Supernatural bad luck?

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SluggerBaloney
Posts: 83
Joined: 07 February 2020, 14:26

Supernatural bad luck?

Post by SluggerBaloney »

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Last edited by SluggerBaloney on 12 January 2024, 16:41, edited 1 time in total.
bananasplay
Posts: 168
Joined: 30 May 2018, 16:43

Re: Supernatural bad luck?

Post by bananasplay »

SluggerBaloney wrote: 21 March 2022, 03:18 Babylon is my last favorite Wonder card to be. It just doesn't match up with my play style, I always lose, and I don't enjoy playing.

Played one game, and of course, get Babylon. With 7 wonder cards, the odds of getting any individual card is 14%
I lose, and play again. I get Babylon again. This is .14 * .14 = .019, so about a 2% chance.
I lose, and play again. I get Babylon again. This is .14 * .14 * 14 = .0027. That's about a 3 in a THOUSAND chance I just hit.
I lose, and play again. I get Babylon again. This is .14 * .14 * .14 * .14 = .00038. That's about a 4 in TEN THOUSAND chance.

That simply should not happen
By your own calculations, shouldn't it happen roughly 4 times out of every 10,000 games?

Supernatural? No. Bad luck? Sure.

As for your "play style", instead of being rigidly tied to a way you prefer to play, why not be open to adjusting how you play in order to improve your chances in a given scenario? In 7 Wonders as in other games, I've been forced to ask myself if my preferred way of playing is simply holding me back in certain circumstances. I definitely default to a certain way of playing in some games, but if that way of playing is not serving the ultimate goal of victory, then my choice is to adjust or resign myself to playing "my way" in a losing cause.
Please check my profile for a list of bugs that need upvotes so that BGA will maybe get around to fixing them.
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frogstar_A
Posts: 410
Joined: 30 April 2020, 00:41

Re: Supernatural bad luck?

Post by frogstar_A »

SluggerBaloney wrote: 21 March 2022, 03:18 Babylon is my last favorite Wonder card to be. It just doesn't match up with my play style, I always lose, and I don't enjoy playing.

Played one game, and of course, get Babylon. With 7 wonder cards, the odds of getting any individual card is 14%
I lose, and play again. I get Babylon again. This is .14 * .14 = .019, so about a 2% chance.
I lose, and play again. I get Babylon again. This is .14 * .14 * 14 = .0027. That's about a 3 in a THOUSAND chance I just hit.
I lose, and play again. I get Babylon again. This is .14 * .14 * .14 * .14 = .00038. That's about a 4 in TEN THOUSAND chance.

That simply should not happen
BGA says around 5.9 million games of 7 wonders have been played so far.

That means it should have happened over 2,000 times already that someone gets ggeir least favourite wonder 4 times in a row.
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SluggerBaloney
Posts: 83
Joined: 07 February 2020, 14:26

Re: Supernatural bad luck?

Post by SluggerBaloney »

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Romain672
Posts: 1348
Joined: 05 April 2016, 13:53

Re: Supernatural bad luck?

Post by Romain672 »

You are just remembering wrongly (or lieing in purpose, which is worst).
The max you got in your 10 last game is three babylon in a row.
Then you got another wonder, then another babylon, then i think two others wonders, then babylon.

It's way more likely to have all that.

(for those who check, be careful, one game with babylon was abandonned)
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dschingis27
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Joined: 27 June 2015, 18:30

Re: Supernatural bad luck?

Post by dschingis27 »

Who would have guessed that this "supernatural" story is actually made up. :?
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Romain672
Posts: 1348
Joined: 05 April 2016, 13:53

Re: Supernatural bad luck?

Post by Romain672 »

I just did 100 simulations of 514 rolls of wonders and I counted the number maximal of Babylon wonder they got in 10 games at any of the 505 group of 10. Here is the results:
- 1 of them got only 3 babylons at max, which look really surprising*
- 29 of them got 4 babylons at max
- 48 of them got 5 babylons, like you
- 18 of them got 6 babylons
- and 4 of them got 7 babylons

So yeah... 5 babylons is totally in the range. Feel free to see if you can break that 6 babylons on 10 games or not.

*(he still got 62 babylons/514 while the average is 73, and the lowest is 58, guess his babylons are reparted evenly, while that 58 got 5 babylons in 10 games... I guess those numbers aren't related much :D )
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frogstar_A
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Joined: 30 April 2020, 00:41

Re: Supernatural bad luck?

Post by frogstar_A »

Sigh

There’s a post like this every day on BGA - I got a 1 in a bazillion chance event happen! The websites terrible! It’s rigged! Etc

And yet of course with users all round the world playing a bazillion games in total every day then yes, someone will have a 1 in a bazillion chance event happen to them every day.

Unusual good luck 1 in a bazillion things happen too of course - I won 14 games of Yahtzee in a row last year - but of course they don’t make people angry so you don’t hear about them in forums…
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Een
Posts: 3861
Joined: 16 June 2010, 19:52

Re: Supernatural bad luck?

Post by Een »

What looks like supernatural bad luck to me is that it seems to be very often the same users posting about this. That must be terribly biased and not random at all... *shrug*

On a more interesting note, better random is on the way https://www.zx2c4.com/projects/linux-rng-5.17-5.18/ (but that probably won't change a bit the probability of rants about randomness in the forums).
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RicardoRix
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Joined: 29 April 2012, 23:43

Re: Supernatural bad luck?

Post by RicardoRix »

Een wrote: 21 March 2022, 21:31 On a more interesting note, better random is on the way https://www.zx2c4.com/projects/linux-rng-5.17-5.18/ (but that probably won't change a bit the probability of rants about randomness in the forums).
Will the bga_rand() function use this new upgrade?
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