Incredible miss and backgames against bots

[PersianLord]

This position was taken from a match between a fibster (White) and MonteCarlo bot (gray)  this afternoon.



The human player (White) had 97% chance to hit: 35 of all rolls other than 1-1, and guess what happened, he rolled 1-1.  .  Every 2,3,4,5 and 6 could have done the job for White, who apparantly had played a very excellent and well-timed backgame, yet failed to hit.

I just thought that this position might be interesting to post. After all, it teaches us that NOTHING is guaranteed in backgammon. Unfortunately, I was banned by the white player and thus was not able to watch the rest of match, but I guess he should have won the match, considering his excellent position (spare checker on 5-pt anchor, strong board, 3-anchors and terrible timing of the damn bot.)

By the way, haven't you noticed that almost all of the bots seem to have problems in facing backgames?

[spielberg]

All the bots will have (very small) problems against backgames as they're a relatively small portion of the universe of matches and thus they'll be less well educated in that subset. The magnitude of the bots errors will be nowhere near that which Hardy once identified when he claimed (almost certainly correctly given what I know of him) that he'd win 100% of the time against GnuBg when both players start with 15 pieces on the bar but will arise from a similar "blindspot". Whether the errors are abitrageable is an extremely difficult question - I suspect not yet know NIHI (who's excellent generally (please note that's solely in term's of his play) and particularly at backgames) tries.

[adrian]

Issuing a look NIHolymypic command every 2 seconds will allow you to manually compile a book about NIHI's matches, despite of the gag and blind. Publish it , it may be interesting!

[PersianLord]

All the bots will have (very small) problems against backgames as they're a relatively small portion of the universe of matches and thus they'll be less well educated in that subset. The magnitude of the bots errors will be nowhere near that which Hardy once identified when he claimed (almost certainly correctly given what I know of him) that he'd win 100% of the time against GnuBg when both players start with 15 pieces on the bar but will arise from a similar "blindspot". Whether the errors are abitrageable is an extremely difficult question - I suspect not yet know NIHI (who's excellent generally (please note that's solely in term's of his play) and particularly at backgames) tries.

Good point, Steve.

I'm not good at backgames and hate to play them, but believe me, whenever I tried, I did better against GNUBG. You can test it steve, start a well-planned backgame and you'll see GNUBG makes some strange blunders. It seems that it doesn't consider timing and re-circulation when defending against a backgame. It hits as many blots as it can, even when you've made 2 points in his board. Thus it usually endes with many checkers out of play and a terrible timing, much like the position I posted.

I can bet the White has won that match, other than a drop out of rage!

[PersianLord]

Issuing a look NIHolymypic command every 2 seconds will allow you to manually compile a book about NIHI's matches, despite of the gag and blind. Publish it , it may be interesting!

Thanks my dear friend, but I'm not really interested in such a book, cuz I know already how to defeat sub-1500 opponents  .

The cause for posting this position was that the white player (whom I didn't like to write his FIBS nickname because of my deep respect for privacy) shouted and asked us all to check his position. I got interested and took a look. Then thought that it might be nice for other fellow fibsters to take a look as well and here we are!

Regards

[Noah]

It's like throwing a 21 when only a pip from 4 is needed to WIN.

Further nothing new.... Drama of the backgame should be incalculated.

[dorbel]

It is an opinion often heard that "Bots don't know how to play backgames" and by implication don't know how to defend against them either. Is there any actual evidence of this? Snowie, Gnu and bgBlitz all seem to play them pretty well to me.

[PersianLord]

It is an opinion often heard that "Bots don't know how to play backgames" and by implication don't know how to defend against them either. Is there any actual evidence of this? Snowie, Gnu and bgBlitz all seem to play them pretty well to me.

There is an article that claims that snowie4 is better in defending against backgames:

http://bgsnowie.com/backgammon/articles.dhtml?id=56

[dorbel]

That article compares Snowie 4 to Snowie 3. What I really want to know is, why do we so often hear that the claim that bots dont understand backgames? Where is the evidence?

[blitzxz]

That article compares Snowie 4 to Snowie 3. What I really want to know is, why do we so often hear that the claim that bots dont understand backgames? Where is the evidence?

This is a big problem... How can you prove that bot is playing badly? Maybe rollout. But that might be wrong as well if there is systematic errors. You might believe some (well known) expert player but that's far from evidence to me.

I think bots play normal backgames well and I have learnt a lot about backgames from gnu. I think that gnu is right when it often hits checkers. If opponent already has a good timing you might as well send more checkers to bar because that increases gammon & backgammon chances. But gnu doesn't hit if opponent has bad timing. And gnu tries to ruin the timing by slotting to home board.

The only bad thing which I have found out is that when gnu is in some sort of super backgame (3-points and more) it will slot like crazy. Gnu doesn't care how many checkers are send behind opponent bar. In one of those rare games gnu had almost all his checkers in my home board. I did also long rollouts (with gnu..) and they showed that gnu's recycling strategy was not correct.

And I don't know about snowie since I don't have it.

[PersianLord]

That article compares Snowie 4 to Snowie 3. What I really want to know is, why do we so often hear that the claim that bots dont understand backgames? Where is the evidence?

The article clearly shows that bots have been in trouble facing backgames for a long time:

"Overall Snowie 4 proves to be much better in backgame positions, in respect to the checker play and cube actions. Ambitious Backgammon players can learn a lot from Snowie in this domain. It is the first time, that a computer program handles backgames well!"

