Dice fairness

By Resolver, in X-Wing Rules Questions

Ok, im sure most have seen the very good and detailed dice article on the forums.

does ffg or to’s in general have an official response to some dice being better/worse and by using technics players can identify which ones are more likely to produce results in a players favor?

here are some arguments I’ve seen;

since it’s official dice it’s legal to play with it even if you tested the dice to be in your favor

it’s such a small percentage of dice which is biased it’s not worth pursuing, so probably none will.

it’s a game and this is just part of it because dice manufacturing methods and this is common in other games - don’t worry

no one in my community would do this so I don’t need to worry about this.

fly better even at a disadvantage.

opponent dice is not my dice and I won’t share unless ffg forces me to do it

if you ask your opponent to share dice, you will always use your opponents dice since it’s an unofficial TO rule

I’m not going to randomize my dices, I’m superstitious when it comes to my dice and will select based on my needs

karma will bite you in the *** if you go down this path

and many many more...

based on the discussion I’m seeing here and elsewhere it would be good to get clarification on this topic so communities can reference to some guidelines

Edited by Resolver

People should be aware of the 'Sharing Components' section of the tournament regs (page 5)

It kind of answers these two parts of your post at least:

7 minutes ago, Resolver said:

opponent dice is not my dice and I won’t share unless ffg forces me to do it

if you ask your opponent to share dice, you will always use your opponents dice since it’s an unofficial TO rule

Sharing Components

Before   or during a tournament round, any player may request that  a single range ruler, or set of range rulers, a set of maneuver templates, and/or set of dice be shared for the duration of the round. Any decisions are subject to review by a marshal.

The marshal may mandate that players must share a single range ruler, set of maneuver templates, and/or set of dice during a round .

7 minutes ago, Resolver said:

since it’s official dice it’s legal to play with it even if you tested the dice to be in your favor

it’s such a small percentage of dice which is biased it’s not worth pursuing, so probably none will.

Summed up my sentiments in the first two lines.

I really think it's such a small advantage that it wont make a significant difference. That article was a fascinating read but didn't change my opinion about the game or dice variance

7 minutes ago, player2072913 said:

People should be aware of the 'Sharing Components' section of the tournament regs (page 5)

It kind of answers these two parts of your post at least:

Sharing Components

Before   or during a tournament round, any player may request that  a single range ruler, or set of range rulers, a set of maneuver templates, and/or set of dice be shared for the duration of the round. Any decisions are subject to review by a marshal.

The marshal may mandate that players must share a single range ruler, set of maneuver templates, and/or set of dice during a round .

Ok, Good point. Then my question here how would you share it ?

if you ask, would the default would be to use your opponent dice?

should we use a dice pool from your opponent and he can pick which ones he likes?

- can he ask you not to touch some of his dice?

Should we limit the amount of dice in the beginning of a game, to eg 5-7 which players use together?

etc.

Edited by Resolver
4 minutes ago, Resolver said:

Ok, Good point. Then my question here how would you share it ?

if you ask, would the default would be to use your opponent dice?

The compromise I've seen is: player A asks to share components, player B chooses which set components to share for the game. Not official rules but seems fair.

6 minutes ago, Resolver said:

- can he ask you not to touch some of his dice he’s using?

This way, by asking to share, A is inexplicitly constening to sharing his/her dice with B

8 minutes ago, Resolver said:

should we use a dice pool from your opponent and he can pick which ones he likes?

Should we limit the amount of dice in the beginning of a game, to eg 5-7 which players use together?

Eh I don't know. Minutiae like this is up to the judge/martial at the one event this actually comes up in.

Honestly roll technique makes a lot more difference than the weight of the dice anyway.

13 minutes ago, Eras said:

Summed up my sentiments in the first two lines.

I really think it's such a small advantage that it wont make a significant difference. That article was a fascinating read but didn't change my opinion about the game or dice variance

I’m leaning towards dice sharing myself with a limited dice pool , but I’m also very interested by the community and how it will approach this. Since I love this game I will continue to play it with or without sharing but I would at least feel bad if my dice were biased even if it was totally unknown to me and it would somehow work in my favor - just the possibility irritates me a little as sharing dice seems to irritate some. If most players are fine with the how things are I’m on that wagon myself but I’m conflicted after the article I must say.

13 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Honestly roll technique makes a lot more difference than the weight of the dice anyway.

What was discovered is that it isn't the mass distribution of the die causing the inconsistent variance but inconsistencies in the shape of the dice due to the polishing method used during their manufacture.

Here, for your review if you haven't already. :)

1 hour ago, Resolver said:

- can he ask you not to touch some of his dice?

As i understand it, when you share a pool of dice, both of you use the same pool. If one player asks you not to touch a specific number of dice, or some dice specifically, that raises suspicion that they may have ****** with them or know which dice specifically have bias. So if someone asked me, i would say no.

