Hi,

Random Dice: The Myth

We have been receiving quite a bunch of complaints about the dice. Is it random or not? Well I have a feeling that there is a slight misconception by some of our user about what you call "random".

Basically you expect the dice to be evenly distributed. Once in a while you wish to see a double, but in no way can you accept if one of the players (most of the time your opponent) gets three doubles in a row. This just cannot happen, the dice has to be rigged! If there is four doubles in a row, you will simply stop playing, it is such an impossible thing.

Some quotes from you:
"i saw guys winning in cause of soo many doubles in the first few minutes in a match, so i have stop playing this copy of the game i really like "

Well, if you think like this, you should think about the following:
"random" does not mean that the doubles, D6's will be evenly distributed throughout every match. 
They will not. It would not be random if they always did.

I have made some simulation with a random number generator to see how it goes.
First example:

http://www.flyordie.com/backgammon/50.txt

Some of you will even complain if you see that player1 in this case starts with 2 doubles in a row. Moreover, one of them is a double-six! Terribe! This cant happen! Player1 has surely hacked the server!

Otherwise nothing special yet, player1 was the luckier for these 50 throws, no doubt, scoring four D4's, amongst others. You can also see at the bottom, that numbers are not evenly distributed, 50 turns is just not enough for this.

Next example:

http://www.flyordie.com/backgammon/100.txt

100 turns.
Well, the doubles seem more evenly distributed 16-15, but what would you come up with, if the first 25 steps happened to you? Player1 without any double for 21 turns, while player2 gets 5 of them, including a D6 and 2 D5.
Is it possible? 
Player1 then gets it back at the end, getting 5 doubles in the last 9 turns.

Next example:

http://www.flyordie.com/backgammon/1000.txt

1000 turns. Which is about only 50 games played.
As you can see D6's are evenly distributed, both players getting ~20 of them, with around 150 total doubles.
But if you look closer, "strange" things can happen meanwhile: player1 getting 6 doubles out of 8 turns, including two D6's.
Player2 did not get a single double for 40 consecutive turns. You would be out of your mind if it happened to you, wouldn't you.
Well, as you can see it is completely normal to happen, even with just 1000 turns (~50 games). At the end the two players are more or less equal, though.

Next example:

http://www.flyordie.com/backgammon/10000.txt

10000 turns.
Just putting the stats here:
Doubles: 1668 1662
Doubles 1: [1-1]: 248 [2-2]: 280 [3-3]: 279 [4-4]: 272 [5-5]: 292 [6-6]: 297
Doubles 2: [1-1]: 283 [2-2]: 254 [3-3]: 276 [4-4]: 273 [5-5]: 295 [6-6]: 281

Numbers 1: [1]: 3282 [2]: 3338 [3]: 3357 [4]: 3281 [5]: 3320 [6]: 3422
Numbers 2: [1]: 3477 [2]: 3195 [3]: 3243 [4]: 3383 [5]: 3350 [6]: 3352

Longest Double-Streak for 1: 5
Longest Double-Streak for 2: 5

Longest streak WITHOUT double for 1: 42
Longest streak WITHOUT double for 2: 48

As you can see all numbers counts, all double counts are basically equal on the long run. But players can also get 5 doubles in a row, both of them did, and both of them had 42-48 turns without a single double.

And finally:

http://www.flyordie.com/backgammon/100000.txt

Just to show you that longest streaks will increase as the number of considered turns grow.

Longest Double-Streak for 1: 7
Longest Double-Streak for 2: 8

Longest streak WITHOUT double for 1: 56
Longest streak WITHOUT double for 2: 52

That is EIGHT doubles in a row for player2, and this is only 100 000 turns, which is about 4000 games played. On a server where several thousand players play each day, this can happen daily.

So what i wanted to say, is that this game involves some luck as well.
If you are unlucky, it is not a wise thing to blame it on the site admins, moderators, or anyone else. If you play more, chances will get equalized as you can see from my examples above.

Hope this little explanation was useful for those who took the burden of going through it.