For example here, Snowie 3 will play a foolish 24/20*/14:



But Snowie 4 will correctly play 24/14 without hitting. When the 3rd version of Snowie was so bad handling the backgames, it's quite reasonable to think that how terrible might have been the earlier versions. So we can claim that it's true that bots have, or stil had, troubles in handling backgames. And still I believe that they can't handle them as good as they perform other sterategies.

Regards

[dorbel]

Yes I agree that traditionally bots were less efficient in backgames than in other types of games, but so are 99% of humans! My point is that many people seem to think that if they can get the bot into a backgame, then they will be able to outplay it, but I don't believe that, nor have I ever seen any evidence to support the theory.
I accept, because Levermann says that he has rolled it out, that not hitting is better in the position that he shows, but i wouldn't say that it is obvious over the board.
Anybody got a position where a modern bot makes a blunder (a move that costs 0.11 in money equity)?
Blitzxz correctly identifies a problem with rollouts, which is that you can't trust the bot to do a rollout if it is making a fundamental error to begin with. Thus if you want to compare a hitting play with a non hit in a position where the evaluation prefers the non hit, the rollout is of dubious value. It will play the non hit variation consistently and of course it will hit on the first roll if you ask it to do so, but it won't hit later. You see the problem.

[lewscannon]

I can't resist this. What no one has pointed out is the infernal 'luck' that these damn bots seem to have. I can't count the number of times when I can see an impending disaster coming 3 or 4 rolls away in a match against a bot, and there's absolutely nothing I can do to avoid it, as the dice railroad me with highly improbable sequences, whereas it just doesn't seem to happen nearly as often against regular players. I know this statement will have it's detractors (hi, dorbel! ), but after all my Fibs experience, it just seems to happen way more against bots than humans.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that everyone isn't out to get you.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

lews

[PersianLord]

I can't resist this. What no one has pointed out is the infernal 'luck' that these damn bots seem to have. I can't count the number of times when I can see an impending disaster coming 3 or 4 rolls away in a match against a bot, and there's absolutely nothing I can do to avoid it, as the dice railroad me with highly improbable sequences, whereas it just doesn't seem to happen nearly as often against regular players. I know this statement will have it's detractors (hi, dorbel! ), but after all my Fibs experience, it just seems to happen way more against bots than humans.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that everyone isn't out to get you.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

lews

Well done.

Actually my initial title for this topic was "incredible miss and an old question". The old question was :" Do FIBS bots cheat?", lol.

I still can't realize why bots get their most desired rolls, most of the times, but let us imagine their dices are really random.

Regards

[Zorba]

Human beings tend to be very bad at dealing with probabilities and statistics. Especially dealing with very low or very high probabilities is difficult for us, at least at the psychological/intuitive level.

Rolling 1-1 here is not a miracle. It's just one of the 36 permutations of rolling two dice. It's almost a 3% chance to roll 1-1, every time you roll two dice, and a bit more than 97% to not roll it. We tend to translate that to "can't miss" and "will hit", because it's hard to deal intuitively with the unlikely 3% scenario. But it should happen once every 36 times, and given the amouhnt of dice most players roll on FIBS (especially combined together!), things like this happen all the time. So this might feel like "an incredible miss", but it really isn't. It's just a case of rolling the unluckiest roll, a 1/36 chance. It will happen at least once in quite a lot of your backgammon games. This particular position just happens to have one very bad roll, something which is quite common for backgames (for both sides even).

Another way of looking at it: if you had rolled something else and hit, would you consider yourself lucky that you didn't roll the dreaded 1-1? Or would you have found that "normal" or not even have realised there was a chance to miss?

Here's a quick rollout of the Snowie 4 position (hit or not?), GNUBG 0-ply cubeless:


    1. Rollout          24/14                        Eq.:  +0,432
        62,5%  21,8%   0,9% -  37,5%   4,5%   0,1% CL  +0,432
      [  0,2%   0,2%   0,1% -   0,2%   0,1%   0,0% CL   0,006]
        Full cubeless rollout (trunc. at one-sided bearoff) with var.redn.
        1296 games, Mersenne Twister dice gen. with seed 825414521 and quasi-random dice
        Play: 0-ply cubeless prune
    2. Rollout          24/18 13/9                   Eq.:  +0,379 ( -0,053)
        59,5%  24,2%   1,4% -  40,5%   6,3%   0,3% CL  +0,379
      [  0,3%   0,2%   0,1% -   0,3%   0,2%   0,1% CL   0,008]
        Full cubeless rollout (trunc. at one-sided bearoff) with var.redn.
        1296 games, Mersenne Twister dice gen. with seed 825414521 and quasi-random dice
        Play: 0-ply cubeless prune
    3. Rollout          24/20* 13/7                  Eq.:  +0,343 ( -0,089)
        53,6%  30,4%   2,4% -  46,4%   5,4%   0,2% CL  +0,343
      [  0,3%   0,2%   0,1% -   0,3%   0,2%   0,1% CL   0,008]
        Full cubeless rollout (trunc. at one-sided bearoff) with var.redn.
        1296 games, Mersenne Twister dice gen. with seed 825414521 and quasi-random dice
        Play: 0-ply cubeless prune
    4. Rollout          24/20*/14                    Eq.:  +0,337 ( -0,095)
        53,9%  29,4%   2,2% -  46,1%   5,5%   0,2% CL  +0,337
      [  0,3%   0,2%   0,1% -   0,3%   0,2%   0,0% CL   0,008]
        Full cubeless rollout (trunc. at one-sided bearoff) with var.redn.
        1296 games, Mersenne Twister dice gen. with seed 825414521 and quasi-random dice
        Play: 0-ply cubeless prune


So, hitting is indeed quite bad, costing you lots of wins. However, it does win more gammons (and some backgammons); just not enough to make it a good play.

