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Popsicle wrote:Re the comment about dice not having memory;

If I pick up a gun, and shoot someone, and, the next day, shoot another person, and get caught and taken to court, would my lawyer say 'There's no case for them to charge you with both murders because the gun has no memory?'...

Are you just trolling everyone?

Dice rolls arnt at all dependant on eachother.

Rolling a 6 after a 1 IS THE SAME probability as rolling a 6 After a 6.

Popsicle wrote:Re the comment about dice not having memory;

If I pick up a gun, and shoot someone, and, the next day, shoot another person, and get caught and taken to court, would my lawyer say 'There's no case for them to charge you with both murders because the gun has no memory?'...

Here's a better one - you aim a rifle into the sky, blindfolded, and fire. Completely random chance of hitting someone (and very unlikely.)

If you do this 100 times and miss every time are you more likely to hit on the 101st?


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Luco wrote:I'm like you in that I'm picky about which dice I pick up to reroll, only its because I'm superstitious about my dice, not because of probability though I do see what you're saying in that regard.

I do not believe that is cheating. However, it can look like practised rolling which definitely is cheating. (those guys tend to pick up dice that are showing particular faces so that they are all sitting consistently in their hands)

J-Roc77 wrote:Look at a bell curve of consecutive dice rolls, better yet, get about 10 plus people together, each with a quarter. Everyone flips their coin at the same time, showing their neighbor the outcome. Every time tails comes up their quarter goes in the pot, and they are out. The last person standing who ends up with heads at the end wins the pot, no winner (buncha tails come up), money stays in the pot, wash rinse repeat. Each coin flip is 50/50, however some lucky person will get the pot. 3 heads in a row do not automatically equal a tails is all I am saying.

Bad example.
I can actually flip a quarter so that heads comes up about 95% of the time. When it *doesn't* come up, it's because I've done something wrong.
The weight distribution of a quarter isn't even.

You've got the right idea, though.

Eric

I had a similar issue with this concerning Tervigons - I felt like rolling dice that showed different facings would help the probability of rolling doubles decrease. In effect i was subconsciously trying to do 'practiced rolling' as mentioned in this thread, and thus cheating under the guise of superstition. After some thought on the issue I decided that the best way to roll dice and avoid all conflict or cheating is to just grab them without any attention to the facing. Nobody likes being called a cheater, whether you're doing it intentionally or not.

This is getting far too serious, far too heated, for my liking. I didn't intend the topic to end up this way.

I'll resign from the debate and accept that I'm wrong. If you want to continue to throw formulae and odds and likelihoods and technical terms at me, do so, but I won't be checking the topic from now on. Make of it what you will.

BloodQuest wrote:...I don't take 40K seriously as a simulation, I'm not bothered about being competitive, or who wins.

I absolutely am bothered about painted armies and playing within what I consider to be the spirit of the rules, but I can't in any way see the OP's thinking as cheating in any way, no more than if he blew on the dice before rolling them...

Agreed!

Scott-S6 wrote:I do not believe that is cheating. However, it can look like practised rolling which definitely is cheating. (those guys tend to pick up dice that are showing particular faces so that they are all sitting consistently in their hands)

As people have pointed out a few times, it isn't cheating because it doesn't work. If it did work, it would be, because it would be tipping the odds in one's favour through a means that is not part of the game.


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Popsicle wrote:I'll resign from the debate and accept that I'm wrong.

Credit to you for conceding the point. I think dakka would be a much cooler and smarter place if more people could do the same.

Popsicle wrote:This is getting far too serious, far too heated, for my liking. I didn't intend the topic to end up this way.

I'll resign from the debate and accept that I'm wrong. If you want to continue to throw formulae and odds and likelihoods and technical terms at me, do so, but I won't be checking the topic from now on. Make of it what you will.

LOL

With nearly 800 posts, I'd think you'd have realized by now that this is how MANY (if not most) discussions on Dakka (also: online) end up.


