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29. December 2013, 16:03:09
Thom27 
Subject: Re: Backgammon Tourneys
moistfinger: The first reason is: there seemingly is still the bug causing to repeat the same dice roll with too high probability, when you go from one Backgammon game directly to another (with "submit and go to next game of this type").

Second reason: many players have the impression that the dice "just feel wrong" on this site. Me too. (That can be mistaken, of course; it is difficult to tell without statistical analysis.)

Third reason: there have been other bugs in the past, concerning dice rolling. At least one was proven by statistics: the first and second roll in a game have too often been equal. This bug is removed, however, but it shows that the implementation of the dice was erroneous from the beginning, and it still is not ok yet (see first point above). That thing seems overly complicated or inherently bad and therefore difficult to fix.

Fourth and most important reason: the random number generation is not documented, so that the players don't know what they are using. It is as if someone brought a bag full of self-made dice to the Backgammon world championship and claims these are better than any other existing dice (or at least not worse), and the tournament director decides to use them without testing. I think you agree that this would be a bad idea.
It is possible (and not very difficult) to create a cryptographically secure random number generator to roll the dice, that uses for every game a secret key which can be published after the game is over, and the generator code can also be public, so the players know the mechanism and can test it for it's general quality and as well for it's correct implementation, because once the key is known, the dice rolls can be re-calculated with own implementation of the generator. The rolls are however not predictable as long as the key is secret.
Such a method would IMO be required for serious online play of games with random.

30. December 2013, 01:22:29
playBunny 
Subject: Re: The terrible RNG
Thom27: How, exactly, have you taken advantage of these issues with the dice?

30. December 2013, 02:12:32
Aganju 
Subject: Re: The terrible RNG
playBunny: You are right of course. It does not make it easier to win, if you cannot predict the 'bad' rolls. However, if the randomness is not good, it slowly makes a different game out of Backgammon - for example, if there are less doubles, or incorrectly often two doubles in a row, you can adjust your strategy to take advantage of it. It is still a fair game, but it is not 'standard' Backgammon anymore.

However, I found a high chance of reproducing your opponent's roll by clicking in specific sequences. So when the game comes up, and he had a 5-5, and I want one too, I do that sequence of clicks, and have a higher-than-1/36 chance to get it too (it does not work all the time, but maybe 1:3; still, pretty useful feature); whereas if he has 1-2, I will not do that typically.

30. December 2013, 10:55:02
moistfinger 
Subject: Re: Backgammon Tourneys
Thom27: Thanks for that. Overall I find the dice on Brainking to be quite natural, they feel random and honest enough; it would be nice to always win but that's not the way it goes with a dice game, however good a player one is. The only truly dishonest and unnatural backgammon dice on the web is found on DailyGammon: Play there for a week and you will come to cherish the odd dice idiosyncrasies on Brainking!

31. December 2013, 00:38:33
playBunny 
Subject: Re: Backgammon Tourneys
moistfinger: The only truly dishonest and unnatural backgammon dice on the web is found on DailyGammon:

Lol. Now you've got me wondering which of the DailyGammon dice whingers you are.

31. December 2013, 03:07:22
Sylfest Strutle 
Subject: Re: Backgammon Tourneys
moistfinger: Program is wrong? ;)

30. December 2013, 11:28:44
Hrqls 
Subject: Re: Backgammon Tourneys
Thom27: i always am fond of your second reason :) ... but you probably also know that humans tend to remember bad things more than good things .. therefore there always seem to be more bad rolls than good rolls

your third reason: i think i was the one who came up with that, and i did come up with it by counting all games and record in which the bug happened and also in which games it didnt seem to happen, after that i let some friends on here know about it to verify my thoughts, and after that i posted it on the board to ask for more statistics ...

to claim any random number generator is bad you need to collect statistics, without statistics you will only have your second reason and that one doesnt really count

so, could you please write down your games and keep the statistics (all games on this site remain here forever, so you can show it at any point in the future to everyone) .. once your have the right statistics we can discuss it for real

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