First, I think the user interface on this site is great. The analysis tools is very useful and the navigation of blots is excellent. Unfortunately, like so many previous on-line backgammon sites, the dice rolls are predictable and rigged. For the life of me I can't understand why these software techies cannot produce a BG site with random dice. It's simply mind-blogging to develop an excellent BG software site, then ruin it with cooked dice.

Before I get into the stats, please, never play for money on this site. You are 100% guaranteed to part with your money.

I've played over 3,000 games on this site so far. I'll keep this simple.

One, I keep a random dice generator next to my desktop. I press the "roll" button on it during close mid-games, races, kill opportunities and bearing off. Of the 3,000 rolls I've compared it to, the Backgammon Galaxy dice have been worse for me on 2,324 rolls. You'd have better luck getting hit by lighting. Of these 3,000 rolls, I've predicted the actual roll on 749 rolls. Call me Nostradamus.

Two, there seems to be an algorithm on the bearing off rolls where 1's are rolled close to half the time. I've played 671 games where the PIPS are within 10 of my opponents, and we are bearing off together (race). Keep in mind I'm AHEAD in about half of these matches and I'm only keeping track when we are +/- 10 pips of each other. I'm not counting all the doubles I get when I'm 50 pips ahead on games I already won (I call these rolls make-up data). Of these 671 games, I've lost 587 (with no errors/blunders) You'd have better luck hooking up with Jennifer Austin after the Golden Globes

Third, the come-in rolls are a complete joke. This gets a little more complicated, but the short is this. When my opponents have three anchors or less on the home board, I come in HALF the time. This stat is over 640 rolls. That's insane.

Forth, there is a "luck" data point at the end of each game. This is somewhat subjective because no-one knows how this is calculated, but I had 28 straight matches where my luck score was worse. Unfortunately, this data point can be rigged, for example, by having the dice roll double 6's when you have one blot leave to bear off and finish game.

I have videos with my phone predicting the rolls. It's quite easy to know when the dice will be cooked.

So what's the motive here? Getting ready for ads to keep users coming back? Is my user name tainted? Do they just do this to certain users? Am I playing against computers? Does this create a physiological need to keep playing? I have commented a few times during games that I think the dice are rigged. Maybe Olsen was one of those players and poisoned my account?

The irony is the site is so well designed that I would pay $20 a month to play on it without ads and with true random dice. Why in the world can't these developers figure this out.

why

If you have to ask, then your a prime candidate for these buffoons who programmed the dice. They need eyeballs like yours to watch ads while your opponent moves around the board and you can't come out. It's coming, and the "smart" dice will be programmed to keep you coming back while maximizing click bait.

Sad really, that greed supplants random dice. Again, someone please, just charge a monthly fee, with a great site, no ads, no stupid coins, and random dice. Can't be that hard.

Hmmm.. I see a couple affiliate links to some backgammon books on Amazon, and zero other advertisements. He may get a handful of bucks from Youtube from their videos, but the programming cost of this website alone far exceeded whatever meager $$ he is making from it, and for the time being it's totally free. Enjoy your free service, and stop bitching. Srsly dude.

If I understand you correctly, you think the reason you're being cheated is so that, as you spend time on the bar, you'll have more time to look at the blizzard of ads you're being offered.

But what about your opponent? Since he's not on the bar but has to continue moving, he doesn't have time to look at the ads. So what the site operator gains from having you on the bar, he presumably loses with respect to your opponent.

If the site offered fair dice, wouldn't it benefit from having both players equally likely to look at the ads? What am I missing here?

i cant believe you guys gave a serious response to a riggie XD

Just having a wee bit of sporting fun.

I play on Galaxy and the dice seem pretty normal to me, i cant say that about Grid Gammon.

I'm not sure what incentive Marc would have to rig the dice on Galaxy.

I play for $ there with people I know and load the matches into XG, all my data shows normal dice.

There's no doubt the dice are rigged... I recently joined because Im not playing any live Tournaments right now. Been playing backgammon for 45 years this year and I love it. As far as Backgammon Galaxy goes I joined a player for a 3 point match and in each of the 3 games I was incredibly far ahead. I started to jot the rolls down for each of us in the 3 games we played to see how the dice panned out. In the 3 games that we played I had a total of 13 doubles not mention in the 3 games my dice rolled 31 >> 2-1's, good grief. The other player had 48 doubles in those 3 games ?? Anytime that he was trailing he would get 4 to 5 consecutive doubles and doubles that would work absolutely perfect to his advantage, not once but everytime... I admit there's going to be alot of luck involved because if there wasn't I would have never won any of my Live Tournaments! But as far as Backgammon Galaxy goes, it's a bit ridiculous.. My 2 cents

Wow! Unlucky three games in a row. I've never heard of anything like that in backgammon. Incredible.

FWIW, I've been playing on BG Galaxy for a couple of months and the dice seem perfectly normal to me.

Lehman Brothers made profits for about 80 years in a row. Then one year they filed in bankruptcy for an $800 billion loss- more than all their profits combined, compounded...

The idea is to make the unregulated, $330 trillion interest rate swaps market appear stable and functioning for enough time to make a whale put down a "safe" couple of billion as a hedge. Then cash out fast...

Just played my first match on Galaxy. If dice were rigged, they should have given me beginner's luck to hook me. My error rate was 3.3; my opponent's was 26.7- his cube blunders were off the charts.

Naturally...I got shut out.

