Ok, so I have a question about a game I tried to play once that bombed pretty hard. I see variations of it on here all the time, and I'm wondering if I'm playing it wrong since it seems to be so popular.

It's sometimes called Reading Race or Bridge Race, among other names. You print out the key sentences on paper and tape them in a row somewhere in your classroom. Students are in two teams, one on each end of the row of papers. Two students start reading each sentence one by one as fast as they can. If they reach the end of the line, they get a point for their team. When they meet at the same paper, they do rock-paper-scissors. The student who wins keeps going. The student who loses goes back to the beginning of the row, or to the end of his line behind all his other classmates and another student starts reading.

Here's the issue: Even though the student who won keeps going, he always keeps encountering another student before he reaches the end of the line. Often, he runs into multiple students who are just starting to read. It creates a bottleneck where it becomes impossible for students to actually finish, because as soon as they win RPS, another student starts.

Since I see so many teachers on here recommending this game, how do you guys play it? Have you run into this problem, and if so, how have you fixed it?