How to check loaded dice

By exinfris, in X-Wing

Get a fresh set of dice. Distract the player and swap them over. See if the winning streak continues. If it does its not the dice. If it doesn't then the dice are weighted but this does not mean the player has altered them.

I love this. If he was cheating, no more cheating dice. If he wasn't, he gets a free new set of dice without even knowing!

You do not have to roll dice 100's of times to see randomness.

With some degree of certainty to test the fairness of 6-sided, 10-sided, and 20-sided dice:

6-sided: 52 rolls

10-sided: 63 rolls

20-sided: 83 rolls

I think it would be fun to check his dice vs your dice. I have a feeling you might be surprised.

This topic is wack. People saying you can't use your FFG dice. Others claiming that if your opponent is doing well to steal their dice and replace them. FFG has their own quality control. If the die isn't visibly altered leave your opponent alone and play. It's not cheating to roll the dice you have in your starter set.

The moral is, don't let gamers talk about their dice.

I tend to roll a lot of hits (and evades for that matter) when I play. It really makes my brother mad lol. And I just randomly grab from the dice in my tray (from a total of 2 OG and 2 TFW core sets, so I have a lot of dice). But there are those times where I'll roll all blanks too. Like every time I use proton rockets. <_<

This topic is wack. People saying you can't use your FFG dice. Others claiming that if your opponent is doing well to steal their dice and replace them. FFG has their own quality control. If the die isn't visibly altered leave your opponent alone and play. It's not cheating to roll the dice you have in your starter set.

Even if they're broken?

So you're saying that if my range ruler from the starter set is 5% longer than yours, then you'd be fine with me using it?

I tend to roll a lot of hits (and evades for that matter) when I play. It really makes my brother mad lol. And I just randomly grab from the dice in my tray (from a total of 2 OG and 2 TFW core sets, so I have a lot of dice). But there are those times where I'll roll all blanks too. Like every time I use proton rockets. <_<

Yeah, but that's the thing... others were rolling unusually high numbers of hits/evades with his dice also, so it's not just luck.

Who's to say your range ruler is broken by being to long. Maybe mine is defective being to short. Plus I don't think that happens

Who's to say your range ruler is broken by being to long. Maybe mine is defective being to short. Plus I don't think that happens

You are wrong not all the templates are identical just like not all the dice are the same, printing errors happen not all ships have the fire arcs printed properly for example.

So variance is acceptable to FFG. So play with what you have. Let your opponent play with what they have and move on. Crying about dice and range rulers isn't going to make the game more fun.

Who's to say your range ruler is broken by being to long. Maybe mine is defective being to short. Plus I don't think that happens

You are wrong not all the templates are identical just like not all the dice are the same, printing errors happen not all ships have the fire arcs printed properly for example.

I would really like to know what a properly printed fire arc looks like! Cue flashback to debates on how to implement fire arcs on Vassal 1-2 years ago...I've got 100s of ship tokens and none of the arcs match. I better watch out for people trying to steal and swap them.

It's also weird that nobody accused me of having unfair dice when my Regionals kept rolling blanks for the last couple months. I finally retired them after losing hope that my "luck" was bound to turn around at some point.

Edited by bmf

Putting myself in a TO's shoes, and presuming a lack of scientific measuring equipment at the venue, I'd take the following tack if a player approached me believing another player's dice were rolling unfairly:

a) Ask the player with the 'offending' dice if they minded swapping them out (I would expect 95% of the time they will be happy to do so, problem solved).

b) if they are not willing to do so, test roll the offending die a reasonable number of times (easy enough to roll a die twenty or so times quickly) and assess if there seems to be a bias e.g. with an attack die it should be missing 50% of the time; if I saw 70% plus hits I'd get suspicious and test again. According to a quick probability calculator I found, the chance of getting 15 hits on 20 rolls is about 2% so that seems reasonable in the situation

c) If no problem is apparent, play on; if it looks like the die may be problematic, direct the player to swap it out.

The number of rolls mentioned and the results received is statistically insignificant. You can't make a determination on 20 or 40 rolls.