There was this one time I was playing and my opponent rolled 62 from the bar; the exact roll he needed to escape and hit me. Then I danced on his two-point board three times, giving him enough time to start building a prime and filling in. Then, on top of all that, I rolled 21 twice when I was trying to save gammon and I lost the match...it was like the dice were against me and wanted me to lose...I'm sure all those who think the dice are rigged would agree with me.

Of course, it was a live game and we were using my board and my dice...but...

Seriously, anomalies happen and things that don't seem random are completely random. Flip a coin 100 times and record the results or just record fake results. Give me your results and unless you are very familiar with randomization, I'll tell you if you recorded real results or faked it. What people perceive as random is often not random and what people perceive as rigged is often quite random. Plus, I don't know what is to be gained, in most cases, from rigging dice. Seems like it would be more trouble than it's worth with a downside far outweighing the upside.

100% agree. The amount of doubles rolled over time is way more than random

Totally agree

Explain to me again why creating a site with obviously cheating dice is better than creating a site with honest dice?

There have been other sites that were called out on their dices, and had to make changes. Why? Many reasons and maybe none. If you google how "random" dice are calculated, you will see that it's virtually impossible to have true random. Notice, my statement was not using the word "rigged," as that would imply purposely. When money gets involved, there would be many reasons, to answer your question. Selling memberships, wagers, keep people coming back to get higher ratings, etc....

As they say...buyer beware. I would not put any kind of money on this site.

I don't think anyone is asking you to. The site is free if you just want to play.

I think the amount of doubles has been just about perfect. Granted, I'm using a relatively small sample, but I believe it should be enough to prove the number of doubles rolled is pretty darn close to right where it should be. It's definitely close enough to show the perception is not reality and mere observation would not detect the number of doubles being "way more than random".

To be thorough, we would expect a particular double to occur once every 36 rolls (2.78 percent) and any double to occur once every 6 rolls (16.67 percent). I analyzed all 20,327 rolls (10,167 by me and 10,160 by my opponents) over my last 104 matches. Therefore, we would expect a particular double to occur just under 565 times and any double to occur just under 3,388 times. The results are:

11 - 620
22 - 549
33 - 568
44 - 553
55 - 572
66 - 545
Total - 3,407

Overall, over the course of 104 matches (about 750 games) and over 20,000 rolls, my opponents and I have rolled doubles only 19 more times than the expected amount. That is only about 0.03 percent more than expected - well within expected variances and deviations and definitely close enough to show any perception that doubles occur too often is incorrect.

However.....The doubles were MORE than expected, not less. Which is what I expressed. I stand by my statement. I would never play a tournament (for money) or pay for this site unless they change the dice program. Let me reiterate that this is my opinion only. People can make up their own minds

I need to correct you and clarify what I said. No, the doubles were not more than expected. The doubles were .03 percent more than the expected value. There is a difference and I apologize for not being more clear about it when I wrote earlier. I should have been more careful in my statements.

The number frequency of doubles cannot be an opinion. Your opinion can be that the dice aren't fair. Your opinion can be that doubles show up at inopportune times for you (although, I don't know why the programming would pick you out to be unfair to). Your opinion can even be that the dice are rigged and not random. However, the frequency that doubles are rolled is a fact and whether or not there is "way more" than what would occur with random rolls is also a statistical fact. It's not an opinion.

The fact is, the number of doubles rolled were well within the expected parameters and statistically they are definitely what you would expect to encounter with random rolls. When something has an expected value, that does not mean you expect it to be exactly that value (I should have been more clear about that in my previous post). It means that, over time, you expect the average to approach that value. Being within .03 percent of the expected value means, statistically, the dice are not rolling doubles more than they should...not even close and certainly not at a rate that can be accurately perceived.

Let me put it another way. If you flipped a coin 100 times, the expected value for the number of heads flipped would be 50. That is the most likely occurrence, but it still only happens 7.96 percent of the times that you flip a coin 100 times. Almost as likely, you'll get heads 49 times (7.8 percent of the time) or 51 times (7.8 percent of the time). If you flipped a coin 100 times and it was heads 51 times (2 percent more than the expected value), would you say the coin flipping isn't random? Of course not, you'd say that it was definitely within the normal distribution. So, why would you say that .03 percent is more than expected? You wouldn't...the fact is, it's perfectly normal and not more than expected...and certainly not anything anybody could consider "way more than random".

Sorry I was not more clear the first time. Statistically, the dice are rolling the number of doubles that it should. It's pretty clear.

I agree! Both BG Galaxy and Safe Harbor are "rigged" ie. they repeat, they roll too many of the same number, they force you to leave a blot when you're ahead, your opponent always hits you and always gets doubles to hit and cover and to get out of every bad situation. For example, if I'm on the bar and my opponent has only his 1,2 and 3 points I will roll nothing but these numbers for 4 or 5 rolls until he gets his back men safe or get all his men in or makes more points. Same thing happened when I need a 1,2 or 3. I rolled only 4,5,and 6s for 4 or 5 rolls. Same deal.
I was warned years ago about algorithms by a Dell technician and that person was totally correct.
It is very frustrating to know you have no chance of winning no matter how far ahead you are.

I wonder what happens when two people who both think the dice is rigged against them play against each other. Does nobody win and the universe just implodes?

Excellent point. I'm particularly curiously as to how sites select the 'unlucky' people. Are they chosen at random, or are darker forces at work?