Board Game Arena

https://boardgamearena.com/16/cantstop? ... layFrom=95

This player climbed all 3 columns from zero to top in a single turn. For this, he rolled 27 times in a row, without busting.

Odds calculation is difficult, but appearantly odds of this being succesfull for colums 6, 8 and 9 with 27 dice rolls without busting are about 1.5 times 10 to the minus fifteenth percent. This can be described as "astronomically small" and is a good reason to assume foul play is present. BGA is not giving me a path to directly report this player together with the replay though.

You are wrong on your odds. They only needed 1 pair formed by 2 dice out of 4 to land on 6, 8 or 9, which is a ~89.5% chance (1160/1296 or 6^4). And the odds that it happens 27 times in a row is about 5.6%. They were indeed lucky that the other pair landed on a column you had already filled in their first 2 rolls, but it's not enough to suspect them of cheating

Edit : 5.6% is for 26 rolls indeed. For 27 rolls, it's 5%, but the result is pretty much the same. Lucky but still high enough to happen in at least a game played on BGA

MacHaggis wrote: ↑13 August 2025, 13:56 https://boardgamearena.com/16/cantstop? ... layFrom=95

This player climbed all 3 columns from zero to top in a single turn. For this, he rolled 27 times in a row, without busting.

Odds calculation is difficult, but appearantly odds of this being succesfull for colums 6, 8 and 9 with 27 dice rolls without busting are about 1.5 times 10 to the minus fifteenth percent. This can be described as "astronomically small" and is a good reason to assume foul play is present. BGA is not giving me a path to directly report this player together with the replay though.

You showed no work as to where (1.5 x 10^-15)% came from and posted no sources. This would be especially important since you said it was hard to calculate, so not something we could just read off and go "yeah, that seems reasonable". If you showed worked or posted a source, there would be something to look at and consider, to see if your case is reasonable or where something is off, but as it is it just looks like a number made out of thin air.

cheval_raye wrote: ↑13 August 2025, 14:50 You are wrong on your odds. They only needed 1 pair formed by 2 dice out of 4 to land on 6, 8 or 9, which is a ~89.5% chance (1160/1296 or 6^4). And the odds that it happens 27 times in a row is about 5.6%. They were indeed lucky that the other pair landed on a column you had already filled in their first 2 rolls, but it's not enough to suspect them of cheating

6^4 being the 1296 denominator, not the 1160/1296 fraction of course. https://www.taterenner.com/cantstop.pdf Lists 6 8 9 as 90%, which is what 89.5% rounds to if we go by the nearest decimal listings. So while I didn't manually sort out if there were 1160 combinations with at least 1 pair of 6, 8, or 9, it seems reasonable enough to me. (1160/1296)^27 is giving me ~5.0% instead of ~5.6% though. A trivial difference that doesn't change the conclusion. (1160/1296)^26 is what gives me ~5.6%.

And there is a way to report suspected cheaters. The FAQ here says:

If you think a player committed a serious offence during a game (for example insulting someone in the chat), please report them to us, using the 'report this player' link from their profile or by clicking on the 'red thumb' at the end of the game, so that we can take appropriate measures.

I assume this includes cheating, but (even aside from the math argument) how exactly do you think this person cheated? Hacked the game and inputted his own dice rolls?

You can actually google search this as well. This game has some pretty interesting statistics making it a fun game to analyze for statisticians. To win in one turn the odds are around 4.3% (this does not take into account the specific lanes you choose). With 6,7,8 for instance the odds are actually above 6%. For 6,8,9 the odds of busting are just slightly higher. Odds of winning in one turn from those columns would indeed come out to a little over 5%. Now we take into account that your opponent played every single one of their turns until they busted. This means your opponent is likely a risk taker. In a 2-0 scenario a good majority would go for completing 3 columns, or perhaps 2 columns in one turn. The game would be lost anyway, so mine as well go for it all. Not only is it unlikely that your opponent cheated, his risky play behavior is exactly what someone should do when down so many points. He also took column 9 before 8 or 6, and he attempted to progress all columns together rather than individually showing even more understanding as to how to win in 1 turn. (I personally would've stopped after taking columns 9 and 6 as the odds of winning from that would've likely been higher than rolling a couple 8's, but taking 3 lanes does give one some significant bragging rights so you know gotta account for that). Anyway, there's the end of the yap.

TLTR:
Your opponent plays way too risky; however, reality is that this really isn't statistically unlikely.

How is it that they cheated?

thg0724 wrote: ↑08 October 2025, 02:30 How is it that they cheated?

By getting lucky. No one is allowed to get lucky. That's why no one ever wins the lottery. The chances are too small.