N.B. I think this rollout is good enough for ballpark figures here (i.e. hit or not), but if you want more accurate numbers you really should use 2-ply checker play.

[PersianLord]

Another way of looking at it: if you had rolled something else and hit, would you consider yourself lucky that you didn't roll the dreaded 1-1? Or would you have found that "normal" or not even have realised there was a chance to miss?

Not really. When something is likely to happen 97% of the times, it's occurance would not be considered lucky. That would be just normal.

So, hitting is indeed quite bad, costing you lots of wins. However, it does win more gammons (and some backgammons); just not enough to make it a good play.

I had pointed to this earlier, that even without hitting this roll, white is still the favorite to win the match. But my main focus was actually on this question: "why bots, here MonteCarlo, are not good at backgames?"

Regards

[socksey]

"why bots, here MonteCarlo, are not good at backgames?"

Because they have to give us some miniscule chance of beating them!   

socksey



"Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results." - George S. Patton

[blitzxz]

I can't resist this. What no one has pointed out is the infernal 'luck' that these damn bots seem to have. I can't count the number of times when I can see an impending disaster coming 3 or 4 rolls away in a match against a bot, and there's absolutely nothing I can do to avoid it, as the dice railroad me with highly improbable sequences, whereas it just doesn't seem to happen nearly as often against regular players. I know this statement will have it's detractors (hi, dorbel! ), but after all my Fibs experience, it just seems to happen way more against bots than humans.

The reason is that bots play better. Humans only focus on their opponents good luck not realizing their own luck which is called skill. Bots maximaze their chances win so they seem luckier as you lose more. Selective observation. That's like those slot machine players who always remember when they have won but never remember their loses. I complitely agree with Zorba. The whole gambling industry is based on the fact that humans can't figure out propabilities. If every one could no one would play a game for money where they are expected to lose. Sometimes you lose, sometimes you win, but can you figure out the big math: how are you doing in long run? Easy to say but millions of gamblers play by their own logic. Who has ever played lottery?  Not rolling the 1-1. Yes that's lucky. It's over the expected value. 

[Yvon]

This position was taken from a match between a fibster (White) and MonteCarlo bot (gray)  this afternoon.



The human player (White) had 97% chance to hit: 35 of all rolls other than 1-1, and guess what happened, he rolled 1-1.  .  Every 2,3,4,5 and 6 could have done the job for White, who apparantly had played a very excellent and well-timed backgame, yet failed to hit.

I just thought that this position might be interesting to post. After all, it teaches us that NOTHING is guaranteed in backgammon. Unfortunately, I was banned by the white player and thus was not able to watch the rest of match, but I guess he should have won the match, considering his excellent position (spare checker on 5-pt anchor, strong board, 3-anchors and terrible timing of the damn bot.)

By the way, haven't you noticed that almost all of the bots seem to have problems in facing backgames?

Hi this is my first post here. I agree with the previous posters (Zorba et al) that the 1-1 roll was just bad luck, it proves nothing really.

HOWEVER this is not what usually happens at Fibs. What happens is a SERIES of bad rolls for one player combined with either neutral or a series of best rolls for the other. This causes unbelievably high impropabilities that cannot be attributed to random dice. ****

OK in the above example we had the one and only bad roll 11 i.e with a probability 1:36.
Let's suppose the black player then rolls one of his best rolls 12,14,16, 21,23,24,25,32,34,36,41,43,54,56,61,63,65. The chance for this is 17:36 almost 50%.Not bad at all. Then white rolls one of the worst again 55, or 66. This is a chance of 2:36.

We have already reached a propability of this happening of 1/36*17/36*2/36 of 34:46656 or 1:1372
I won't be surprised if black then rolls some neutral rolls and then when ready, a very usefull 66 while white either rolls neutral or more catastrophic doubles.

*** So if this cannot be atrributed to random dice on what the hell can be atrributed? In my oppinion all games at FIBS are monitored by a computer program which at some stage (usually at critical positions) interferes and decides who the winner will be. Don't you dare double in such situations, you will end up crying.

I am going to open up a forum for discussing specifically this issue. I don't expect Fibs to ever admit this  happening, so my only hope is for people to submit their files, the number of games they played, and see if such high improbabilities fall within range.

I personally have played about 1000 games there, i have lost more than a 200 under such bizare conditions.

NB. Has anybody noticed how frequent is your rolling 66 at the BEGINING of the game (say within the first 7 rolls) when they HIT you? Is the chance for this happening a plain 1:36??? No it is not! Look at the conditions (within the first 7 rolls + hit you)

[Yvon]

Now if I may add my 2 cents on the matter of the bots been lucky (or rolling themselves a series of best rolls) or not, I would definetely say they are not. There are 6(?) bots at Fibs I think, 3 of them are just average players. Strangely I have never seen a series of high improbability best rolls from a bot, while i have seen too many while playing with humans. Don't know why,propably the Fibs server doesn't mess around when bots are playing 
Just lets them do their own messing which luckily is not as much as one would expect from Fibs server 

Gnu imo is not such a good player I don't know why so many people rely on its analyses and stuff. How reliable could they be??

