strange games

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Yorgad
Posts: 131
Joined: 21 October 2012, 13:27

Re: strange games

Post by Yorgad »

Hey,

Out of curiosity, what would be acceptable evidences regarding that player for not cheating (starting from August, supposedly)?

e.g.: some games starts with a burst after a couple tries (although I agree it could be qualified as "samrt cheating"), the player lost one game (not a 100% win rate) etc.

Don't get me wrong, just trying to have a contradictory reasonning here :geek:

Cheers,
Y.
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donkeykong66
Posts: 53
Joined: 08 July 2015, 11:39

Re: strange games

Post by donkeykong66 »

Yorgad wrote: 18 November 2021, 19:54 Hey,

Out of curiosity, what would be acceptable evidences regarding that player for not cheating (starting from August, supposedly)?

e.g.: some games starts with a burst after a couple tries (although I agree it could be qualified as "samrt cheating"), the player lost one game (not a 100% win rate) etc.

Don't get me wrong, just trying to have a contradictory reasonning here :geek:

Cheers,
Y.
I think at this point, what we are trying to see is a game (preferably multiple games) where Dörte uses her strategy of "rolling while 1 or 2 columns are already completed" and she busts.
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Ranior
Posts: 212
Joined: 30 September 2011, 19:39

Re: strange games

Post by Ranior »

DonkeyKong just nicely laid it out. I've watched way too many of Dorte's games now, going back to when they were down in the 100's for elo, and I will stress the part I and others are latching on to: Dorte sometimes chooses to roll when already having capped another column, and when she does so, she never busts, to an absurd rate in a short period of games.

I've gone back and watched many games where Dorte isn't cheating. They behave like a normal player in a great many of those games--she busts early, stops at reasonable progress. Critically she also often does stop after capping one column. There's quite a few games where Dorte has the option to just keep pushing for a win in a single turn and decides not to, instead behaving like a normal player. (In fact there is even one game where Dorte probably should push for the win and doesn't!)

I think the particularly odd part of Dorte's strategy that we're all latching on to is watching Dorte not only push some number combinations far further than one probably should (although they do this pretty often), the truly alarming bit is that even after they manage to cap one column on some of their spurts, they keep going--and never fail. These are the critical pieces that make it fairly clear Dorte is cheating--you simply cannot consistently get in a position where you've capped a column and just keep pushing to roll and literally never busting. The odds of Dorte achieving this string are unfathomable.

Again, I think it also is a really telling sign that Dorte does not normally employ this strategy--she has plenty of games prior to this sudden winning streak where she does not do such things and instead stops after capping one column. This streak repeats last season which is what this thread started on--Dorte has another run last season employing this strategy and never failing and shooting up the rankings to win arena, and now we are seeing it again. This is just altogether far too much to chalk up to chance--even if you assume Dorte is the luckiest player ever, why does Dorte typically not employ this strategy, but then suddenly does and manages to never bust? There's a few games in there too where Dorte is capping 4 columns--a strong player would generally never roll again and risk losing out yet Dorte does. The only way to rationally explain Dorte's actions when they already have capped at least one column on a turn and yet continue to go are because Dorte knows they are not going to bust.
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Ranior
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Joined: 30 September 2011, 19:39

Re: strange games

Post by Ranior »

I also agree that the evidence needed to conclude this isn't cheating is seeing this strategy fail at a reasonable clip.

The really unique thing about these games is watching Dorte cap a column and keep going--especially in games where Dorte is under no pressure to be so aggressive. Dorte consistently chooses to push their luck in situations that in no way call for it as their opponent sometimes isn't even on the board at all. Yet again the real flag something is up is that Dorte literally never busts in these positions. (Dorte does interestingly sometimes take turns like a regular player where they do just cap a column and instantly stop, there are even whole games where I think Dorte isn't cheating. It's weird, but Dorte seems to only employ this cheating strategy some of the time on some of the turns--not sure if that's because the cheating strategy only allows for cheating on certain turns due to knowing the string of upcoming rolls or what). Regardless, once Dorte has capped a column and chooses to continue rolling on that turn, you'll never see them bust and they'll just keep rolling and win.

I can accept this works sometimes--I recently had a memorable loss where I didn't even get a single turn as the player capped 6, 7, 8 in a single go. This is improbable, but not wildly so, if a player only tried that they can do it maybe 4% of the time. Players can make wild comebacks sometimes, sometimes you'll see wildly unlikely things, even in a string of a couple of games. When thousands of games get played every day for 10 years on this site, you're going to get some really wonky things happening.