Putting myself in a TO's shoes, and presuming a lack of scientific measuring equipment at the venue, I'd take the following tack if a player approached me believing another player's dice were rolling unfairly:

a) Ask the player with the 'offending' dice if they minded swapping them out (I would expect 95% of the time they will be happy to do so, problem solved).

b) if they are not willing to do so, test roll the offending die a reasonable number of times (easy enough to roll a die twenty or so times quickly) and assess if there seems to be a bias e.g. with an attack die it should be missing 50% of the time; if I saw 70% plus hits I'd get suspicious and test again. According to a quick probability calculator I found, the chance of getting 15 hits on 20 rolls is about 2% so that seems reasonable in the situation

c) If no problem is apparent, play on; if it looks like the die may be problematic, direct the player to swap it out.

The number of rolls mentioned and the results received is statistically insignificant. You can't make a determination on 20 or 40 rolls.

You do not have to roll dice 100's of times to see randomness.With some degree of certainty to test the fairness of 6-sided, 10-sided, and 20-sided dice:6-sided: 52 rolls10-sided: 63 rolls20-sided: 83 rollsI think it would be fun to check his dice vs your dice. I have a feeling you might be surprised.

How did you determine these number of rolls?

So variance is acceptable to FFG. So play with what you have. Let your opponent play with what they have and move on. Crying about dice and range rulers isn't going to make the game more fun.

It's actually not.

There are rules set in place to stop things like this from happening in tournaments, for example.

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thank you for all your posts on this thread <3

Who's to say your range ruler is broken by being to long. Maybe mine is defective being to short. Plus I don't think that happens

You are wrong not all the templates are identical just like not all the dice are the same, printing errors happen not all ships have the fire arcs printed properly for example.

I would really like to know what a properly printed fire arc looks like! Cue flashback to debates on how to implement fire arcs on Vassal 1-2 years ago...I've got 100s of ship tokens and none of the arcs match. I better watch out for people trying to steal and swap them.

It's also weird that nobody accused me of having unfair dice when my Regionals kept rolling blanks for the last couple months. I finally retired them after losing hope that my "luck" was bound to turn around at some point.

Hardly weird... people usually don't complain about something that puts their opponent at a disadvantage.

But then you knew this already, and that was just a red herring.

The point is, you retired your dice. Why not keep playing with them if "all dice are equal"?

I mean, complaining about dice that only rolls blanks isn't going to make the game more fun, now is it? ;)

EDIT: That said, I would have offered to let you use my dice if your dice were rolling nothing but blanks in a game against me.

But then that's just how I am.

Edited by OddballE8

Double post... forums are going nuts.

Edited by OddballE8

Putting myself in a TO's shoes, and presuming a lack of scientific measuring equipment at the venue, I'd take the following tack if a player approached me believing another player's dice were rolling unfairly:

a) Ask the player with the 'offending' dice if they minded swapping them out (I would expect 95% of the time they will be happy to do so, problem solved).

b) if they are not willing to do so, test roll the offending die a reasonable number of times (easy enough to roll a die twenty or so times quickly) and assess if there seems to be a bias e.g. with an attack die it should be missing 50% of the time; if I saw 70% plus hits I'd get suspicious and test again. According to a quick probability calculator I found, the chance of getting 15 hits on 20 rolls is about 2% so that seems reasonable in the situation

c) If no problem is apparent, play on; if it looks like the die may be problematic, direct the player to swap it out.

The number of rolls mentioned and the results received is statistically insignificant. You can't make a determination on 20 or 40 rolls.
Edited by Trevellian

The number of rolls mentioned and the results received is statistically insignificant. You can't make a determination on 20 or 40 rolls.

You do not have to roll dice 100's of times to see randomness.With some degree of certainty to test the fairness of 6-sided, 10-sided, and 20-sided dice:6-sided: 52 rolls10-sided: 63 rolls20-sided: 83 rollsI think it would be fun to check his dice vs your dice. I have a feeling you might be surprised.

How did you determine these number of rolls?

He's based it off a chi squared test I think - see http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/57624/how-many-rolls-do-i-need-to-determine-if-my-dice-are-fair

Good luck to them. Literally.

Let's say that they can roll them them 10K times and get one with say 60% bias.

