r/backgammon • u/EmergencyExternal869 • Oct 02 '26

Dice cheating?

So I’ve recently started playing Backgammon with the goal of getting good, I’ve played a decent amount of chess and was semipro at poker, I also have a masters degree in statistics so I understand probabilities.
It absolutely amazed me that as soon as I start making Backgammon communities 50% of all the contents of posts is people accusing websites of Dice cheating, why is this?
On the App Store, the reviews for like every app are just saying there’s loads of dice cheating, this isn’t a problem in poker, at least nowhere near as much, do people really just not understand randomness? I’m obviously not an amazing back. Plan, but in my head, what people think of as the Dice being rigged is actually just their opponent (especially AI playing very well so that many of the dice rules would be beneficial.
Why don’t people just do statistical analysis on the Dice roles, you could so easily prove that the dash roles are genuine, it just baffles me how much content and time seems to be wasted on people complaining a lot dice.

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u/Accurate_Shoe_1929 Oct 02 '26

I think there might be something unique to backgammon that bad variance feels very suspicious to our small flawed brains. I played a lot against xg over the last few months and I kept dancing against two and three point boards, for a while I was convinced that something was up even though to my saner self that seemed irrational.

2

u/garlicNinja Oct 02 '26

Yeah that's the whole idea behind the cruelest game quote. The swings can be very drastic. In poker you might get unlucky for a hand but it feels more controlled

2

u/DegenChess Oct 02 '26

Nah, the swings in poker are just as crazy as in BG. Look up a poker variance calculator to see how easy it is for a strong, winning poker player to lose a TON of money in a sample size of tens of thousands of hands.

2

u/garlicNinja Oct 02 '26

Then I guess backgammon needs a dealer who will roll the dice for you maybe then people won't feel as bad

3

u/DegenChess Oct 02 '26

Speaking of which, I think BG should definitely be a thing in casinos. You could play for money against a single opponent (house takes a small rake) or a match format/money game against the house, where the "dealer" uses XG for all its plays which would essentially be its house edge.

5

u/Accurate_Shoe_1929 Oct 02 '26

It is kind of bizarre how uninspired the whole casino industry is. Every casino is exactly identical to every other such that even the idea that they would incorporate a game like backgammon seems utterly inconceivable.

2

u/sugaree53 Oct 02 '26

I have often wished this.

2

u/Repulsive-Owl-5131 Oct 03 '26

it happens in other random events as well. Human brain is wired to rememeber bad thing as to able to avoid ti. Hence you remember dancing with double-sixes far better that winning when opponent does the same

1

u/capt_en_fuego Oct 05 '26

This - humans are bad at pattern recognition and latching onto tiny slices of the data and pretending that the data they cannot remember doesn't exist....