[PersianLord]

Hi this is my first post here. I agree with the previous posters (Zorba et al) that the 1-1 roll was just bad luck, it proves nothing really.

HOWEVER this is not what usually happens at Fibs. What happens is a SERIES of bad rolls for one player combined with either neutral or a series of best rolls for the other. This causes unbelievably high impropabilities that cannot be attributed to random dice. ****

OK in the above example we had the one and only bad roll 11 i.e with a probability 1:36.
Let's suppose the black player then rolls one of his best rolls 12,14,16, 21,23,24,25,32,34,36,41,43,54,56,61,63,65. The chance for this is 17:36 almost 50%.Not bad at all. Then white rolls one of the worst again 55, or 66. This is a chance of 2:36.

We have already reached a propability of this happening of 1/36*17/36*2/36 of 34:46656 or 1:1372
I won't be surprised if black then rolls some neutral rolls and then when ready, a very usefull 66 while white either rolls neutral or more catastrophic doubles.

*** So if this cannot be atrributed to random dice on what the hell can be atrributed? In my oppinion all games at FIBS are monitored by a computer program which at some stage (usually at critical positions) interferes and decides who the winner will be. Don't you dare double in such situations, you will end up crying.

I am going to open up a forum for discussing specifically this issue. I don't expect Fibs to ever admit this  happening, so my only hope is for people to submit their files, the number of games they played, and see if such high improbabilities fall within range.

I personally have played about 1000 games there, i have lost more than a 200 under such bizare conditions.

NB. Has anybody noticed how frequent is your rolling 66 at the BEGINING of the game (say within the first 7 rolls) when they HIT you? Is the chance for this happening a plain 1:36??? No it is not! Look at the conditions (within the first 7 rolls + hit you)

Wellcome Yvon,

I'm very eager to participate in your forum.

BTW, I think more proof is needed to conclude that whether the dices are random or not, 1000 games is not sufficient. There's also a page on Patti's website related to this issue :

http://www.pattib.org/fibs_dice/

But it would be nice to post some odd positions that a lucky roll decides the game, so let me know when you'll create your forum.

Regards

[Yvon]

Thanks for the welcome PersianLord. I have sent an e-mail to Patti regarding this matter and although I don’t really expect a reply, just out of courtesy I will wait for a week or so before opening up the forum. Most propably it will be on MSN as is the only place I know of opening up a forum easily.

Thanks for reminding me of that article on whether on the overall the fibs rolls are random or not. I ‘ve read it a long time ago it  just examines whether on the overall the rolls or doubles fall within range of probabilities.For example whether a 45 (or 54) appear 2 times every 36 or 5.5% over a million or billion-I don’t know- of fibs rolls.

This however has nothing to do with my suspicion that the games at Fibs are monitored by a computer which at some stage interferes by giving one of the players a SERIES of best rolls. The article just examines if the dice generator at fibs is reliable or not. I have never claimed it is not, all I claim is that is often bypassed by some computer program. You are very right, this interference often takes place at the bearing off with lots of doubles, all we need is just records to prove it mathematically. Furthermore imo it targets only specific players….

This Fibs computer interference takes many forms but is always a series of 3-5 rolls in critical positions. Suppose the computer wants to destroy an almost quaranteed win of player A. It may start giving  a Series of worst rolls for A + Series of best rolls for B, or a series of worse rolls for A +neutral rolls for B or just a series of best rolls for B+neutral for A. More often than not it spreads this SERIES of let’s say 4 rolls over a bigger range of say  6 rolls and to complicate things even more it may even throw some smoke in, by braking the series and give player A a "sweatener" roll when it’s all too late.

We will analyze all these if and when we open that forum. We will really need good mathematicians to calculate the odds of posted files. Things get terribly messy sometimes considering that for every position there is a set of best rolls, worst rolls, a bit good, a bit bad, and totally neutral ones….

[Patti]

You told me in email that you had proof.  I asked to see it, and also inquired as to your hypothesis, testing method, sample size, and confidence interval.  You dodged those questions.

However, please feel free to post any statistical evidence you would like.  FIBS is honest, and I have nothing to hide.  If you have convincing evidence that there is a problem then I would be happy to see it.  If your evidenced is biased and your collection methods are dodgy, then that too will speak for itself.

By the way, there is no way for a computer program to bypass the FIBS dice roller.  You can use the telnet interface and see for yourself exactly how the client and server communicate-- everything is out in the open and is plainly human-readable.

[playBunny]

opening up the forum. Most propably it will be on MSN as is the only place I know of opening up a forum easily.

http://excoboard.com/

Excoboard - Free, easy and doesn't require any connection with Microsoft, something which gives pause to many folk. You can set up your forum to allow registration without email confirmation which will make it easier to get people to join. You'd have full control over almost every aspect of your forum.

[playBunny]

Patti, I've been running out of good rolls recently. Could you give me the account number for Marvin's slush fund again? And the amount .. is it still 10 times the Fibs membership fee for a month of good dice?

[blitzxz]

We will analyze all these if and when we open that forum. We will really need good mathematicians to calculate the odds of posted files.

Yes, let's think about this. I roll ten times two dices. Then I get some exact serie of rolls. But wait a minute. What is chances to roll just that exact serie? Something like 1 in billions. And still it happened! I must be cheating.

