FIBS Board backgammon forum

I'm sure this is not a new topic but I have to ask.

I swear, when I play I am either red hot or ice cold. I just don't seem to have games when I have both good rolls and bad rolls.

What has been the general consensus on tis in the past?

It appears you have discovered teh experiment. Because of this, you are no longer useful to us as a subject. We thank you for the valuable data you have provided us, and wish you luck in your future online gaming. We respectfully ask that you do not say anything about this on FIBS, as that will only taint further studies.
If you had any real paranoia, or other mood or personality dysfunction, we would be referring you to assistance.

The answer to your original question, "Are The Fibs Dice 100% Honest?", is without a shadow of doubt, maybe!!  

But only you can make that judgement when you have played sufficent number of games!

Got to learn to take the rough with the smooth snowjake, that's why I now lurve 5 and 1s!  


 

What you observe Snowjake is just the reality of playing a dice game where huge swings are possible with a single roll. The best bot analysing programs (snowie and gnu), both have a feature that measures luck. They do this by drawing up a list of all the possible dice rolls in every position and assuming that the player makes the optimum play for each, then comparing the actual roll with the mean result. Over a single game, it is extremely rare for the luck to be close to even. "Extremely rare" means two or three games in a hundred. Thus you are absolutely right, you will usually be hot or cold.
It is also not at all unusual, to have long winning and losing streaks. My longest ever losing streak on fibs was 12 matches! This is the game. You have to learn to stay calm and keep looking for the best play when this happens.
The good news is that the bots dont analyse other types of luck, so there is a lot of scope still for good play. I saw an interesting example of this recently, where I escaped from behind a five prime with a 1/18 shot, then survived my opponent's 24 hitting numbers. This looks like outrageous luck, which it was, but had she made a better play two turns previously, she would have had a six prime and snuffed out the possibility of my luck.
Are fibs dice fair? Undoubtedly yes. The server has no function that analyses your position, so it has no way of giving you a "good" or a "bad" roll. It just gives you the next one on its list. This list is also supplying all the matches that are being played concurrently to yours, so you will get a different number if you wait longer to roll. There have also been many statistical analyses of fibs dice over the years and all show that the results are indistinguishable from those obtained with a good set of precision dice.
Happy Rolling!