Quote:
Originally Posted by Sgt_Pepper
... It should also be easy to calculate the percentage for each player of coming in from the bar against various boards during the match (2, 3, 4, or 5 points covered) compared to real dice odds. For example (we'll assume one checker on the bar) , against a 5 point board, only one particular number gets you off the bar, so 11 in 36 or about 31% of the time. Do that calculation for all the various boards in a match and compare that to real dice odds over the long run.
You can see this for yourself, very easily.
If you weren't aware of it, XG, in addition to analyzing the strength of your moves, can also simply analyze all of your dice rolls for you and those rolled by your opponents. It will display, in a graphical format, the exact answers to your request.
Here's how to do it:
First, download as many of your Galaxy matches as you can. To do so, simply click the Galaxy
ANALYSIS link and then click the
DOWNLOAD icon in the far right margin. The match will be saved as a text file to your hard drive, most likely in your default download folder, wherever that may be.
Immediately after clicking a download icon, simply click the next match download icon in the next row. It only takes a second or two to click each icon. Eventually you will have to scroll down to see more icons. But that's it. It's just click - click - click, etc, scroll... click - click - click, etc, scroll... You can download your last 100 matches, for example, in probably not more than a couple of minutes. (Alas, I know of no way of downloading matches from Galaxy in
batch mode. For now I think downloading is limited to one match at a time, as described.)
I suggest then saving all of these match text files you download to a new folder called, for example, Galaxy_Matches.
Start up eXtreme Gammon. Click
FILE - IMPORT - BATCH IMPORT. Here you can import as many matches as desired, all at once. To do so, click
CHOOSE and then navigate in your own folder structure to the match folder (Galaxy_Matches). Select all of the files in that folder and then click
OPEN.
(Alternately, you can also drag and drop matches into the input box.)
Next,
find and then
select your Galaxy username among the list of players.
If you're just interested in analyzing the dice rolls, I suggest setting the Analyze Level to None or Very Quick. This will save a bit of time. Obviously, if you're interested in analyzing your performance, you might wish to use a stronger Analyze Level, such as World Class.
Click the
Create Profile button and check the
Override Previous Analysis for this player.
That should be it. Click the
START button to begin. The program will then analyze each match, one after another. Go make yourself a cup of coffee. It should only take several seconds, at most, to analyze each match, although the exact time will depend, of course, on the Analyze Level you choose and the length of each match. The program might be finished before you return to your desk.
When the analysis is complete, from the top menu click
PLAYERS - SEE PROFILE RESULTS. Select the
DICE tab.
Here you can see your total number of dice rolls, and that of your opponents, from the matches. You can see the percentage of those rolls that were Doubles, the percentage of times you entered from the bar and the Expected Percentage from the bar. You can see the Doubles percentage once the game was considered a race, etc.
Click the
DETAILS tab for even more dice-related data. Here, for example, you can see exactly the number of times (or percentage) you rolled 6-6. You can see the number of times you rolled doubles in a row.
You can see the number of times you entered from the bar against a 1-point board, against a 2-point board, against a 3-point board, etc., and what the expected number should be.
You can do all of this for your dice, your opponent's dice, or for both dice!
With the graphical format displayed, it is very easy to see how all of these numbers (or percentages) compare against what the Average or Expected number would be. (Notice the Average line that is running down the column.)
Clicking the
ANALYZE tab will give you the results of your dice against the Chi-Square text.
Of course, if you don't have XG, I'd be very happy to do all of this for you. It honestly wouldn't take me more than a minute or two. (I would, of course, need you to e-mail me your Galaxy match text files.)
This dice analysis will give you actual data to support your claim that the dice on Galaxy are the absolute worst. So far you've provided no actual data at all.
In a prior thread you said you tracked the number of doubles from the bar from 12 of your matches on Galaxy, and how your results did not seem all all valid or proper. (You admitted it was a very small sample size... and you also admitted that you didn't bother tracking it after that.)
I'm really curious if you've taken the time to actually import a decent size number of your matches into XG and generate actual dice stats as described above. (And by "decent size number," I'm just talking about 100 matches or so but if you have 1,300 matches to import, so much the better.)