Forum Archive :
Fun and frustration
Don't mean to cast ANY aspersions upon the rolling talents of any
robotic entities, but to lose this race against gnubg is downright
ridiculous:
Move number 60: X to play 42
GNU Backgammon Position ID: v20DIADbLAAAAA
Match ID : QQlqAUAAAAAA
+13-14-15-16-17-18------19-20-21-22-23-24-+ O: gnubg (Cube: 2)
| | | O O O O O | 4 points
| | | O O O O O |
| | | O |
| | | O |
| | | 6 |
v| |BAR| | 11 point match
| | | | X
| | | | X
| | | | X
| | | X X X X | X Rolled 42
| O | | X X X X X | XX 0 points
+12-11-10--9--8--7-------6--5--4--3--2--1-+ X: user
Pip counts: O 50, X 28
Rolled 42:* 6/off
After I bore a man off, gnubg rolled: 66, 11, 22, 51, and 44.
Nothing serious...
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Gregg Cattanach writes:
That is a pretty remarkable parlay. The race is so hopeless that even with
a rollout Snowie shows it as 100% wins for X, so you must be WAY more than
1000 to 1 to win this one.
Of course, it didn't cheat, but it is a pretty good bad beat story :)
Gregg
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Douglas Zare writes:
I think it is about 2000-1 after the 4-2, and perhaps slightly more
unlikely before the 4-2. An immediate 6-6 would give 0.5% winning chances,
an immediate 5-5 would give 0.4%, and an immediate 4-4 would give 0.2%, and
these add up to about one chance in 3200. I think the other ways to win add
up to at least half as much.
On FIBS, I won a match against Costello in which I needed to roll 3 working
sets while it failed to roll any double twice. I calculated the chance at
about 3000 to 1, but that wasn't too surprising, since my experience level
on FIBS was greater.
A less likely event from real life: In a side event at the Boston Open, my
opponent and I rolled the same number 8 times to try to start the game. The
chance of that happening for any particular game is about 1 in 1.7 million,
and I certainly haven't played that many games. Of course, that was neither
lucky nor unlucky.
Something to keep in mind with bad-luck stories from real life is that
there is a good chance that they get garbled and exaggerated. A player
complained that I had rolled 5 doubles in a row after only 4 of my last 5
rolls were doubles. Since it is about 20 times as likely to be able to make
that mistake, if you think there is one chance in 10 that a player would
make that mistake then 2/3 of the stories you hear would be wrong.
If anyone thinks that they have found a pattern in the Mersenne twister
rng, please test it carefully, and then let everyone know, rather than the
reverse.
Douglas Zare
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Fun and frustration
- A game brings you money (Michael J. Zehr, Feb 1996)
- A story from my youth (neilkaz, Aug 2008)
- Backgammon at 50 (Mary Hickey, July 2005)
- Backgammon by mail (MelRae, Aug 1997)
- Backgammon haikus (Phil Simborg, July 2004)
- Backgammon hustler (Socks, Apr 2004)
- Backgammon laws (Walt Swan, Dec 1999)
- Beginner's luck (Paul Tanenbaum, May 1999)
- Characters we all know (Alan Webb, Feb 1999)
- Choking under pressure (Kevin Bastian, Dec 1997)
- Danish Championship semifinal match (Daniel Murphy+, Nov 2004)
- Don't come looking for sympathy ... (Ian Shaw, Nov 2004)
- "Good roll!" (jfk+, Jan 1998)
- Hard luck story contest (Einar Tryggvason, Apr 1996)
- "I resign" (neilkaz, June 2011)
- Lonely checker's lament (Luvrhino+, Aug 2001)
- Losing streaks (Stanley E. Richards+, June 2006)
- Losing streaks (Leo Bueno+, Nov 1999)
- Losing streaks (Jim Peplow, July 1998)
- New Year's resolutions (Alan Webb, Jan 2000)
- One-liners (scuba, Jan 2007)
- Simborg's laws of backgammon (NYCGuy, June 1997)
- Some learning humor (Daniel Murphy, Aug 2011)
- Ten commandments of backgammon (Morten Wang, Nov 1997)
- The square thing (David B. Sandler, June 1996)
- Translation fun (James Eibisch, Feb 1998)
- What are the chances? (Pete+, Mar 2003)
- Wishing good luck (Michel Tarragnat, Apr 2005)
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