I used similar and felt pleased to avoid the brute force approach. But then I saw you refined solution and realised I made it difficult on myself by calculating the scores.

SCORES1 = {

"A X": 4, # Rock = 1 + draw = 3 "A Y": 8, # Paper = 2 + win = 6 "A Z": 3, # Scissors = 3 + lose = 0 "B X": 1, # Rock = 1 + lose = 0 "B Y": 5, # Paper = 2 + draw = 3 "B Z": 9, # Scissors = 3 + win = 6 "C X": 7, # Rock = 1 + win = 6 "C Y": 2, # Paper = 2 + lose = 0 "C Z": 6, # Scissors = 3 + draw = 3 }

Note to Admin - it is not formatting code block in comment. Is that me or comments?