Woodstock woman competing in Rock, Paper, Scissors national championship

By SOYIA ELLISON
For the Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/20/08

Emma Gay is on one heck of a winning streak.

The first time she ever played Rock, Paper, Scissors competitively, she won. The second time, she won again. And so this weekend she'll play a third time. In Las Vegas. For $50,000.

Competitive Rock, Paper, Scissors? Fifty thousand dollars?

Yes and yes.

Gay, a 21-year-old Woodstock native studying psychology at Kennesaw State University, can't believe it either.

"They told me I was going to play in the national tournament in Las Vegas, and I was like, Oh-kayyyy," she said. "I didn't even know such a thing existed."

Gay's good fortune began this spring, during a night out with friends at Zucca Bar and Pizzeria in Kennesaw. She just happened to be there on the night Bud Light was sponsoring a Rock, Paper, Scissors competition.

As most readers no doubt remember from childhood, Rock, Paper, Scissors — or RPS — works like this: Two people face each other. They each hold out a fist and pump it three times — one, two, three. On three, they display the sign for rock (closed fist), for paper (flat palm) or for scissors (two fingers in sideways "V"). Scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock crushes scissors.

Gay cut, covered and crushed the competition at Zucca that night. And so on April 20, she headed to Turner Field to play RPS against 60-some local winners from around the state.

"I was like, 'I'm just going for the free food and beer,'" she recalls. "And then I got to Turner Field, and I got really competitive. I wanted to win."

Win she did. On the Jumbotron, no less.

Gay clinched the Atlanta bracket in the March Madness-style tournament, qualifying her for an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas to compete in the national tournament at the Mandalay Bay casino.

She's taking her fiancé, Tim Palmer, along on what will be her first "really nice vacation."

"I've never been to Las Vegas ... I've never even played the slot machine," she says. "I've never tasted any of that kind of life. I'm just a little Southern girl."

If Gay wins, she'll advance to the international competition in Beijing on Aug. 23, which would be a dream for this would-be traveler.

"This is cheesy," she admits, "but ever since I saw the Olympics when I was a little kid, I've wanted to represent my country at something. Wouldn't it be funny if I represented my country at the international Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament?"

The international tournament is the first of its kind, and the brainchild of Matti Leshem and Andrew Golder, co-founders of the U.S.A. Rock, Paper, Scissors League.

The two men have a background in television — they both worked on the Comedy Central game show "Win Ben Stein's Money," and Leshem's IMDB credits include playing a cop on an episode of "Falcon Crest" and executive producing something called "Paula Abdul: Cardio Cheer." And they clearly know something about marketing. Lesham can work Bud Light into the answer of almost any question. But he swears Rock, Paper, Scissors has been a lifelong passion.

"I'm originally from Israel, and I did play a lot as a kid," he says. He and his friends used the game to settle childhood disputes. "But in Israel, it's not, 'Who's going to get the ball in the neighbor's yard?' It's 'Who's going to get the ball in the Palestinian neighbor's yard?' The stakes were always a little higher."

And now, with the RPS league, he and Golder have found a way to raise the stakes in the U.S.

This is the League's third year and third national tournament. "The Best Damn Sports Show Period," on cable TV's Fox Sports Net, has plans to air parts of this year's competition on its Oct. 6 show.

Poker great Phil Gordon will referee the tournament, and an ambulance and paramedics will be standing by in case of dislocated shoulders or wrists. Leshem claims such injuries can occur in these high-stakes, single-elimination tournaments.

"In the first round, half of the people will be eliminated. It's brutal. You see people crying. You see all sorts of emotions."

When Leshem talks about RPS, he uses words like "athleticism," "skill," "stamina" and "strategy."

Gay uses the word "luck."

"Some people get really mad when I say that," she says. "They take this so seriously. I don't take myself that seriously. I think I'm lucky." (She does, however, believe her knowledge of psychology helps her in sizing up the competition, anticipating what her competitor will throw.)

She's still laughing about the suggestion in her information packet that she don a costume to unsettle her competitors.

"I'm like, what, are there going to be a bunch of Trekkies there?"

As of midweek, she had no idea what she would wear. She'd bought a burgundy T-shirt that reads, "Rock, Paper, Scissors. Choose wisely." But she wasn't sure she'd don it for the tournament.

"I think I might just wear something cute, because I think there'll be a lot of nerdy guys there, and so I'll throw them all off by being cute."

Now that's strategy.

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