I propose a version of backgammon played with Sicherman dice!

The outcomes and odds of any particular roll are the same as with a 'normal' pair of dice, but the chances of doubles are lower.

Link about Sicherman dice:
http://www.grand-illusions.com/acatalog/info_35.html

"An unusual pair of dice. One has sides 1,3,4,5,6,8. The other has sides 1,2,2,3,3,4. ..."

The piece says that the odds of rolling any of the totals is the same, and I'll take their word for that, but it also says that "any game that you can play with a normal set of 2 dice can also be played with a set of Sicherman Dice, with no difference in the outcome". That's only correct for games where the total is used, not the individual dice.

Allowing that we want the different doubles behaviour, there's also a marked change to the odds of single dice - an additional 3 and the loss of both a 5 and a 6. That, along with and the appearance of an 8, no less, would affect the game more than the changed odds of doubles.

I think it would make quite a difference in the way that the game was played. For instance, in the home table, closing the 3-point would be more important than before due to the three 3s - odds of 16/36 instead of 11, while the 5-point would be slightly less useful because the odds of re-entry there would be 6/36 instead of 11/36. (The change would only be slight because the 5-point has other considerable strategic value)

Jumping primes would be harder with the loss of a 5 and a 6 so the value of smaller primes would go up - except that the 8 would make even a 6-prime escapable!

The increased long-arm potential would make for some very unexpected hits - an opponent's backrunner that escapes to your 9-point could be knocked back by one of your own backrunners with an 8-6 from your opponent's 4-point!

Thad: I welcome the idea to play backgammon with different dices, but I wouldn't choose those ones. As playBunny pointed out, the fact that the sum of the two dices is the same as with ordinary dices is not very relevant in backgammon, and I don't like the fact that it would be impossible to full-prime the opponent (it would require 16 checkers).

I would welcome new dices such that
1) There are less doubles. This sounds nice.
2) There is a higher probability to hit a direct shot - which would favour the positional plays vs the racing plays.

A possibility would be one die ranging from 1 to 5, the other from 2 to 6. It would require some testing to tell how it would work.

You know that little grinning face on the button you click to get the smileys?  Well, on my display, when my opponent doubles, that little grin comes up right under the word "double"!  Boy is that annoying!

alanback: The thing that is so stooooooopid is that you have to roll the dice. The choices should be double and autoplay the turn. Then you wouldn't have to click twice. I know clicking twice is no big deal, but it's the dumb implementation that irritates so many players. Fixing that needs to be done.

Plleae Please Please Please can we have an option to say "skip all my turns until I can make a legal move." It is so frustrating having to roll the dice (for absolutely no good reason - whatever you throw, you can't move) and then pass. This is the biggest weakness on this site. It needs to be fixed!

pgt: No, the biggest weakness is that tournaments don't progress once all the meaningful games are complete, but having to roll the dice when you have no legal move does come in second. ;-)

pgt: I agree with you, autopass (or the lack of it) is still the #1 weakness of BK.

AlliumCepa: Not when you have the cube.

AlliumCepa: The problem is with the way fencer has implemented 'auto pass' here is that it is not only used when there are no possible rolls that will make a move possible, but also when the dice rolled has no possible moves associated with it.

pgt:  In fact, it would be useful to be able to turn off the cube altogether, so you wouldn't have to choose between rolling the dice and doubling on each turn in situations where you know you won't be doubling.

alanback: Terrific idea ! Turn off / turn on the cube would solve the autopass when owning the cube problem and do much more in the same time. There should be some red warning besides the board that says "you have turned off the cube in this game", though.

alanback: When I used to play at Vog they had an Auto-roll switch which was very useful. This was the case even though these were live matches. When you thought the game was moving into a phase where you might like to double then you'd switch off the auto-roll and take it a bit more slowly. On a turn-based site, especially against opponents who take 7 days per move, taking it a bit more slowly isn't the best default!

One disadvantage, though, is that automatic rolliing removes the opportunity for skilled psychokinetic dice rollers to concentrate on getting the dice that they need.

playBunny:  The protoype of all internet backgammon servers, FIBS (First Internet Backgammon Server) has always had several software toggles, including toggle double.  With doubling toggled off, the dice are rolled automatically each turn.  Another useful setting is toggle greedy, which if set on will cause the server to automatically bear off the maximum number of checkers in unambiguous situations.

does a gammon or a backgammon win affect your rating differently than a normal win?

tippyc: nope, a match is a match

tippyc: Should it?

Thad:  Don't even go there.  That's a closed subject here.

alanback: Ok.

alanback: What, the one where a match is a match is only a game even if it's a match with a million games?

Or the one where a match is a match is a CHESS match?