Eric

Jokorey wrote:
Exactly. The odds don't change, but if you perform method X because you *think* it improves your odds, your *intent* is artificially alter the result by using your method, aka, cheating.
Just because it turns out they're *not* Magic Dice does not change his intent.

While I understand the argument here, it's so nestled in irrelevance and abstraction that it is virtually meaningless for practical gaming purposes.

First is the question of definition: Cheating is something that actually alters an outcome. Superstition is not cheating, because superstition doesn't have the power to alter statistical odds.

If your opponent counting rosaries between his rolls, or blowing on his dice, or submitting chants to Umpapamaumau, or saying "COME ON BABY, BIG MONEY" before he rolls is cheating, then don't you think casinos would have put a stop to it?

Since those behaviors don't alter the game, or even have the potential to alter the game, it's not cheating. It's certainly nothing I'd get on the cross about during a game.

IMO, you only require intent. You'd call someone a cheater for bringing loaded dice to a tourney, even if you caught them before they used it, wouldn't you?

If you believe you are gaining an unfair advantage by using magic, then you have that intent and are cheating.

If you're doing something just because it's a ritual or tradition for you, or because it's fun, but are aware you aren't actually getting an advantage, it's not cheating.

Grakmar wrote:IMO, you only require intent. You'd call someone a cheater for bringing loaded dice to a tourney, even if you caught them before they used it, wouldn't you?

loaded dice have the power to alter the randomness of the player's rolls. saying ABRACADABRA does not have that power.

if someone wants to write silly incantations to recite during a game because they think it makes them better, lol, give'r beef, brah! once they get the table wiped with them enough times hopefully they'll crash into the hard wall of reality.

The law usually requires intention and action.

Just bringing loaded dice is not cheating until you use them, although it's definitely suspicious.

As for superstitions and magic, the point of cheating is to get an unfair advantage. Anyone can spit on their hands or blow on their dice, so one person doing so is not cheating however much he believes it will work, as his opponent can do exactly the same.

Some people actually only use 'flat' faced dice, as actually, the holes in your average dice make the '1' side minimalistically more likely to have landed down than that of the '6' side. The amount is so trite that only the most mathematically inclined and annoying even bother, but all faces of all dice are extremely reemotely different. There is no such thing as a perfectly fair dice roll, but when the odds are a fluctuation of 1 in 100000 (or whatever huge arbitrary number) different it is hardly worth worrying about. Some dice are heavier and others have rounded corners and whatever.. which makes it slightly skewed depending if you are a 'shake and toss' or a 'drop it on the table' or whatever when you roll.

sebster wrote:
...When people talk about dice having no memory, they mean that rolling a die is a completely random event that no person influences. The die is released from the hand and it bounces off the table always spinning until it comes up with one side or another. If you pick the dice up and roll it again it will spin and bounce around on the table and it will come to rest with whatever number – completely independent of the previous roll.

To believe otherwise is to believe that dice have some form of consciousness where they know somehow that they rolled high last time, or rolled low last time, and have some means of making themselves produce a higher or lower number this time. So the options are to believe in independence, or to believe in magic.
...

And again, the people with whom I largely (almost wholeheartedly agree) keep making this mistake (or keep deliberately overlooking a known possibility).

There are not two options. You can believe in independence, you can believe in magic, or you can believe in dice and/or dice rolling procedures that aren't perfectly random.

Given the generally low production value of most dice, and the completely irregular and haphazard polishing that they receive during their production (assuming, as with most dice, that they are painted and then polished), it is in NO WAY irrational to regard some dice as more likely to roll certain numbers over others. People have documented particular dice with randomness problems, and have even performed experiments that suggest (I won't say prove) that GW white dice are generally produced in a way which skews their randomness.

I totally agree that perfectly random dice are going to produce independent, random results when thrown in a manner which doesn't bias their results. However, it is hard for people in the real world to come up with a priori knowledge that their dice have been produced perfectly random.

