OT: Rock, Paper, Scissors... BEER ?

[Smorgass Bored]

Rock, Paper, Payoff: Child's Play Wins Auction House an Art Sale By
CAROL VOGEL
It may have been the most expensive game of rock, paper, scissors ever
played.
Takashi Hashiyama, president of Maspro Denkoh Corporation, an
electronics company based outside of Nagoya, Japan, could not decide
whether Christie's or Sotheby's should sell the company's art
collection, which is worth more than $20 million, at next week's
auctions in New York.
He did not split the collection - which includes an important Cézanne
landscape, an early Picasso street scene and a rare van Gogh view from
the artist's Paris apartment - between the two houses, as sometimes
happens. Nor did he decide to abandon the auction process and sell the
paintings through a private dealer.
Instead, he resorted to an ancient method of decision-making that has
been time-tested on playgrounds around the world: rock breaks scissors,
scissors cuts paper, paper smothers rock.
In Japan, resorting to such games of chance is not unusual. "I sometimes
use such methods when I cannot make a decision," Mr. Hashiyama said in a
telephone interview. "As both companies were equally good and I just
could not choose one, I asked them to please decide between themselves
and suggested to use such methods as rock, paper, scissors."
Officials from the Tokyo offices of the two auction houses were informed
of Mr. Hashiyama's request on a Thursday afternoon in late January.
They were told they had until a meeting on Monday to choose a weapon.
The right choice could mean several million dollars in profits from the
fees the auction house charges buyers (usually 20 percent for the first
$200,000 of the final price and 12 percent above that).
"The client was very serious about this," said Jonathan Rendell, a
deputy chairman of Christie's in America who was involved with the
transaction. "So we were very serious about it, too."
Kanae Ishibashi, the president of Christie's in Japan, declined to
discuss her preparations for the meeting. But her colleagues in New York
said she spent the weekend researching the psychology of the game online
and talking to friends, including Nicholas Maclean, the international
director of Christie's Impressionist and modern art department.
Mr. Maclean's 11-year-old twins, Flora and Alice, turned out to be the
experts Ms. Ishibashi was looking for. They play the game at school,
Alice said, "practically every day."
"Everybody knows you always start with scissors," she added. "Rock is
way too obvious, and scissors beats paper." Flora piped in. "Since they
were beginners, scissors was definitely the safest," she said, adding
that if the other side were also to choose scissors and another round
was required, the correct play would be to stick to scissors - because,
as Alice explained, "Everybody expects you to choose rock."
Sotheby's took a different tack. "There was some discussion," said Blake
Koh, an expert in Impressionist and modern art at Sotheby's in Los
Angeles who was involved in the negotiations with Maspro. "But this is a
game of chance, so we didn't really give it that much thought. We had no
strategy in mind."
As Ms. Ishibashi wrote in an e-mail message to a colleague in New York,
to prepare herself for the meeting she prayed, sprinkled salt - a
traditional Japanese ritual for good luck - and carried lucky charm
beads.
Two experts from each of the rival auction houses arrived at Maspro's
Tokyo offices, where they were shown to a conference room with a very
long table and asked to sit facing one another, Mr. Rendell said. Each
side's experts had an accountant from Maspro sitting with them.
Instead of the usual method of playing the game with the hands, the
teams were given a form explaining the rules. They were then asked to
write one word in Japanese - rock, paper or scissors - on the paper.
After each house had entered its decision, a Maspro manager looked at
the choices. Christie's was the winner: scissors beat paper.
"We were told immediately and then asked to go downstairs to another
room and wait, while the forms went off to headquarters to be approved,"
Mr. Rendell said. He described the atmosphere in the room as
"difficult," saying both sides were forced to "make small talk."
Christie's will sell most of the major paintings in its evening sale of
Impressionist and modern art on Wednesday. It hopes the star of the
group, Cézanne's "Large Trees Under the Jas de Bouffan" (1885-1887),
will sell for more than $12 million.
Auction houses give each sale a code name to identify it. Christie's is
sticking with "Scissors."
__________________________________

[Tony DeAngelo]

They use this for everything, including deciding who breaks. In Japan
RPS is called "Jun, Ken, Hoy".

[Dhakala]

I guess that's 'cause there's no head or tail on a Japanese coin,
according to this guy. He spells RPS differently, too. :-)

http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Island/6653/jcoins.htm

There's no "head" or "tail" on a Japanese coin. Japanese people use
Jyan-Ken-Pon (Rock, Paper, Scissors) to decide matters, anyway!

One side of each coin (with the exception of the 5 yen) shows the value
in Arabic numerals and the year in which the coin was minted, written
in kanji (Chinese characters) or a combination of kanji and Arabic
numerals. The year is expressed in the gengou system, which is unique
to Japan and relates years to the length of the reign of the emperor at
the time. Most of the coins encountered these days are either Heisei
(The Era of Achieving Peace under Akihito, emperor since 1989) or Showa
(The Era of Enlightened Peace under the previous emperor, Hirohito, 64
years from 1926 to 1989).

The other side of each coin has "Country of Japan" at the top and the
value written in kanji at the bottom. There is also a picture of a
flower or a tree which is symbolic to the Japanese. An exception is the
10-yen coin, which shows a famous building instead. See below for
details.