Thad: i think it should be worth a bit more, as well a multi game match should be worth more, depending on how many points you win by, but i realize implementation of that could be difficult

tippyc:A proper ratings system would make adjustments which reflect the probability of the outcome.  This in turn is a function of the relative strengths of the players and the length of the match.  The longer the match, the greater the probability that the stronger player will win.  Therefore, if the stronger player does win, the change in ratings should decrease with the length of the match.  If the weaker (i.e. lower-rated) player wins, then the change in ratings should increase with the length of the match.

alanback: I made a request for something to fix this a while back. I thought my idea was good, but I guess not enough others did.
Feature requests (Thad, 2007-07-15 06:55:25)

Thad:  There are perfectly good backgammon ratings systems already available.  FIBS and Dailygammon use the same formula, and it works great.

alanback: And most importantly, the FIBS formula is perfectly compatible with the BK formula. I told Fencer long ago that I was able to give him a formula that implemented the FIBS trick for taking into account the length of the match, while leaving the BK formula unchanged for single games. He seemed to be OK with the idea of changing the formula, but not willing to implement it any time soon.

It is not a backgammon-specific problem. The current rating system could also be exploited by playing multi-games chess matches against weaker players.

Cloning BG, as I defined the game, the (my) rules say that captured pieces count as Race pieces. We should try this: the new cloned pieces would count as captured pieces instead. If no one can move, the game ends as a draw.

How come, in an auto pass game, when I "move and stay here" and my opponent cannot make a move, the dice are displayed for their roll, and it is my turn again.

But when I do the same and I find it not my turn again, my opponents dice roll is not displayed????

This so called auto pass of fencers is really a disaster isnt it?

Family Man: I think you've answered your own question, when he can't move you see what he has rolled but if he can move you are denined seeing the dice until he views the game.

skipinnz: yeah, but why?? what sense does that make? If it has already been rolled anyway, then why does it matter if i see it?

It makes me wonder, if it has been rolled, and I cant see it, then i wonder what could be happening behind the scenes? maybe nothing, but it leaves doubts!

Family Man: because if he can move, the dice won't roll until he rolls them

Vikings: No, that is not correct. He had open options available on previous turns as well, but his dice roll didnt allow a move. Then after 3 turns like this, where i moved and stayed here, then it was not my turn again, but the dice did not show!

The problem is that the way Fencer wrote the original code, the dice weren't rolled until a player looked at his turn. It needs to be changed to implement many of the changes we'd all like to see, but that's a lot of programming.

Thad:  I don't see any compelling reason for a player to be able to see his opponent's dice before the opponent moves.  It's nothing but monkey curiosity that makes us want to know what's going to happen next.  There's nothing we can do anyway, except maybe resign, and we can always do that when the turn comes back to us.

It would enhance the gaming experience! ;-)

Thad:  How?  

alanback: Don't you ever want to 'look ahead'? ;-)

Say you just made a nice blockade with a hole in it. Maybe your opponent can get thru it, but only with a roll of 5-3. If it's a slow-playing opponent, you might not see the result for several days. I'd like to be able to see the dice roll right away (when possible).

Thad: Just makes it worse. The dice are rolled and they STILL won't make a frigging turn. arg

alanback: I dont think there is any compelling reason to see dice before an opponent moves....

But why hide them either????

The point is that they are already rolled, supposedly, so why not display them???

Thad:  That's what I meant by monkey curiosity.  Sure, I have that too. But it isn't a compelling reason to see the dice.  Or to ask Fencer to do more programming when there other more important features that could be implemented.

alanback: I don't care to argue the point with you. How about a match instead. ;-)

alanback: How? Like you said, It satisfies monkey curiosity. But you said it was only monkey curiosity, which value cuts your off from understanding it's experiential benefit. I love knowing what my opponent's dice are when I play at Gold Token and DG (when the move-ahead hasn't stopped on my turn). But, then again, I am a very curious, er, bunnkey!

Another reason, though it wouldn't apply to many people, is that feedback is of most benefit when it immediately follows a behaviour. Thus, by seeing the dice immediately, you can tell if your spell or sacrifice to the Dice Gods worked or not.

playBunny: I must have sacrified a lot to the dice Gods...3  random double ones in a row so far, wondering what the record is? LOL

Andersp: I saw 3 double ones in a row followed by 2 double 4s

No it was actually 4 double ones followed by the 2 double 4s

Czuch Czuckers: LOL...try to do that at your kitchentable with real dice :)

Does Fencer keep a record of the dice rolls? If not, perhaps he could. If so, does he publish them? It would be interesting to run some statistical analysis on them to see how random they are.

If you think about how many games have been played here, the odds might actually be pretty good for someone to have thrown 1-1, 1-1, 1-1 by now like Andersp did. It probably should have (and probably has) occurred several times.

It seems to me like more doubles are rolled near the ends of many of my games. I'm assuming that it just looks like that to me, though.

Thad:  I once did some statistical analysis on the dice rolls at ItsYourTurn because I was convinced they were skewed.  I had no luck proving this, as it turned out that the distribution of rolls was pretty close to random, with some slight bias for or against particular results.  I imagine you would find the same here.  I don't recall whether I did a systematic study of consecutive doubles.  I still have the database around somewhere.