49 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

What was discovered is that it isn't the mass distribution of the die causing the inconsistent variance but inconsistencies in the shape of the dice due to the polishing method used during their manufacture.

Here, for your review if you haven't already. :)

I have. I still expect how the dice are rolled to make more difference.

1 minute ago, thespaceinvader said:

I have. I still expect how the dice are rolled to make more difference.

I should have been a bit more clear then, I wasn't disagreeing with the technique part but the mass part. "Roll" style definitely has an influence (got to see "first hand" on a stream recording when one of the players switched from straight shake and roll to a barely shaken drop on a key defensive roll).

4 hours ago, Resolver said:

- can he ask you not to touch some of his dice?

Sure, but under the premise of a shared dice pool, you can similarly ask him not to touch them either. ;)

4 hours ago, player2072913 said:

The compromise I've seen is: player A asks to share components, player B chooses which set components to share for the game. Not official rules but seems fair.

This.

If a person is unwilling to share their own components, they've got no place requesting both players to use the same set.

If a person is unwilling to use another player's components and insists on using their own, they've got no place requesting both players to use the same set.

There's potential exceptions ("my range ruler broke, can we use yours" or "i forgot my 1-hard at home"), but this is basic fairness. Like the fair way to divide a slice of cake. One cuts into two pieces, the other chooses.

Edited by theBitterFig

I have over 40 events under my belt as a TO and had this happen maybe 3 times.

When I rolled the dice, I could never duplicate the results on a constant basis, but the common complaint was Player A's dice were giving them the results they needed. Honestly, it always came down to list building and luck to me, but you have to take each complaint seriously. The way I have always resolved it was to provide my own dice as community dice and let them share. TBH, no one has every complained about that solution.

On 6/20/2019 at 11:57 PM, thespaceinvader said:

Honestly roll technique makes a lot more difference than the weight of the dice anyway.

This is why I got myself a dice cup recently. I felt that I ended up with streaks (both bad and good) due to bad rolling technique and while it might be confirmation bias it does feel like I am getting more avg results now with more games decided by skill instead of dice.

Having read that dice report I decided to share dice every game.

Went to a small, casual event yesterday, every opponent was happy to share their dice. My results were pretty much average.

This was a big improvement on my normal results so I'm going to continue doing this for every game and see how it does. Maybe my own dice really do hate me and it's not just confirmation bias?

PS my solution for anyone who doesn't want me to touch their dice is simply to ask them to roll them for me! Anything is better than my own dice! :D

The thing that the methodology and the testing proved to me is that it typically would take more than a game to see this become noticable. Even the outlier at 5.57% difference ends up being a difference that would be seen 1 out of every 20 or so rolls. If you are being shot at 20 times in a game, you have problems other than your dice.

I would never refuse to share, but the typical margin of difference being between 1%-2.5% means that I might get one more result one way or another every tournament. Now if that result shows up at a crucial moment, then lucky me. But since that is itself a bit of luck, I'm not going to demand shared dice pools or anything.

It's a great piece of work, and I'm glad someone undertook it. At the same time, those results just make me think that it's small enough percentages that I doubt it'll have any real effect on any particular game.

1 hour ago, Raven19528 said:

The thing that the methodology and the testing proved to me is that it typically would take more than a game to see this become noticable. Even the outlier at 5.57% difference ends up being a difference that would be seen 1 out of every 20 or so rolls. If you are being shot at 20 times in a game, you have problems other than your dice.

I would never refuse to share, but the typical margin of difference being between 1%-2.5% means that I might get one more result one way or another every tournament. Now if that result shows up at a crucial moment, then lucky me. But since that is itself a bit of luck, I'm not going to demand shared dice pools or anything.

It's a great piece of work, and I'm glad someone undertook it. At the same time, those results just make me think that it's small enough percentages that I doubt it'll have any real effect on any particular game.

Not being a mathematician, I could be wrong, but if you select your dice so that are all 5% better, and you roll a 3 dice attack about 10 times per game how many extra hits can you expect to see?

Normal players using a normal range of dice have no real problem with the variability; but one bad egg who's selected the best possible dice is a potential problem. (I think my dice are naturally terrible, I just need to prove it!)

22 hours ago, Gilarius said:

Not being a mathematician, I could be wrong, but if you select your dice so that are all 5% better, and you roll a 3 dice attack about 10 times per game how many extra hits can you expect to see?)

Some back of the envelope math here, but an unmodded 3 dice attack would normally yield 1.5 hits.

If you change the odds so that the dice are now 55% hit/crit, an unmodded 3 dice shot would now yield 1.65 hits (.55×3), so over 10 rolls with 3 favorable dice you'd expect to see one extra hit.

Considering i've seen dice variance over the course of a game vary as much as +/- 10, it doesnt seem like its a real deal breaker, not enough to justify dice testing or exclusively playing with a shared dice pool.