Continuing where we have left off.
Round 3 of Argus Panoptes, where 8 contenders remain:
Japan is a top 10 country that toggled the most visits at SOTR. Curiously, Yuhei Kusui is Japan’s first entry to any event I’ve ever hosted. The first seed will be up against Ken Levine, who you might recognize as “The Subro” where he solves puzzles at numerous blogs. In the other corner, Matej Uher, who once reached a crazy final in a RPS tournament earlier this year, will be facing Matt Lahut, a newcomer and July Giants is his first event.
Who will prevail? And the winner of Argus Panoptes is…
And the first-seed delivers! Yuhei Kusui from Japan occupies the second seat in the Champion’s Throne!
We now come to our third week to determine who will take the third spot. 27 people defeated Medusa so the bracket will award 5 byes to the earliest submissions.
There are two reasons why I use RPS as the method to determine the winner. Firstly, I enjoy the suspense while conducting them. Secondly, I just find “the winner from a random draw is so-and-so” such a plain way to end any contest. RPS not only introduces randomness but it also allows a little window of strategic play.
For example, in Argus Panoptes: James McGowan opted for PPSSSSSSSS and Matt Lahut reached the finals with PSSSSSSSSS. Coincidence?
Now in Medusa, 3 sneaky players adopted the same strategy.
Ken Levine: PPPPPPPPPP
Robert Vollmert: PPPPPPPPPP
Andrew Brecher: PPPPPPPPP
This explains why paper is so popular in my stats. Ben Wootten also did something similar: RRRRRRRRRR
Let’s see if this strategy works:
(Errata 14/8/14: Fixed incorrect symbols)
Nope! Ben got as far as the final 8 until he eventually had to face a paper. Matt Lahut, with a different set of hands, is once again in the final four! Could he take his revenge? He will be facing puzzle master Nikola Zivanovic. Nikola is one of SOTR’s top solvers who always came up short in these luck-based games. On the other side, Czech’s puzzle ace Jakub Hrazdira (known as “Gotroch” in the puzzle community) will take on Dylan Gibbs, who certainly exercised his beginner’s luck as Medusa was his first submission ever with SOTR.
Who will occupy the third seat in the Champion’s Throne?
To be continued
Somewhere Over the Rainbow 
I didn’t properly understand how the RPS system was going to work. I thought it was going to be a 10-point game against each opponent in sequence. So I picked PSSSSSSSSS after reading some literature that players tend to play rock first and tend to generally play paper more than the other two. Apparently the second of those statements was right and not the first!