Much more likely is a die which is imperfectly random to some extent or another. While it is possible to come up with an erroneous conclusion about your dice based on a limited sample size, it is also possible to discover that certain dice do actually produce skewed results. If you have imperfect dice, it is totally possible that certain dice produce independent but non-random results. A die that is polished and shaped to produce 6's more often still has an independent result each time, in that the previous result doesn't in any way influence the current roll, but it is still imperfectly random.

To go further, suppose that Player A carefully keeps track of all of his rolls with a particular red die over a long period of time, and notes that it is MUCH more likely to roll a 1 than any other number. He then uses that die deliberately whenever he needs to roll low. He would appear to be attempting to cheat, even though on a particular roll, it is POSSIBLE for his die to roll some other number.

Now suppose that player B has not kept careful record of all of his die rolls over a long period of time with a particular blue die, but he believes that it is much more likely to roll a 1 than any other number. If he uses that die whenever he needs to roll low, is he attempting to cheat? Does his ineptitude with statistical methodology protect him from this accusation?

Does it matter if his belief is correct (and the die turns out to be misshappen to produce more 1s), even though his belief wasn't established scientifically?

Does it matter if he is incorrect, and either hasn't observed enough rolls to make this assumption, or has just remembered the memorable ones?

Does it matter if he believes that the blue die rolls low because it is mis-shaped, or if he believes that it is "lucky"?

What if Player B just says that he believes his blue die is "lucky" but actually believes it's a cocked die that rolls low?

What if Player A says he believes his red die is "lucky", even though he has established that it is a cocked die that rolls low?


That's why I'm suspicious of any "lucky die" or "lucky roll" procedures. There's no good way for me to distinguish a genuine belief in something nonexistent (like "magic dice") from a false, professed belief in the same, used to conceal an actual cocked die or rigged method of rolling.

I try to use a set of dice that are all relatively identical (like a pack of dice, all of the same color), and I try to keep them all together in a jumble, so that it is clear that I am not picking particular dice to roll. If I do roll the same dice twice (like a to-hit, followed by a to-wound), and those numbers are noticeably "good" for me, such as rolling 2 sixes to hit, followed by 2 sixes to wound, I will consciously put those dice back in the group if I need to roll another high number, as I don't want it to seem like I have particular good dice that I roll. If so many people weren't so superstitious (or germophobic), I would prefer that both sides used the same dice for the whole game, honestly.

So (to bring religion into this) you could put someone in a horrible position if they ask their respective deity for help with a dice roll. Either they admit their deity doesn't exist (or is apathetic to their cause), or they admit they were cheating.

hemingway wrote:loaded dice have the power to alter the randomness of the player's rolls. saying ABRACADABRA does not have that power.

Yes, which is what people have kept saying, when they were saying the intent is to cheat, but no-one cares because no-one really thinks it does anything.


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Kilkrazy wrote:The law usually requires intention and action.

Yes, which is why they're not guilty of cheating, which is why no-one has said they're actually cheating.

What has been said is that they intend to cheat, but no-one cares because we're all operating on the assumption that it doesn't actually do anything.


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Da Butcha wrote:And again, the people with whom I largely (almost wholeheartedly agree) keep making this mistake (or keep deliberately overlooking a known possibility).

There are not two options. You can believe in independence, you can believe in magic, or you can believe in dice and/or dice rolling procedures that aren't perfectly random.

You make a good point. I was thinking purely in terms of people choosing some dice over others based on the single previous roll, which is hardly enough to establish a die's likelihood at rolling high or low on future rolls.

It was an interesting point you raised; exactly where general observation and a belief in luck ends, and deliberate study and the establishment of lucky dice begins is ultimately pretty subjective.

