First player advantage

[BGGeeky]

Hi!

Backgammon has a first player advantage. When I start a game, I am always second player. Is there a way to ensure that this is divided over games?

For example by using the first roll to decide who goes first?

Greetings and good gaming!

[RobertBr]

Player order is randomly decided in most games - pretty sure this is the case with Backgammon.

[euklid314]

Hi!

Backgammon has a first player advantage. When I start a game, I am always second player. Is there a way to ensure that this is divided over games?

For example by using the first roll to decide who goes first?

Greetings and good gaming!

Claims like "I am always second player" make me curious every single time. Usually there has been a streak of about 5 games in a row that makes people write such comments. I probably do not have to stress the fact, that of all cases I looked at *all* such comments so far have been misleading, false, lying,... (choose how you want to phrase it).

For BGGeeky it was the second game I looked at that he started. Because this game could have been played after his forum thread I continued to look and only 4 games away he started again. What makes people spread those misinformations, I wonder?

To end my post with constructive information: The starting player in Backgammon is decided randomly on BGA. According to usual international Backgammon rules the first roll of the game can never be a double.

[BGGeeky]

Thanks for the replies. I indeed noticed I started a couple of times since the post. No intentions of lying of course

I am wondering if there are any stats about the % of going first. My (maybe exaggerated, biased, misleading, lying -call it whatever unconstructive word is best) feeling is still that this is not balanced somehow. This got me wondering wether or not this has to do with who starts the game. Is there any information about how first player is selected?

I definitely played more than 5 games

[euklid314]

Unfortunately there is no stats provided. Thus, if you are interested, you have to invest some time. I am 95% sure that you have started between 130 and 165 games of your 295 games.

What do you mean by starting player being "balanced"? The starting player is not balanced because it is determined randomly. What "balanced" distribution do you expect or wish?

I well believe that your opponents have started more games than you - because that is 50% likely. The probability that you started exactly the same number of games as your opponents is practically 0% (even if you had played 296 instead of 295 games). Your feeling seems to be that your opponents started way more games than you - which is most likely due to selective perception.

And again I add some constructive information at the end of my post - perhaps this is interesting to some readers...

The starting player in Backgammon has a 51.327% chance of winning. This probability is calculated by averaging out all the 15 starting rolls and assumes equal skill of the players.
If the starting player rolls a 3-1 (best starting roll), he has a 55.51% winning chance.
If the starting player rolls a 4-1 (worst starting roll), he has a 49.65% winning chance.
Only with 4-1 starting is a disadvantage. All the other 14 starting rolls give an advantage to the first player.