Board Game Arena

brunajmeller wrote: ↑01 May 2025, 01:55 Look at this game: https://boardgamearena.com/8/catan?table=666623439

38 TIMES THE NUMBER 8!!!!! only 3 times the number 6. This is insane!

You likely quoted the wrong table...
For the linked game the output are

{2,3,4,5,9,5,0,7,4,2,1} (two times 2, three times 3, 4 times 4, ...., one time twelve)
nothing really exceptional...

gmrsmrt wrote: ↑01 May 2025, 06:54

brunajmeller wrote: ↑01 May 2025, 01:55 Look at this game: https://boardgamearena.com/8/catan?table=666623439

38 TIMES THE NUMBER 8!!!!! only 3 times the number 6. This is insane!

You likely quoted the wrong table...
For the linked game the output are

{2,3,4,5,9,5,0,7,4,2,1} (two times 2, three times 3, 4 times 4, ...., one time twelve)
nothing really exceptional...

sorry I used the wrong file
the output is

{1,2,1,5,1,6,15,1,4,0}
namely 15 times 8 and one time 6
may be you misinterpreted the percentage of rolls as the number of rolls which happens quite often here.
A somewhat weird output but certainly not exceptional

brunajmeller wrote: ↑01 May 2025, 01:55 Look at this game: https://boardgamearena.com/8/catan?table=666623439

38 TIMES THE NUMBER 8!!!!! only 3 times the number 6. This is insane!

So firstly what you look at is the % of 8, there was 38% of 8. Gmrsmrt tell you the good distribution.
Fifteen 8 out of 40 rolls have a probability of 1/5717.
But remember you can do that claim for any number and for rolling them too much or too few, so you can roughly make that probability ~x20 more likely. Which give ~1/286.

And you got only 215 games, so yeah that's pretty interesting, you got the one game you should expect which is out of the way. But we are totally on track still, there is nothing unlikely at all. After playing ~300 games, you should have one game like that.

I've been playing online poker for more then 30 years, and have seen this argument for 30 years in poker. The thing is, you only remember the games that probability is not what you expect it to be, the 100's of games that go exactly as they should just kinda fade into your memory, and you are left convinced the randomness is against you.

And of course, when you win it's not because luck favored you, it's because you were so skilful that you could win despite the site being rigged against you

I totally agree it happened to me as well in lot of games.

this is definitely an issue - yesterday, i was in a game where there it seemed like there were as many 2s and 3s as 6s and 8s.
Today i was in a game where 6s were rolled only 3 times, and another where 8s were rolled perhaps 5 times.

It's frustrating and has me think I'll quit playing Catan and potentially other games on BGA where there's (supposed to be) the ability to apply strategic thinking modified by a range of predictabilty based on luck (e.g. dice rolls).

The dice are a problem for sure. The Algo seems to randomly pick the winner, regardless of the tile number, at the start of the game. I have seen 11, 12 and 2 on the player that is going to win roll 4 times in a row. Games that go 60, 70 and even 80% done and not a single 6.

It is NOT just the dice. The entire Algo is junk. A few examples beside the dice are how some cards always come out together. Or how the robber will trigger a number to be rolled.

How is it the Spies Cards always come out together? If you get a spy, you use it on the guy with the other blue card to get the other spy from them.
How is it that the Inventor Cards come out together? If you get one, and there are no blue cards because if there is, it will be the spy, and another person gets a green card you wait because the chances are the other inventor in in their hands.
After more than 50% of a game goes by with out a number rolled to have that number roll 3 or 4 times in a row after the robber is moved there. This happens so often I am amazed no one talks about it.

Are these above items done on purpose?

I have working in IT for 30 years and humans are terrible at programming random generators. This is why high security random generators use thing like Lava Lamps to generate random things like Encryptions. Just Google Cloudflare lava lamps live.

FromLardToHard wrote: ↑14 May 2025, 17:04 I have working in IT for 30 years and humans are terrible at programming random generators.

They're not terrible, they're very good, given that by definition a random generator cannot be "programmed". What humans are really terrible at is judging whether something is random or not.

Jellby wrote: ↑14 May 2025, 17:09

FromLardToHard wrote: ↑14 May 2025, 17:04 I have working in IT for 30 years and humans are terrible at programming random generators.

They're not terrible, they're very good, given that by definition a random generator cannot be "programmed". What humans are really terrible at is judging whether something is random or not.

There are MANY studies and white papers of how terrible humans are at generating anything random. Entire many PhD thesis's covering this topic and how Game Theory, AI, Casinos. Sports Betting and Security systems can use this to take advantage of players or catch cheaters. It's pretty common information. Why else would the top Encryption Provider in the world use Lava Lamps to generate random and not a piece of software. Because no matter what, human bias will get into the code.