The various forces that act on a die from you throwing it out of your hands, and from the table itself when it bounces, are going to massively overpower whatever torque might be exerted on the die from one side being infinitesmally heavier than another side, or from one side being slightly more 'sticky' due to increased friction from a bad polish job, or random air pockets that make up a small fraction of the object's weight, etc. etc.

sebster wrote:
Yes, which is why they're not guilty of cheating, which is why no-one has said they're actually cheating.

I suggest you re-read the thread.

Scott-S6 wrote:

Luco wrote:I'm like you in that I'm picky about which dice I pick up to reroll, only its because I'm superstitious about my dice, not because of probability though I do see what you're saying in that regard.

I do not believe that is cheating. However, it can look like practised rolling which definitely is cheating. (those guys tend to pick up dice that are showing particular faces so that they are all sitting consistently in their hands)

Thanks for the heads up with that. It would be a hard argument as I tend to toss the dice vertically with lots of spin when I only have a few so I think I'm mostly safe there

I completely understand the maths an logic of the probabilities of rolling subsequent sixes however this doesn't stop me from taking new dice if I have a reroll and the first set have failed me.

I also understand that this is just my own personal superstition.

At the same point you wouldn't believe how often if I fail to follow this simple superstition that the dice let me down.

At the same point I have never considered myself a cheat for doing so. Superstitious? Yes. Cheat? No.

Neither has anyone I have ever played.

We all have our own little habits that we try to keep to.

Brother Bartius wrote:We all have our own little habits that we try to keep to.

My set of 36 tiny dice never rolled well for me (consistently rolling seven ones on saving throws and double sixes on leadership). I rolled each of them in turn, putting aside the ones that came up with one pip. Then rolled those etc until I had the one troublemaker dice. I've since isolated it from the others. The remainder have rolled well for me since.

I'm still considering whether to reintroduce the rebel dice, or leave it out forever.

It's superstition, plain and simple.

Me and my regular opponents do the same thing though. I maintain that a die that rolls a one is cursed for a round and therefore can't be used again that round. For wounding, I roll the dice that hit, as these are clearly the lucky dice.

Mathematically, if a die rolls a six it's enitely likely to roll a six again. The odds you're confusing are:

a D6 has a 1/6 chance of rolling a 6.
The chance of rolling another six on the same die is 1/6.
However
The odds of rolling two consecutive sixes on the same die is 1/36. The same can be said for a 6 and a 4 for instance (or any other particular number for that matter).

So you're using a wierd set of probability to quantify this, when it's not particularly useful.

I actually subscribe to a train of thought which I call "idiot odds", which is a way I calculate odds quickly.
If a roll has a 50% chance of coming off (4+), but is twin-linked, the actual odds become 75%, but my "idiot odds" say it's a guarantee.

Continue using it if it makes you happy, as I do with mine. Bit it's not techinically accurate.

This thread is a bunch of people with bizarre dice rituals that are probably annoying to watch at the table, a bunch of people that know how numbers work saying the rituals are absurd, and the first group of people saying "Yeah probably, but I'll still do it because in some corner of my mind I think my magical ritual works anyway, despite all reasonable arguments to the contrary"

Foxtale wrote:So (to bring religion into this) you could put someone in a horrible position if they ask their respective deity for help with a dice roll. Either they admit their deity doesn't exist (or is apathetic to their cause), or they admit they were cheating.

It is not cheating... Every one is welcome to try being lucky, or superstitious, or try praying. It in fact adds an element of hopeful fun or sillyness to the game that science denies. No one is welcome to use loaded dice, thus, to do so is cheating. Kilkrazy said as much before in this thread and I'm going to quote him for truth again:

Kilkrazy wrote:As for superstitions and magic, the point of cheating is to get an unfair advantage. Anyone can spit on their hands or blow on their dice, so one person doing so is not cheating however much he believes it will work, as his opponent can do exactly the same.