Roll it 10K more times and see if it's still biased. Do it 100K more times? Where do you draw the line?

Assuming the dice weight is within a couple of percent of each other, a decent shake in the hand and a decent drop, each roll is an independent entity. Chaos takes care of the rest.

I have a very very accurate balance at work. I'll check my 30 dice. It may be a while as I have field work coming up, but if I remember, I'll give it a go.

I'm not talking about finding that one dice that has a 1% higher chance of rolling a crit.

I'm talking about finding dice that rolls crits so often that it can't be anything else than a factory mistake.

You wouldn't have to roll a dice like that 10k times to see that it's broken.

(for example, the OP talks about dice that rolls hits/crits 90-95% of the time, no matter who is rolling them)

A "couple" of people rolled them "several" times. I must write a paper on this lickety split and submit it Science! My Noble Prize in physics will be in the mail by Christmas.

*edit* and by that sarcastic remark, I mean the test is not statistically significant. ;)

Anyway, If I had real suspicions, I'd weigh the dice individually and compare to other dice (not his) to start with, and look at them under a dissecting microscope for a telltale plug hole obscured by paint. Should do the trick.

Read what the OP is writing, before making spiteful comments.

As far as the 90-95% data goes. One of our members is a mathematical genius, he does work at a nuclear power station not far from here. He sat and watched this guy play several games over a month time frame, and recorded his rolls (he did it under the guise of writing a blog on tactics, which he did), he said that the probability of the number of hits/crits/evades this guy rolls is near impossible.

I like the idea of just telling him that we as a group are uncomfortable playing him with his current dice set, and that we feel that his dice may have manufacturing issues. He'll I'll even purchase a couple dice sets for him to replace his current ones.

He's been pretty gracious about letting us check out his dice, so there is a good chance he's not a cheater.

Unfortuantely nothing said, which statistical procedure was used to identify the bias (if any). But at least there is an extensvie data sample which looks suspiciuous.

Edit: Added last sentence.

I can quite easily be sarcastic without being spiteful, just ask my friends. :P

Secondly, there is still not enough information to go on. Unless said mathematical genius recorded every TL, every focus, every card that can change a die result, it's still anecdotal.

Here's an anecdote. I use HLC's quite a bit. Without TL's and focus they are not really that great, but with the synergies of cards that I use and TL's and foci, I can burn s**t down. I (attempt to) play to make those things happen. Maybe this guy is also doing that? Said mathematician also cannot tell which die is doing what, since he can't sample them individually. Rolling more than one die will turn up more crits, but you don't know which die is doing it. Confirmation bias can do the rest. Not saying he didn't do the maths properly, but I remain a skeptic.

Also, what sort of TO worth their salt doesn't have a $600 electronic balance and a dissecting microscope at their venue? Sheesh. (Also spiteful-less sarcasm :) )

Panax, on 20 Feb 2016 - 11:33 AM, said:

Who's to say your range ruler is broken by being to long. Maybe mine is defective being to short. Plus I don't think that happens

Christ, it always comes back to an argument about the size of your range rulers, doesn't it?

Stop worrying about how short your range ruler is and worry more about your placement.

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I can quite easily be sarcastic without being spiteful, just ask my friends. :P

Secondly, there is still not enough information to go on. Unless said mathematical genius recorded every TL, every focus, every card that can change a die result, it's still anecdotal.

Here's an anecdote. I use HLC's quite a bit. Without TL's and focus they are not really that great, but with the synergies of cards that I use and TL's and foci, I can burn s**t down. I (attempt to) play to make those things happen. Maybe this guy is also doing that? Said mathematician also cannot tell which die is doing what, since he can't sample them individually. Rolling more than one die will turn up more crits, but you don't know which die is doing it. Confirmation bias can do the rest. Not saying he didn't do the maths properly, but I remain a skeptic.

Also, what sort of TO worth their salt doesn't have a $600 electronic balance and a dissecting microscope at their venue? Sheesh. (Also spiteful-less sarcasm :) )

Actually, I'll correct myself. He may of been taking explicit notes of the initial unmodified rolls, in which case part of that point is moot. The point about knowing which dice are "loaded" stands.