Is the BGA random number generator rigged/flawed?

[N_Faker]

Lets see what the BGA forum users think.

[nccc]

is this an algorithm or a mood problem

[RicardoRix]

is this an algorithm or a mood problem

Well any good RNG would take that into account.

[N_Faker]

How surprising.

[Woodruff]

Hard to tell...
We human have many cognitive biases on how we see probabilities, especially when having the occasion to play way more games than usual.
That being said, some situations remain suspicious indeed, I can't tell if those are part of some "true random" or not.

Unless a true scientific method/protocol can be set up to test probabilities and is correlated with the mathematical aspects of the problem, and that only, discarding any subjective point of view, I think it is impossible to answer that question.

We are many to complain, that is human nature, but so few can make such a study alas :/

[KongKing123]

Rigged: no. Flawed: maybe. It would definitely be interesting to see the source code of the bga_rand function that is used here.

The php_rand function before PHP 7 was quite bad: https://boallen.com/random-numbers.html

Hard to tell...
We human have many cognitive biases on how we see probabilities, especially when having the occasion to play way more games than usual.
That being said, some situations remain suspicious indeed, I can't tell if those are part of some "true random" or not.

[sourisdudesert]

Hi,

There is no need to do a poll on this.

If you have the mathematical proof (ie: probability calculation vs important number of random event) that the BGA random generator is flawed, this is useless to vote "yes": please post this proof here instead.

To say things differently: we absolutely don't care if 51%, 90% or 10% of BGA users are thinking that the random generator is flawed: only ONE proof is would be needed to demonstrate this.

We've been very transparent on this:
_ we explained here what functions are being used by BGA for randomness: https://boardgamearena.com/faq?anchor=f ... ing_random
_ a lot of games here has been developed by BGA users, and you can contact them to ask them which exact functions they used, if needed.

So, again, if you have a mathematical proof, please post it there (should I mention that it never happened in 11 years?). If you just have the "impression" that it is flawed, well, that's just an impression and BGA is not concerned about that

[sourisdudesert]

Rigged: no. Flawed: maybe. It would definitely be interesting to see the source code of the bga_rand function that is used here.

The FAQ is answering this

[KongKing123]

Rigged: no. Flawed: maybe. It would definitely be interesting to see the source code of the bga_rand function that is used here.

The FAQ is answering this

Thanks, I didn't know that. So the bga_rand function I've heard about is just a wrapper for random_int and shuffle, there is no custom implementation?

According to the Studio File Reference the site is on PHP 7.2.12, so that would mean random_int and shuffle have pretty good randomisers.

[sourisdudesert]

Thanks, I didn't know that. So the bga_rand function I've heard about is just a wrapper for random_int and shuffle, there is no custom implementation?

Just a wrapper, yes. The idea is that the day PHP is providing an even better algorithm, we can move all games to this new one by just updating this one