So your opponent is welcome to pray to Jehovah, or Buddha, or Ganesh... And you are welcome to pray to "science" to try and help you if you want... Oh wait! Science is already apathetic to your cause, hmmm...

hemingway wrote:I suggest you re-read the thread.

Show me the person who claimed attempting to influence the dice through 'lucky' mechanisms was actually cheating? As opposed to being the intent to cheat, made harmless by the fact that such methods don't actually do anything.


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Brother Bartius wrote:I completely understand the maths an logic of the probabilities of rolling subsequent sixes however this doesn't stop me from taking new dice if I have a reroll and the first set have failed me.

I also understand that this is just my own personal superstition.

At the same point you wouldn't believe how often if I fail to follow this simple superstition that the dice let me down.

At the same point I have never considered myself a cheat for doing so. Superstitious? Yes. Cheat? No.

Neither has anyone I have ever played.

We all have our own little habits that we try to keep to.

Yes, because swapping dice doesn't actually do anything, so no-one really minds. This has been pointed out a lot of times now.


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Psyker_9er wrote:It is not cheating... Every one is welcome to try being lucky, or superstitious, or try praying. It in fact adds an element of hopeful fun or sillyness to the game that science denies. No one is welcome to use loaded dice, thus, to do so is cheating. Kilkrazy said as much before in this thread and I'm going to quote him for truth again:

So your opponent is welcome to pray to Jehovah, or Buddha, or Ganesh... And you are welcome to pray to "science" to try and help you if you want... Oh wait! Science is already apathetic to your cause, hmmm...

It's a huge assumption that any God or ritual would work as well for each player. It's an assumption one is able to make because we all accept that those rituals all affect the dice the same - not one bit.

But here's a thought experiment - what if there were rituals that were known to make any dice 90% likely to come up with the number desired by the player? You better believe those rituals would be banned, using them would be an attempt to swing probabilities away from what they ought to be, and towards the player.

We don't ban the rituals people do go through, because we accept the rituals don't actually do anything.

This topic has been all the buzz lately... and that is AWESOME!

I've got my own thread for the topic of being lucky, started by lucky people, for lucky people:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/327046.page

If luck (or what ever you may want to call it) can be identified as a force of will, then the game is no longer a game of odds. It becomes a battle of minds. And therefore, still not cheating...

MikeMcSomething wrote:This thread is a bunch of people with bizarre dice rituals that are probably annoying to watch at the table, a bunch of people that know how numbers work saying the rituals are absurd, and the first group of people saying "Yeah probably, but I'll still do it because in some corner of my mind I think my magical ritual works anyway, despite all reasonable arguments to the contrary"

True, there are plenty of reasonable arguments AGAINST the concept of luck or using rituals and yadda yadda...
The difference between those of us who still listen to the voices from the corners of our minds, and those who listen to the voices of long dead scientists:

We still have hope, and have plenty of room to grow. Those who stick to the laws of others have already given up, and bound by those laws they shall go no further.

Putting dice in a special cup, jiggling it in little circles or whatever, or forcing your opponent to wait while he watches you sift through your dice for ones that you think have special powers isn't the wargaming equivalent of enlightenment. It's just slowed.

Psyker_9er wrote:
The difference between those of us who still listen to the voices from the corners of our minds, and those who listen to the voices of long dead scientists:
We still have hope, and have plenty of room to grow. Those who stick to the laws of others have already given up, and bound by those laws they shall go no further.

Nice! I'm stealing this... erm... borrowing it.

Psyker_9er wrote:The difference between those of us who still listen to the voices from the corners of our minds, and those who listen to the voices of long dead scientists:

We still have hope, and have plenty of room to grow. Those who stick to the laws of others have already given up, and bound by those laws they shall go no further.

Sweet. Time to ignore logic, reason, and fact, just because the truth is constricting! Fight da powa! Down with those evil scientists!

Psyker_9er, that has got to be the dumbest post I've read all month. Congrats, I'm pretty sure there is an award for that somewhere.