Monica Martinez is in unforgiving form as she dispatches four hapless wannabes with clinical precision. Rock. Boom! Paper. Boom! Scissors. Boom! The Canadian stands on the stage on the first floor of Phase One of Sha Tin’s New Town Plaza, just slightly bent from the hips, and whips her playing arm in short, sharp and deadly jabs that send her opponents reeling.

These four people – three guys and one woman – are supposed to be the best we can put up: the semi-finalists in the Hong Kong leg of the World Rock Paper Scissors Championship. Forget about it. They have met the destroyer, and, though six bangles jangle on her ruthless right wrist, they have found out that, even in a demo game, Martinez brooks no fools. She will not be defeated.

Martinez is the reigning Rock Paper Scissors world champion, a title she snared in a surprise victory at last year’s RPS World Championships in Toronto, hosted in a brewery by the World RPS Society, “dedicated to the promotion of Rock Paper Scissors as a fun and safe way to resolve disputes”. She won US$10,000 and international glory for her achievement.

This year is the first time the championships have come to Hong Kong, offering the local winner a chance to travel to Toronto to compete in this year’s finals. After two weekends of heated competition at the shopping mall, 51-year-old Tsuen Wan mechanic John Leung eventually prevails. The smiling assassin, who’s wearing camouflage shorts and one of the fluorescent green T-shirts foisted on participants, tells me after the final – in which he easily dispatched of a tall, bespectacled woman – he feels he was “very lucky”. He didn’t practice for the competition and merely entered because it brought back fond memories of playing the game as a kid. Whatever, Leung, I know you’re just frontin’.

I challenge him to a game, best of three. Locked in intense battle, I choose to start with scissors and then run the three-move gambit known as ‘The Diplomat’: paper, paper, paper. Now, I’m struggling to find a way to phrase this diplomatically, but... well, I kick his camo ass. Hong Kong champion? Pfft. Give me a real challenge.

Luckily, she’s sitting nearby. Seated just inches from Martinez, I ask the imposing world champ – by day, a college admissions worker – what her secret is. “I don’t know,” she lies. “I just read their faces. I just know what they’re going to do next.” The bangles, she swears, have nothing to do with it.

According to the official press line, Martinez has gone 367 days without being defeated. By my rough calculations, that’s just over a year. “If it’s serious, I win. I can’t help it,” she says.

We’ll see about that. I challenge her to a duel. It takes just three throws to deliver the killer blow. Scissors. Rock. Paper. No-one ever expects the paper. I throw my hands high above my head in triumph. I can already see it on my CV: “Once defeated the Rock Paper Scissors world champion at her own game”.

See www.worldrps.com for more.

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