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New York Metropolitan--Luck Factor

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Tuesday, 5 January 2016, at 5:58 p.m.

In Response To: New York Metropolitan--Luck Factor (Stick)

Stick wrote:

Luck will determine the winner in these matches ~100% of the time.

Yes, in the sense that for every match, the winner will be the luckier player. For this not to be the case, one player has to throw away a lot of MWC.

What I think is not widely appreciated is that games like backgammon are designed to be this way. I didn't really fully appreciate it myself until I did the analysis that I reported in this thread. Backgammon is designed so that

1. the player with more skill will win more often; and

2. it will always look like luck, even if you measure the luck quantitatively.

Given that this is inherent in the design of the game, tinkering with it to increase the skill factor won't change that. Unless you make a truly major change to eradicate almost all the luck, all that will happen is that the more skilled players will win slightly more often, but it will (almost) always be the case that in any particular match, the luckier player will be the winner.

This is good news for Phil, because he likes to tinker with the game, so he can rest assured that no matter how much he tinkers, he will always be able to use the luck numbers to claim that more tinkering is needed to make it more of a game of skill.

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