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BGonline.org Forums
Backgammon variant with slightly non-random dice
Posted By: Timothy Chow In Response To: Backgammon variant with slightly non-random dice (Timothy Chow)
Date: Sunday, 20 April 2014, at 2:50 p.m.
Let me pose a question that was implicit in my original post but which may not have come out quite the way I intended.
It's obvious that perfect play in this variant requires memorizing the state of the deck. What's less clear to me is how much of an edge the memorization gives you. In other words, suppose you were to play the variant without realizing that it is not normal backgammon. How much would your game suffer? My guess is that it would suffer very little.
For those who don't like the existence of a known state, how about if I make a further adjustment to the game. Dice rolls are still generated according to the method I described, except that the game (after the first roll, which is generated normally) does not necessarily begin with a shuffle. Instead, it begins at some random distance down in the deck, unknown to either player. This way you won't know what the state of the random number generator is. (You would discover the state when two doublets in a row appear, of course. The generator could be reset to a random position in the deck every now and then to combat this.)
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