[Patti]

I just rolled the following sequence of numbers:

4-6 2-1 2-2 2-2 5-1 5-5 5-4 6-1 2-2 4-1

The odds of that are one in 57127475625984, assuming I've counted and done the math right.  Man, this site must be totally rigged.

[socksey]

Don't forget the required reading for all newbies: 

http://www.alef.co.uk/fibs/archive/dysfunction.html



socksey



Make yourself familiar with the angels and behold them frequently in spirit;  for without being seen, they are present with you. - St. Francis De Sales

[playBunny]

More often than not it spreads this SERIES of let’s say 4 rolls over a bigger range of say  6 rolls and to complicate things even more it may even throw some smoke in, by braking the series and give player A a "sweatener" roll when it’s all too late.

I must admit that I've noticed these "sweeteners" many times, such as needing 6-6 to get a man in off the bar and zoom round the board to even up the race. I do get the 6-6 but only after dancing long enough that it doesn't matter. Time after time similar things have happened to me. I don't know why I've been targeted by the servers at Vog, BrainKing, GoldToken, DailyGammon and FIBS but it's there, plain as day. GnuBg does it to me too. Even my real dice do it to me. I think they're all linked somehow.

[Yvon]

You told me in email that you had proof.  I asked to see it, and also inquired as to your hypothesis, testing method, sample size, and confidence interval.  You dodged those questions.

However, please feel free to post any statistical evidence you would like.  FIBS is honest, and I have nothing to hide.  If you have convincing evidence that there is a problem then I would be happy to see it.  If your evidenced is biased and your collection methods are dodgy, then that too will speak for itself.

By the way, there is no way for a computer program to bypass the FIBS dice roller.  You can use the telnet interface and see for yourself exactly how the client and server communicate-- everything is out in the open and is plainly human-readable.

I already told you by e-mail the evidence and the evaluation methods will be posted in a new forum. I already explained it will examine specifically a series of rolls in crystal clear situations. I also told you each poster, will be required to tell his sample size.
Maybe the evidence will not be sufficient to substantiate what I am saying. Maybe it will.
So, patience please....

I also told you by e-mail that this suspicion (either valid or not) could just vanish if you were giving your members the option to play using rolls from a password protected file that your server would send to both players just before the game starts. At the end of the game they get the password and check the rolls themselves... Simple and effective.

Why do you avoiding even mentioning my suggestion? I don't think that would be too difficult for you. I 've read somewhere in this forum you are an expert programmer yourself. Well?

Listen Patti, my purpose is not to undermine the Fibs server.
Instead of trying to attack me, you should have been more logical and asked me "well suppose what you are saying is true, why should Fibs do that, is there anything for it to gain"?

Answer this question to yourself dear Patti.

PS. As I said in my e-mail i will keep on waiting your reply to my suggestion to play matches from a password protected file. It will save us all a lot of time and energy.

[Yvon]

....

[Patti]

OK, since you mentioned it... why would FIBS do that?  Where is the incentive?  What does it have to gain?

There are myriad problems with sending rolls ahead of time:

- How long is the game?  How many do you send?
- The server doesn't have email addresses for most users
- Andreas is not currently developing the FIBS software

And the most important is the one that I sent to you in email yesterday.  Allow me to quote:

If the server used predetermined rolls, then the complaint
would just change to "my opponent figured out the rolls".
People who are convinced the site is rigged just won't use
logic or reason no matter what you do.

In fact, sending encrypted rolls is actually less secure than generating them on-the-fly from the server.

Oh, and you said this to me in your first message:

Or I will use my record of games which ALREADY proves everything mathematically and statistically

However, it appears that you are unwilling to share this proof with me, or even describe *how* you created such proof.  I can only conclude from this that you are bluffing.

[Yvon]

OK, since you mentioned it... why would FIBS do that?  Where is the incentive?  What does it have to gain?

There are myriad problems with sending rolls ahead of time:

- How long is the game?  How many do you send?
- The server doesn't have email addresses for most users
- Andreas is not currently developing the FIBS software

And the most important is the one that I sent to you in email yesterday.  Allow me to quote:

In fact, sending encrypted rolls is actually less secure than generating them on-the-fly from the server.

Oh, and you said this to me in your first message:

However, it appears that you are unwilling to share this proof with me, or even describe *how* you created such proof.  I can only conclude from this that you are bluffing.

For lots of reasons. Maybe it assumes that some members need  "help" otherwise they will abandon the place. Maybe it assumes that it teaches one of the 2 players (by punishing him) to be less risky, more careful etc. Maybe to add some "spice" to the game. In fact Microsoft admits that their dice generator at zone, accelerates bearing off of already lost games.

OK I 've read your reasons as to why you cannot set the OPTION to your users to play from file. Fair enough, i simply disagree on what the most important reason is. You basically assume that I am illogical and nothing would convince me... well everybody can distinguish from what you said that the most important reason is the owner of the software is not developing it anymore.
Fine, I hope someone else has heard this suggestion and do it at last.

Finally, no I am not bluffing. It just takes a lot of time to prepare a written analysis and present a figure (concerning the odds) which cannot be disputed. So far i was just doing it for my own use, and to tell you the truth i was satisfied with an approximation. I never kept any records, so i have to dig up my files and do everything from the begining so that it can be presented in a public forum. This is the reason I haven't sent you anything yet.

Frankly I want to avoid it. I know how much time that will cost me, and I know how much time I will have to waste presenting and discussing that in a forum.

