Simple trick for avoiding the robber

[anonymous60523]

Whenever you have more than 7 cards in your hand and it is your turn, waiting 30 to 40 seconds before rolling the dice can greatly lower the odds of you rolling a 7. I've used this trick many times and it actually works. How do I know? Before I started to use this trick, I would roll the dice immediately when my turn started. And I would almost always roll a 7 when I had more than 7 cards in my hand. It seems that BGA programmed the dice to behave this way.

As somebody has already pointed out here in another thread, programmable dice are never "random." They are designed to behave a certain way according to an algorithm. If the parameters are not met for a game algorithm, then they will not trigger.

I completely understand the risks of posting this information to the public forum. Will BGA now make changes to its alrogithm so that this trick no longer works? That is possible. But to be honest, I don't really care. If they do change their algorithm, I think it will be fairly obvious when that happens. But I just wanted to share this little bit of information to everybody else.

Note: Most of my Catan games were played on another account (around 400 games played). I had about a 50% win rate, and I attribute that to the trick I described above.

[Stroom]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

You misunderstood something about the algorithm explanation. RNG algorithms are not related in any way to the game algorithms.

Generally people who whine about randomness just do not understand how randomness works and they always take some strawman examples and show heavy confirmation bias. Just... stop.

[euklid314]

Whenever you have more than 7 cards in your hand and it is your turn, waiting 30 to 40 seconds before rolling the dice can greatly lower the odds of you rolling a 7. I've used this trick many times and it actually works. How do I know? Before I started to use this trick, I would roll the dice immediately when my turn started. And I would almost always roll a 7 when I had more than 7 cards in my hand. It seems that BGA programmed the dice to behave this way.

As somebody has already pointed out here in another thread, programmable dice are never "random." They are designed to behave a certain way according to an algorithm. If the parameters are not met for a game algorithm, then they will not trigger.

I completely understand the risks of posting this information to the public forum. Will BGA now make changes to its alrogithm so that this trick no longer works? That is possible. But to be honest, I don't really care. If they do change their algorithm, I think it will be fairly obvious when that happens. But I just wanted to share this little bit of information to everybody else.

Note: Most of my Catan games were played on another account (around 400 games played). I had about a 50% win rate, and I attribute that to the trick I described above.

I know you are joking and making fun. But you are not helping because some people believe that your post is meant seriously.

[anonymous60523]

Whenever you have more than 7 cards in your hand and it is your turn, waiting 30 to 40 seconds before rolling the dice can greatly lower the odds of you rolling a 7. I've used this trick many times and it actually works. How do I know? Before I started to use this trick, I would roll the dice immediately when my turn started. And I would almost always roll a 7 when I had more than 7 cards in my hand. It seems that BGA programmed the dice to behave this way.

As somebody has already pointed out here in another thread, programmable dice are never "random." They are designed to behave a certain way according to an algorithm. If the parameters are not met for a game algorithm, then they will not trigger.

I completely understand the risks of posting this information to the public forum. Will BGA now make changes to its alrogithm so that this trick no longer works? That is possible. But to be honest, I don't really care. If they do change their algorithm, I think it will be fairly obvious when that happens. But I just wanted to share this little bit of information to everybody else.

Note: Most of my Catan games were played on another account (around 400 games played). I had about a 50% win rate, and I attribute that to the trick I described above.

I know you are joking and making fun. But you are not helping because some people believe that your post is meant seriously.

Where did I say I was joking? I stand by what I said in my post. If you decide to wait for a minimum of 30 to 40 seconds before rolling the dice, the odds of you rolling a 7 are greatly reduced. I know this to be true because I experienced it firsthand.

I'll go even further than that and say that the BGA dice are stacked against you. Why do I say this? Almost every situation where I had more than 7 cards in hand, I rolled a 7. This would not be the case if you were to play the actual board game with real dice. It is statistically impossible. But I would like to be clear with what I am saying here. I only noticed this to happen when it was my turn to roll the dice, and when I had more than 7 cards in hand. Having more cards in hand did not seem to affect how other players rolled the dice. I hope this all makes sense.

[anonymous60523]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

You misunderstood something about the algorithm explanation. RNG algorithms are not related in any way to the game algorithms.

Generally people who whine about randomness just do not understand how randomness works and they always take some strawman examples and show heavy confirmation bias. Just... stop.

I can understand why someone would say this. Confirmation bias certainly exists. But it is incorrectly being applied here. It is clear the dice were designed to behave this way on this platform. And respectfully sir, you have only played Catan 1 time on BGA. Maybe you would have a different opinion if you had played BGA's Catan more.

[euklid314]

If you want to be taken seriously then please provide us the game numbers of all games (I assume you can provide at least 10) where the robber was behaving wrongly according to you claim.
That is, please provide the game numbers of those games where you were playing normally and the robber was supposedly appearing to often when you had 7 cards in hand.

[Tisaac]

This is the most entertaining conspiracy theory i have heard so far on dice on bga, please keep going !
How would you say the distribution goes as the waiting time goes ? Is it like : if i click directly the odds are high and it decreases as the time goes ? Or rather there is a threshold of 20sec after which the algorithm completely changes its behavior ? Are there any risk of going to back to the initial bad dice behavior if i wait too long, like 1 min ?

[Jellby]

Will BGA now make changes to its alrogithm so that this trick no longer works? That is possible.

If BGA had tweaked the dice as you say, why would they have made it work different after 1 second or 30 seconds? Is it their "secret trick" so they could get better rolls than the rest? Why not make it dependent on the username instead?

I have a suggestion: Wait 30 minutes instead of 30 seconds. It works best in real-time times. I guarantee you'll be very unlikely to roll a 7... or any other number.

[Fusselkopp]

I'll go even further than that and say that the BGA dice are stacked against you. Why do I say this? Almost every situation where I had more than 7 cards in hand, I rolled a 7.

Well, some simple maths here: Whenever 2 dice are rolled, the most likely result is a 7 - because the most possible combinations of results add up to 7.
So yes, the dice ARE kind of stacked against EVERYONE in this game, by deliberate choice of the game's author! That has nothing to do with any BGA algorithm, though.

[Sdani]

This is the most entertaining conspiracy theory i have heard so far on dice on bga, please keep going !

Absolutely Agree!!!!

My conclusion, why on earth would anyone on BGA have the dice algorithm related to the number of cards in hand?
What does BGA (or their programmers) win with this?
(except for funny forum posts...)

Even if so, it is the same for everyone and doesn't influence the game result? So what's the problem?