You're not however going to get a run where you never bust while making aggressive moves to close out games across a run of like 40 games. I must have watched roughly 90% of Dorte's last like 60 games and I've never seen Dorte bust when having capped a single column and still rolling.
semioldguy
Posts: 1
Joined: 15 June 2020, 06:40

Re: strange games

Post by semioldguy »

donkeykong66 wrote: 18 November 2021, 19:29 As Ranior mentioned, during these games, if she closes a column and decides to continue rolling, during this streak of games she never busts. I decided to look at the 21 games where she completes 3 columns all at once, and calculate the odds that she doesn't bust *after* completing the first column (a point where "regular" gameplay dictates you should likely stop). It turns out that taking into account the number she was progressing on, the odds of not busting on any of those rolls (i.e. after completing 1 or even 2 columns already) is roughly 1 in 10^18.
To put this 1 in 10^18 number in perspective: You could have 1 million players playing this sequence of games every single day for 2.8 billion years and that streak of luck might happen to one of those players once. That streak of luck within a single sequence of games happening at all multiple times in one year (which is actually just during several months, and not playing anywhere near a million times daily) is already well beyond the pale, but to happen multiple times to the same player during that time is completely unfathomable.
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Romain672
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Joined: 05 April 2016, 13:53

Re: strange games

Post by Romain672 »

For those who want more informations about unlikely event, I have a video about Dream and minecraft, which have now said that he cheat (involontary for him, but still cheat).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ko3TdPy0TU

Here is the important numbers:
- the world record in a casino are about 1*10^10
- the world record of the world record in a casino are in craps, not getting a 7 roll 154 times in a row, which has a probability of 1.6*10^12
- and then he talk about something I don't like, it's the probability of one event happening if for 10 billion year, every human did that action every second, and it has a probability of 3.1*10^19

But nobody double check the numbers given by Donkeykong66. But from what I have seen, that doesn't seem off.
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donkeykong66
Posts: 53
Joined: 08 July 2015, 11:39

Re: strange games

Post by donkeykong66 »

Romain672 wrote: 19 November 2021, 05:50 For those who want more informations about unlikely event, I have a video about Dream and minecraft, which have now said that he cheat (involontary for him, but still cheat).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ko3TdPy0TU

Here is the important numbers:
- the world record in a casino are about 1*10^10
- the world record of the world record in a casino are in craps, not getting a 7 roll 154 times in a row, which has a probability of 1.6*10^12
- and then he talk about something I don't like, it's the probability of one event happening if for 10 billion year, every human did that action every second, and it has a probability of 3.1*10^19

But nobody double check the numbers given by Donkeykong66. But from what I have seen, that doesn't seem off.
Here is some more information for anyone who wants to check:

I analyzed all last turns, and looked at which numbers she rolled on after closing the first column, and how many times. For example, game 216274931 she rolled 7 times on 5&7 and then 2 more times on just 7 to complete the game. Here are the combinations and frequencies:

two columns:
2 & 4 --- 4
5 & 7 --- 7 + 5 = 12
5 & 8 --- 2
5 & 11 --- 1
6 & 7 --- 3 + 2 = 5
6 & 8 --- 1 + 11 + 2 + 12 = 26
6 & 9 --- 5
6 & 10 --- 2
7 & 8 --- 2 + 5 + 4 = 11
7 & 9 --- 1 + 2 = 3
7 & 10 --- 1
8 & 10 --- 3

single column:
4 --- 4
5 --- 1
6 --- 3 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 = 8
7 --- 2 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 3 = 12
8 --- 1 + 4 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 8
9 --- 2
10 --- 1 + 2 = 3

Using http://www.taterenner.com/cantstop.php, the probability of none of these rolls failing is roughly 1 in 10^18. Anyone feel free to double check the numbers and verify the 1 in 10^18 claim. As a quick sanity check, this is 113 rolls total, and even giving a quite generous 80% of success for every roll to not bust already would give about a 1 in 10^11 probability.
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Een
Posts: 3854
Joined: 16 June 2010, 19:52

Re: strange games

Post by Een »

To answer some comments, we know that people posting here are not random-deniers or random-complotists, and you make a good case. This is the reason why we looked.

I looked at the game first several weeks ago when I noticed this thread, and saw nothing wrong.
Seeing this thread continued, another team member looked at the code this week (actually, discussing it, most team members have looked at some point), and at this player activity patterns, and saw nothing at first glance.

But reading your extra posts about how unlikely this series was, he decided to continue digging and after spending some extra detective hours found the answer in an unexpected place.

So you don't need to compute any more probabilities: you were right. We are discussing how to fix the issue. Once it has been fixed and deployed, we'll post the solution to the mystery.
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simonbe
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Joined: 23 March 2020, 11:30

Re: strange games

Post by simonbe »

Cool, looking forward to it :)
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patrober
Posts: 41
Joined: 18 March 2020, 11:13

Re: strange games

Post by patrober »

Excellent. Is this unique to this game, or is it common to some other games, such as the other games this player regularly wins at?
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