Don't even think about challenging Douglas College student Travis Chastkavich for the last slice of pizza or the front seat of the car.
When it comes to the universal arbitrator of rock paper scissors, he's basically unbeatable.
Chastkavich, a 23-year-old, took first place in a 200-competitor, singleround elimination, tournament in Douglas College's gym last Tuesday afternoon.
Chastkavich's strategy is something of a double psych-out, baffling his opponent by repeating the same play over and over until the opponent is convinced he'll change it up, and then repeating the play once more.
"I like to go rock, usually more than once," he said. "In my last game that won the match, I did rock four times in a row. It's kind of psychological. You think a player is going to do something. I just didn't change anything. He thought I was going to do paper so he did scissors and I beat him with rock."
The strategy worked, but instead of "riding shotgun" or getting the last cold beer, the reward was four tickets to an upcoming Vancouver Canucks game.
"It was pretty intense," he said. "I knew Canucks tickets were on the line and I really wanted to win them so I tried my best."
And this isn't the first time's Chastkavich has shown his rock paper scissors prowess. He won another rock paper scissors tournament organized by his friends when he was younger.
That Chastkavich and his girlfriend will be taking two of the Canucks tickets is a given, but how to decide who gets the other two?
The 23-year-old sports science student came up with a fitting plan.
"I decided to choose four of my closest friends who have girlfriends and last night we got them to compete against each other in couples' games and the couple that won the tournament is coming with us," he said.
The Douglas tourney was organized by Scott Fraser-Dauphinee, campus life coordinator for the college, as a means of getting students to mix together and have fun on campus to combat the image Douglas has of being just a "commuter college."
"Because Douglas is a commuter school, we don't have residences or anything like that but we can still build a community like schools with residences sometimes have," he said.
Fraser-Dauphinee said the turnout was slightly less than he had hoped but getting students involved in their school takes time and Douglas is on the right track.
"It'll be the first of a number of events this year that is geared towards getting the students out for something that is fun and engaging," he said.
BrentRichter
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