and Twos” that provides a selection method for groups of more than two people. As a child, I only knew Eeny Meeny Miny Moe for this purpose. However, after 2nd grade, the “Eeny Meeny” method was easy to cheat.
Cheating brings me to my second point, which I will simply quote from Wikipedia (emphasis mine):
An interesting consequence of the expanded version of odds and evens… is that the winner is significantly more random than playing consecutive games of rock, paper, scissors. Since any single player can change the result to any other player, a nonrandom result requires the simultaneous cooperation of all players. While unwitting cooperation based on manipulating human psychology can be achieved with successive games of rock, paper, scissors by skilled players, the difficulty of simultaneously predicting the throws of all other players in a single expanded game of odds and evens is much greater.
I hope I remember this when my children are old enough to need selection methods.