Btw I almost laughed at you example of 10 rolls and your estimated chance to happen. This is NOT what I am talking about.
See my post to PersianLord regarding his example. When you analyse games it is extremely rare to have 1 and only 1 best roll, or 1 and only 1 worst. Usually there are more, as there is a set of rather good rolls (but not best), rather bad (but not worst) as well as a set of neutral ones.

[Yvon]

http://excoboard.com/

Excoboard - Free, easy and doesn't require any connection with Microsoft, something which gives pause to many folk. You can set up your forum to allow registration without email confirmation which will make it easier to get people to join. You'd have full control over almost every aspect of your forum.

Thanks my friend i will check that out.From a quick look it doesn't take pictures in, and doesn't allow uploading of files does it? 

[Patti]

So the scientific method basically goes like this:

Construct a hypothesis
Design a method for testing that hypothesis
Test the hypothesis
Analyze the data to see if your hypothesis is true or false
Report the results

The trick is that you need to know what it is you're looking for before you start looking.  You also need to gather data in an unbiased manner.

Here's a trivial example.

Hypothesis:  FIBS cheats in favor of the user with the first username alphabetically.

Design:  Write a bot that monitors the output of "toggle report" and logs 10,000 matches.  Analyze the collected data set to determine the frequency with which the lower-username player wins.  If that result is within one standard deviation of expectation, conclude that no cheating takes place.  If it's between one and three standard deviations, record 100,000 matches and retest.  If it's outside of three standard deviations, conclude that such cheating takes place

Test: Write the bot, gather the data. 

Analyze, Report: self-explanatory

Yes, testing an analysis takes a lot of work.  However, if you're already testing the data then presumably you have a hypothesis and have designed the test.  How about sharing that much?

But truly, I have no fear of anything you might publish.  I'm highly confident that no such intentional manipulation is happening on FIBS.  If you design a valid test and prove otherwise, then I would be more than happy to hear it.  If you design a bogus test, or fail to gather data in an unbiased manner, then that will speak for itself.

[playBunny]

From a quick look it doesn't take pictures in, and doesn't allow uploading of files does it? 

I'm not sure. I've only had mine for a very short time and it's just for messages between myself and one other person. We hardly stretch the feature list at all and have had no requirement for anything more than text so far. ;-)

[Patti]

Oh, and if you really want to set something up, Yahoo groups probably meets your requirements.

[Luddite]

It's perfectly obvious, and scientifically verifiable, that Fibs hates ME far more than anyone else.  I keep losing games that I should win!  Sorry, I just don't have time to post the data.  Trust me! 

C'mon people, if you want a frustrating exercise, play several rounds with gnubg set to grandmaster level, with dice generated by random.org.  Gnubg will kick your keester from here to kingdom come, and you can't blame gnubg, random.org, Fibs, Patti, or anyone else. 

Give it a rest.  The dice aren't rigged -- backgammon is just a frustrating game.  Read the "Dysfunctional" article referenced above, then read it again.  Now THERE'S a conspiracy you can sink your teeth into! 



Bones

[Yvon]

Here's the new forum with its first evidence.

http://groups.msn.com/IsFIBSinterferingingames/general.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=2&all_topics=0

[Patti]

Thanks for the laugh, Yvon.

I won't post on MSN, but tell me this:  What are the odds of encountering a 1-in-5000 sequence in 1000 games?

[Yvon]

Thanks for the laugh, Yvon.

I won't post on MSN, but tell me this:  What are the odds of encountering a 1-in-5000 sequence in 1000 games?

You can't even set your question right and you are telling me you want an answer? Laugh as much as you like my dear, perhaps that would help others start laughing at you.

Btw if the link doesn't work try this one

http://groups.msn.com/IsFIBSinterferingingames

[Patti]

wow this comes to 1:5598.
The question is: have I played so many games to expect that to occur once?The answer is NO I only played a litlle more that 1000

OK, what is the likelihood of a 1:5598 sequence occurring in 1000 games?'

Or do you find that question inadequate as well?  I understand that it's impossible to calculate, because you don't know how many rolls occur in 1000 games, but you can probably come up with a back-of-the-envelope estimate to work with.  My guess would be that an average game goes about 30 rolls.

[Yvon]

OK, what is the likelihood of a 1:5598 sequence occurring in 1000 games?'

Or do you find that question inadequate as well?  I understand that it's impossible to calculate, because you don't know how many rolls occur in 1000 games, but you can probably come up with a back-of-the-envelope estimate to work with.  My guess would be that an average game goes about 30 rolls.

First of all you should have known that a sequence of any 4 non doubles has a chance much less to occur than 1:5000 in fact it is approx 1:100,000. This alone should have raised you the suspicion that your question is fallacious.
Here we are talking for a sequence of 4 worst rolls within 8, whose chance to occur has already been calculated and it was 1:5598. The sequence decided the outcome of 1 game under a specific setup (actually it costed me 4 out of my  1000 games). The calculation showed it should occur once every 5598 times. Times here means GAMES not number of arbitrary appearances.
How many games like that would you like to see to be convinced Patti?


Anyway end of discussion and I apologize to PersianLord for derailing his topic. If you want further discussion you know where you will find me.

I also apologize on your behalf to the owners of this forum for your copying from the other forum and pasting here.

[Patti]

My question was really "Do you have a basic understanding of probability and statistics?"  Thanks for the answer.

[playBunny]

If we only just include my rolling of the worst possible rolls and opponents rolling of best possible rolls in a sequence we get
3/36*5/36*5/36*4/36 wow this comes to 1:5598.

