Board Game Arena

The supposed randomness on this site is *. I have started 10 games recently and was chosen as either the last player, when it was the worst to go last, or the first in 4 player games of Carnegie which means I get to choose a new department last seven times. Then today I start a few new games of Carnegie and I am first in turn order in all of them which means choosing a new department last. I am hardly ever second and slightly more frequently third. I am of the opinion this is ridiculous now. I am in the worst possible starting position in 9-10 games out of 12-13 games.

*Moderation Edit: please remember to keep the language on BGA family-friendly

13 games is a really small sample when it comes to statistics ...

True randomness is not possible with current technology (maybe when we get quantum computers). But it should be close enough that you can't notice the difference. But with 1 million (for example) people playing, one of then will likely experience luck that is so bad it could only happen once in a million. That person may well come to the forums to complain. An interesting aside is that there is a trend in gaming (from traditional computer games, I have no idea if any of the games on BGA follow this) of making games less random in order for them to appear more random to individual players.

King Hrothbeort wrote: ↑12 April 2022, 19:25 An interesting aside is that there is a trend in gaming (from traditional computer games, I have no idea if any of the games on BGA follow this) of making games less random in order for them to appear more random to individual players.

[face palm]... unfortunately even mentioning that (and no it doesn't happen on BGA, the developers just call some variation on a rand() function) is likely to add further fuel to the long list of users who buy into a bizarre conspiracy theory about BGA rigging the tables (the Backgammon and Yahtzee forums are full of this kind of stuff).

To the OP: You just got unlucky, that is how randomness works.

OP - It’s just unlucky.

Across all the millions of games played by thousands of people on BGA there’s bound to be someone who gets an unlucky run like that.

They then post in the forum that the randomiser doesn’t work.

The other 20,000 people don’t post “I went first 7 times out of 13, seems ok to me” but that’s the truth of it.

Same as if in real life 20,000 people all rolled 6 dice. You’d expect three of those 20,000 to roll 6 of a kind. They might go away thinking the dice are loaded. They arent.

frogstar_A wrote: ↑13 April 2022, 11:22 Same as if in real life 20,000 people all rolled 6 dice. You’d expect three of those 20,000 to roll 6 of a kind. They might go away thinking the dice are loaded. They arent.

Actually, you would expect 10 to 20 people to roll 6 of a kind. Part of the reason that this keeps coming up is that the general understanding of probability amongst players is very very low (its like having a Go-Kart club in which only 1 in a 1000 of the drivers have even a basic knowledge of how engines work, you would end up with some very weird thinking).

6 ^ 5 = 7,776. So 3 out of 20,000 seems reasonable.

The RNG has no idea if it's best or worst to go first or last in Carnegie, or any other game. It doesn't know the difference between you or any other player. It doesn't even know you're playing a game, or what the result is being used for.

As expected, the usual crap about statistics over thousands or millions of games. Additionally, started another two 4 player games of Carnegie and first in turn order again. I guess al that collective randomness has just happened to fall on me and not dispersed over the thousands, or more, people playing on bga, strange that - and no I don't believe it to be a conspiracy theory.

I guess that gave some of you statistics nerds a chance to *.


*Moderation edit: please remember this site is family-friendly and sexual content is not appropriate.

come on...
even if you use a random insult generator it will come up with something better than that.