This research I find pretty useless. It is about quantitive statistics, and it should be about qualitative statistics, and as I myself am no expert, that makes it suspect.

Maybe the amount of luck in the endgame would be a criterion.

In simple layman terms.
On several, but mostly few, occasions in a game there is a significant win or drop in equity between, say, 6 dicethrows, and the other 15. In this particular case I am referring to getting off the bar with 1 point open. It can also be that you need to hit a blot, or that there is some important strategical consideration. It's clear that those dice numbers are random, as the numbers for, by example, entering from the bar and hitting a blot are different every time. So in case the bot manipulates the dice on those pivotal occasions, those numbers don't change the statistical outcome.

Have you ever considered spending the time and effort to test your own hypothesis?

Backgammon gnu man, I am not accusing you. I am sure you just did what was requested of you. But just one dice manipulation per game is enough to be well profitable for a gambling site.

What you should do is create a hypothesis and a test, collect enough data to make your results statistically significant and then present the findings. What I see is someone who is making a claim that may or not be true and wants other people to spend their time and effort to prove it wrong.

Do you have collected evidence that support your claim that bots and or sites are changing a move or two here or there? If not then you are simply whining about something that may not even be true.

What about this. When you come back with your hypothesis, your data, methodology, and your conclusion we'll discuss your findings.

Having experienced the world around me for 50 years, and seeing what has happened in poker, the entire thing is quite suspect.

I agree with all of you. My position is rather convenient, being anonymously seated behind a keyboard at the other side of the ocean , and relying on induction rather than on experiment, (and even using a thesaurus now and then). But that doesn't make my perception inferior. What is at stake here is the esteem of the psychologic valuable games of poker and backgammon, and their measure of pleasure and entertainment.

It also doesn't give anyone sufficient reason to believe you.

If cheating is happening in online backgammon, I think it's far more likely that the cheating is happening by users and not by the backgammon site. That user-end cheating can be done by bot consultation (highly probable) or possibly by predicting future dice rolls based on previous dice rolls (much less probable).

Cheating on the site's end by the use of sophisticated algorithms that determine the right times in which to swing the luck is the least probable of all of cheating schemes. It's more likely that a user connected to the site is cheating (superuser style) than for the cheating to be coded into the program.

It's not me who is the culprit.

Eh? I wasn't accusing you of anything. I was saying that you're welcome to your perspective on the matter, but the lack of evidence that it's actually happening doesn't give anyone reason to believe that your perspective is meaningful.

Then I went on to just make some miscellaneous speculations on how I would expect cheating could occur if it were actually happening. That was mostly in response to the following:

Programming a bot or RNG to recognize those pivotal occasions and then programming the bot to change rolls on just those situations is so much more work than other ways of cheating that are just as transparent. So why would someone cheat in a very complex way when simple cheating will suffice?

I have nothing against you, but I want to use this as an example. Humans cheat in life be it games, work, love life. It is almost in our nature to cheat.

With that being said, we could take your logic with regards to insinuating that the sites cheat by saying "You yogiman are a cheater". The only thing I would need is a general statement "Humans cheat, therefore you are a suspect". Then we do it your way and I require you to prove that you aren't.

There is a reason why there is suppose to be a presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

My view is this, you should put your views on the back burner and forget about them until that time that you can prove the claim. And I can do the same and not declare you a cheater.

Dear All:

Nice to see that this topic still perks one's interest. I have anecdotal stories that can be related at a later date but for the current session I will state that I have seen the results of a statistical test performed by only one internet Backgammon site. Curious, that only one could be found. You would think that all sites would be eager to present evidence of sound dice. The tests I reviewed were suspect and need clarification on many issues. All sites claim tested dice generators. I did not see null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis on this study. The study did not stated them up front. Another curiosity.

I agree heartedly that tests of note, worthiness need to be conducted and done so continuously. Testing the number occurrence of dice and frequency of doubles may not be enough.

I propose that all backgammon internet sites have outside agencies (independent from internet site owners) state the tests, conduct the tests, show the methods and share the results. In Backgammon, one of the most important aspects of the game is taking a risk with open blot, getting hit, and re-entered.

Ah Re-Entry. You as players have five re-entry positions. I will stop here so you can contemplate the importance of a Re-Entry Test.

Next post I hopefully will supply details and outline the tests.

Remain skeptical in all your endeavors you will be better off.

Eddie Legs

P.S. Maybe Vladd222 is wrong, maybe he is right, and no matter what the result, his skepticism is very much appreciated.

Hi Eddie,

I rather pull both your legs.

I’ve probably let this thread go on longer than I should, but we’ve now officially entered the silly season, so I’m locking it down. Future threads on this topic, or on the closely-related topic “Do all the bots cheat?” will be deleted.

To Aaron, mpetch, Mike Taper, and others: The people who believe that they’re being cheated by the bots or by online sites will never be convinced otherwise. Every time they dance on a one-point board or their opponent throws a double to win the bearoff will be conclusive proof that they’re being cheated.

To all those who believe the dice are rigged: Take your opinions to rec.games.backgammon, which welcomes this sort of thing. You can discuss your gripes there at any length you want with like-minded souls. Here’s some simple advice – if you think a site is rigged, don’t play there. If you think all sites are rigged, play live backgammon. It’s much more fun anyway. But a word of warning – if you do play live, be prepared to be just as unlucky as you are online. Learn to play better, and you’ll find your dice will magically improve.