A lot of people complain the dice must be rigged because their opponent rolled so many doubles or whatever. Well sometimes highly unlikely sequences of rolls happen using real dice too. Unless you keep records over many many games there is simply no way to know. Once a week or so someone sends me messages saying I somehow have control over what comes up. If that were true then I wouldn't play as it would be no fun. Yes I have had some extreme luck both good and bad...it happens and I will never whine or gloat about it. A friend of mine suspects sometime players here are actually not people but are computers or are using computers. It is certainly possible. But I have no knowledge of such things going on. Rarely though I have seen things which are totally unexplainable. These involve positions where the game is almost over and I am way ahead meaning the odds of me winning are better than 99.9% and my opponent suddenly offers me the doubling cube. Magically the next several rolls come out and they win. No sane player or computer would have ever doubled the game under those conditions. One explanation would be they indeed control what came but if that is so then why aren't they doing it more often? Another explanation is perhaps they somehow knew the next few rolls. I don't play cards but heard there were some scandals involving online poker (for money) where a few players could see the hole cards of the others. Perhaps someone has better theory.
Weird Coincidences?
Posted in
Backgammon
Weird Coincidences?
Excellent post and I think you have touched on what I have said all along: The dice are random. When peopled double and then miraculously win, it involves possibility VS probability. Perhaps they double just in case they do win to make it look miraculous. Just so you will know, it's much, much harder to program a backgammon game than a chess game so the likelihood of computers is suspect. I think many people often get advice via private messages. And again, great post. Dr. Gammon
My desire is to play against the best. My rating bounces between 200s-300s sometimes dramatically. My W/L% tends to be 1.35 plus or minus a bit. I am pretty sure some people are receiving help from another person. The only reason this would bother me is the person giving help didn’t choose to just play me. Were they afraid of something? It may well be harder to program backgammon than chess but people do hard things every day. To be honest this would not bother me. It can be difficult to figure out who is better than whom. The rating system can certainly be manipulated by only playing people rated higher than you are. W/L% can be manipulated by playing only those much worse than you are. There is one thing which is certainly not random. Players alternate getting the first move. If it were random then people would be complaining about the 5 times in a row they went second and forget about the 5 times in a row they went first. In a given game it may matter but over time it evens out. Just because the first move is fixed does NOT mean the rolls are fixed.