This game is broken.

[BarnardsStar]

Quick update: after running a monte carlo simulation - rolling 1,000,000 sets of 40 dice rolls each, iterating through the games looking at each "window" of 11 rolls and seeing if 7 were doubles, then counting how many games that happened in - the answer appears to be about 0.84%, give or take. So that's one out of every 119 games, and at the current rate of backgammon games that's one every 1h45 minutes or so.

It's not that ridiculous.

Oh, and incidentally, for the original (false) claim of 8 out of 9 rolls? The rate there would be once every 8800 games or so. Quite a bit rarer, but still not ridiculous.

I'll leave you with this parting thought from Richard Feynman:

You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won’t believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!

[Jellby]

What is the probability of opening the BGA forum page and finding a post about rigged dice?

[Chadlington]

The game is not broken. It’s rigged.

The designers decided that it would be more important to have a close game versus a true game. So, just like Mario kart will you get hit by the giant bomb rocket at the end, The opponent that you’re currently killing and have trapped in your home suddenly gets the exact rules that they need to get out and then suddenly they roll multiple double sixes and fives.

It’s an algorithm. It was a decision made. It’s shitty because it ruins the nature of the game.

[BarnardsStar]

The game is not broken. It’s rigged.

The designers decided that it would be more important to have a close game versus a true game. So, just like Mario kart will you get hit by the giant bomb rocket at the end, The opponent that you’re currently killing and have trapped in your home suddenly gets the exact rules that they need to get out and then suddenly they roll multiple double sixes and fives.

It’s an algorithm. It was a decision made. It’s shitty because it ruins the nature of the game.

You deduced this based on a whole 4 games played? What a laugh. Come back when you actually understand what "random" means.

[zogdog]

Sadly, I have to agree. I love cribbage and literally in every game I play on this site, one player is consistently dealt amazing hands and gets the perfect turn-up card, whereas the other has to try to scrape every point they can get. The other day, I was dealt JJJ5 for 2 hands in a row and then also got 4556. This happens way too often for it to be considered luck...

[Paddles]

So apparently we have agreement from two players that the dice on BGA are rigged - but one says it's being rigged to make the games close, and the other says its being rigged to make someone a clear winner.

Of course, neither of them provides anything in the way of even suggestive examples, let alone some sort of analysis, let alone analysis with any statistical rigour (or, alternatively, examination of the game code).

Sometimes I wonder whether we're just being trolled?

[BarnardsStar]

Sometimes I wonder whether we're just being trolled?

Or the person making the claims is so sadly mistaken. More than half the time complainants will come here and say something like "I rolled doubles 17 times in a row and they were all odd numbers" and you go back and look at the game and, well, no, they did not. Not even close. I don't know if it's trolling or people getting confused, or purposefully inflating things to "make a point."

Like in this case -- unfortunately, games that happened on Aug 5 and Aug 6 are broken, but I've looked at the opening hand of this player's cribbage games going back through August 3rd (excluding the two dates above) and saw absolutely nothing like what was being claimed. Unfortunately I do have to allow that it might have happened in the 6 cribbage games they played on those two dates, so I'm not saying it definitely didn't happen ... but "it happened the other day" is exactly the sort of loosey-goosey claim people love to make that never shows any evidence. And then they can't remember when it happened, or maybe "oh I got JJJ5 in one game and QQQ7 in the next game, whatever, it was two triples in a row is my point." But when you bear in mind the initial cribbage deal is 6 cards and you put two of them in the crib... the chances of getting 3 of a kind two hands in a row is not terribly gobsmacking. If it was two trip-Jacks that would be much rarer, and if it was actually trip-Jacks with a 5 (as one of the other three cards dealt), even rarer...

My calculations indicate the odds of getting dealt a three-of-a-kind in a 6-card hand like that are about 1 in 22.6. The chances of it happening twice in a row would therefore be 1 in 511, and the chances of it happening twice in a row with the same suit would be 1 in 6640 or so. Which sounds rare, but hey, it has to happen to somebody. It would be weirder if that never happened.

[Chadlington]

The game is not broken. It’s rigged.

The designers decided that it would be more important to have a close game versus a true game. So, just like Mario kart will you get hit by the giant bomb rocket at the end, The opponent that you’re currently killing and have trapped in your home suddenly gets the exact rules that they need to get out and then suddenly they roll multiple double sixes and fives.

It’s an algorithm. It was a decision made. It’s shitty because it ruins the nature of the game.

You deduced this based on a whole 4 games played? What a laugh. Come back when you actually understand what "random" means.

Yes. It’s obvious and I have pattern recognition.

[BarnardsStar]

I have pattern recognition.

Ah, I've found your problem. The human brain is very good at spotting patterns. So good, in fact, that it frequently spots patterns where none exist. This is your problem. You don't understand true randomness, and think that 4 games of poor luck (or, well, poor gameplay, possibly) actually show any sort of meaningful pattern. They don't. There is no pattern.

I'll note you just played a 3-point Backgammon match... in the first game, your opponent got to bear off just 2 pieces before you won. In the second game they again got to bear off just 2 pieces before you won. In the third match they managed to bear off 12 pieces. This does not fit your stated claims of the game rigging things to be close. You whomped them. Where's your pattern?