If we do that, then it may well be 1:5598 but it's not that meaningful a number. Here's an example to illustrate.

Let's say you spin a coin 6 times and get a mixture of 4 heads and 2 tails.. If you then ignore the tails and multiply the probabilities of just the heads you get 1/16. But what does it mean? What about the tails in there? 1/16 is the probability of getting 4 heads in 4 spins but it's not the probability of doing it in 6 spins.

This investigation can't work if you do probabilities of sequences which omit items in the sequence that don't fit, they must be included to get a meaningful value. In other words it has to be about collections - the probabilities of combinations and permutations : 4 heads out of 6 spins or, in your case, 4 him-best-me-worst in 6 rolls.

Check that this stuff makes sense and then look at the problem again because these are the formulas that apply here.*   

http://www.mathsisfun.com/combinatorics/combinations-permutations.html

(*) except that you are also using the fuzzy concept of "best" and "worst" which complicates things rather a lot. Ideally your calculations should factor in how much these rolls are the best or worst

[playBunny]

Just out of interest, the average number of moves in a game is 20 per player but 25 per player if there's no cube.

[webrunner]

Just one question: why open up a seperate forum?
This is EXACTLY the place to discuss this, isn't it?
Patti is here, the members are here. I don't understand your hostile approach as your first post.

[PersianLord]

Just one question: why open up a seperate forum?
This is EXACTLY the place to discuss this, isn't it?
Patti is here, the members are here. I don't understand your hostile approach as your first post.

How good of you to say that. I really want to open a 'whiner hall' here. People then can post positions when their opponents, bots or humans, got a very lucky roll and then whine about the damned FIBS dice 

Then each week we will choose the 'whiner of the week' title. I guess me, vic and ZW... have a great chance to be successful here 

Regards

[socksey]

We had a whiner champ once in the body of Anakin!  May he rest in peace.  I'm sure many here miss him a great deal as I do. 

Your guess now is pretty good!  (vic for sure! Love u sweetie!)   

socksey



When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I. -  Ann Gardner

[dorbel]

Copy of post to Yvon's "forum".

Yvon, what you are demonstrating here is that you don't understand the game of backgammon! In your post you have tried to show that you lost the game after a sequence with a possibility of 1 in 5598. Actually, several of the asumptions on which you base this figure are false, but let that pass. What you have ignored are all the other possible courses that this game could have taken, many of which would have also led to your defeat.
In the original position that you doubled for example, you are about 43% to win the game from there and of course the opponent's 57% wins will include some gammons, probably about 14. In other words, your double is awful and in money play should be met with a beaver! On the bar after being hit, your opponent is still about 20% to win before rolling. You then think that his best rolls are 1-1 or 3-1, but in fact 6-1 is clearly superior to either. Need I go on?
Take it on the chin buddy. Your game is still at the novice level and your allegations about fibs manipulation of dice is patently absurd. Take some friendly advice. Close this forum and go off quietly and learn to play. I suggest downloading GnuBg. No, it doesn't cheat. Enjoy the game!

[Tomawaky]

Dorbel Thanks for this final post.
Webby Thanks to host it.
Patti Thank for your patience.
Yvon Thanks for this funny post. It's now time to study the game.

[inim]

Just found this incredible thread, I'm in tears. Would it be possbile to tell JokeBot about it, so we can enjoy it for years to come, quote by quote?

[blitzxz]

This topic is now old topic but propably somebody will bring it up time after time so let's think about why. Actually let's think about following set up. You play backgammon with your good friend. But there's a little twist. Your friend will roll dice for both players and he will do it behind his back! After he has rolled he will tell you what numbers he did roll but not show the dice. If you're not thinking that your friend might be cheating you are absolutely naive. And still this is essentially what bots and backgammon sites are doing. You don't know how the dice are generated inside the program you just see the outcome. How can you trust?   

[Hardy_whv]

How can you trust?   

Very easily: For GNU Backgammon the whole source code is available. You can download the source code, analyse it's dice algorithm (and anything else) and then compile the code. It would be so easy to prove any cheating. However, there is none.

Hardy 

[blitzxz]

Very easily: For GNU Backgammon the whole source code is available. You can download the source code, analyse it's dice algorithm (and anything else) and then compile the code. It would be so easy to prove any cheating. However, there is none.

Hardy 

That's true but only for gnu and only if you can understand programming. I sure can't so I just have to trust them.

[playBunny]

If you're not thinking that your friend might be cheating you are absolutely naive.

I would hope it that depends on the friendship. Rather than naive it could be paranoid to think that they are cheating.

And still this is essentially what bots and backgammon sites are doing. You don't know how the dice are generated inside the program you just see the outcome. How can you trust?   

The issue is very different from the example given anyway. A more realistic analogy would be someone that you both hired through an agency to do the dice rolling for you. This person is in another room and calls out the dice through a loudspeaker. They never see you, they don't know your names, they know nothiing about either of you and have been hired by a third party on both your  behalf.

Now you can ask the question about trust and the answer is the same in both cases. There needs to be an incentive for the dice provider in order for selectively biased dice to be given. The dice provider has to have some means of choosing who is to benefit and there has to be a gain, one that's worth it even if the biased dice system is exposed. The likelihood or rather the unlikelihood of that occuring would mitigate that aspect.

For a games server people suggest the incentive of better dice for the better players in order to keep them playing, other suggest that it would be better dice for the weaker players in order to keep them playing. Hmmm.

There's the possibility of the Special Lucky $50 dice for those who value money less than their integrity. But that method requires advertising in order to attract people willing to pay and sufficient people willing to pay. Needless to say the risk of exposure is immense.

There's the possibility that the dice provider does actually know one of the participants and wants to play favourites. If that's done sporadically then nobody else would know, not even the beneciary, but it's hard to imagine much satisfaction for the dice provider. If it's done with greater regularity such that it materially affects the beneficiary's rating and winning percentages then they are likely to start wondering how they can be so lucky at this site but so unlucky elsewhere. Eventually that wondering could lead to discovery of the subterfuge.

It could be done in collusion with the dice provider, of course. In that case let's hope that the dice provider remains friends with the beneficiary lest they get grassed up (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grassed+Up)

It's difficult to come up with a suitably worthwhile incentive for a dice provider. more ideas are required......

[blitzxz]

I would hope it that depends on the friendship. Rather than naive it could be paranoid to think that they are cheating.

Yes, this would be very interesting phychological test. How many people would cheat if they are rolling behind back? No money just for fun. Maybe I'm paranoid but I'm sure that almost every one would cheat time to time in long session even against a friend. And you could do it with the server analogy as well. Third person calling rolls. I'm sure that many people would cheat there too even if they don't get anything from it. But luckily computers are much more trustworthy then humans.

[playBunny]

Maybe I'm paranoid but I'm sure that almost every one would cheat  time to time in long session even against a friend. And you could do it with the server analogy as well. Third person calling rolls. I'm sure that many people would cheat there too even if they don't get anything from it. But luckily computers are much more trustworthy then humans.

[Bunny's coloration]


Oh my, I see it totally the other way. For me it's most people would not cheat, indeed would be proud to not cheat. And as the anonymous third party dice rollers i think that very, very few would cheat.

It's one of those things that says more about the person than about other people. Not that there's an implcation of it being self-referring, ie. to think that most others would cheat doesn't mean that the person is a cheat themselves, but there's a difference between people who see human nature as basically self-serving, and cheating is one such action, and human nature as basically good. The majority of people actually are basically good but not everyone sees that. The combination of someone thinking that most people are cheats and also that most people deserve to be cheated against .. that's definitely not a good one!!

[lewscannon]

Not for nothing, but I would love to be able to roll manual dice and then tell the bot what it had rolled. Would I cheat, lie, do whatever I could to humiliate the bot? I'd like to think that I'm above that kind of thing.

[Mookie]

 

Not for nothing, but I would love to be able to roll manual dice and then tell the bot what it had rolled. Would I cheat, lie, do whatever I could to humiliate the bot? I'd like to think that I'm above that kind of thing.

I don't know, lews.  If you'll remember, when I met you in that bar in New York, we did a similar experience.  You mixed drinks behind your back and then told me what they were, but I had no way of knowing what you had mixed.  The funny thing was, regardless of what you made me ("Mookie, here's a screwdriver," "Mookie, here's a Maker's and water,"), it all tasted like squid oil.  Now, granted, I'm not a bot, but I also feel quite confident that you weren't "above that kind of thing."

MOOKIE

[lewscannon]

I don't know, lews.  If you'll remember, when I met you in that bar in New York, we did a similar experience.  You mixed drinks behind your back and then told me what they were, but I had no way of knowing what you had mixed.  The funny thing was, regardless of what you made me ("Mookie, here's a screwdriver," "Mookie, here's a Maker's and water,"), it all tasted like squid oil.  Now, granted, I'm not a bot, but I also feel quite confident that you weren't "above that kind of thing."

MOOKIE

Would you rather have me mix drinks behind my back, or Resh? at least I didn't hand you a glass and tell you it was a mudslide. And I had my doubts about the 'protein shakes' that you kept bringing back from the bathroom.

oh wait, excuse me:

Würden Sie lieber mich Mix Drinks hinter meinem Rücken, oder Resh? zumindest habe ich nicht Hand Sie ein Glas und Ihnen sagen, es war ein Schlammmassen begraben. Und ich hatte meine Zweifel an der "Protein-Shakes", die Sie zurück gehalten, um aus dem Badezimmer.

[teyakis]

Would you rather have me mix drinks behind my back, or Resh? at least I didn't hand you a glass and tell you it was a mudslide. And I had my doubts about the 'protein shakes' that you kept bringing back from the bathroom.

oh wait, excuse me:

Würden Sie lieber mich Mix Drinks hinter meinem Rücken, oder Resh? zumindest habe ich nicht Hand Sie ein Glas und Ihnen sagen, es war ein Schlammmassen begraben. Und ich hatte meine Zweifel an der "Protein-Shakes", die Sie zurück gehalten, um aus dem Badezimmer.

LOL 

[Patrick Davey]

What a great set of posts.. I particularly enjoyed Yvon's MS Forum... who's central thesis explains that as the code is secret, we are all being used as little Guinea Pigs whilst FIBS fixes the dice to see how we react.

Damn, I can hear the thump of heavy boots on the stairs...  gotta run

(daveyp)

[socksey]

What a great set of posts.. I particularly enjoyed Yvon's MS Forum...

All I got out of the posts is that Yvon loves to chat with Yvon!   

socksey



"Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen. They are utter fools who accept a thing as convincing proof simply because it is in writing." - Maimonides (1135-1204) Spanish Jewish philosopher

[boog]

And it always rains on the day your kid is pitching. How long does this position have to be here?