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BGonline.org Forums
Backgammon Dice are NEVER precision dice
Posted By: Phil Simborg
Date: Wednesday, 24 August 2016, at 10:40 p.m.
I got this message from the P-40 engineering team who have recently done extensive research and study of backgammon dice. I think most in the backgammon community will be very surprised to know that NO BACKGAMMON DICE are precision dice:
"FYI, when we “classified” dice as precision we measured the dimensions of the cube and they had to fall within 1/10,000 of an inch of each other. 0.0001”
Casino dice are made to this specification and measured prior to sending to the casino. Once you put rounded corners on dice they are no longer considered “precision”. There is no way to measure the accuracy of dice corners from one side to the other to make sure they are the same – you have to live with the tolerances built into the machining center doing the grinding.
Backgammon dice start out as square dice and come from a lot determined to be precision dice. That’s where it all ends. Once the corners are rounded they no longer become precision dice as far as the gaming industry is concerned. There is no specification nor does a specification exist for rounded precision dice tolerances and measurements.
They can say what they want to about pseudo random number generators, across the board they will out preform manual dice especially when there is no specification for rounded “precision” dice. If someone claims there dice are precise, kindly ask to what specification were they built? Casino dice yes, rounded cornered dice no!"
Again, the tests have shown that no backgammon dice physically tested by the P-40 team have found a single pair that does not have biases toward a specific number. Not only are the dice not precision, they ALL will roll some numbers more than others.
Electronic dice generators, on the other hand, can be made to produce truly random rolls (within very tight parameters) and have, and will continue to prove to out-perform what we currently are using and calling "precision dice" in backgammon.
This raises another question: why doesn't backgammon use true "precision dice," which are squared off dice like the ones used in casinos? Well, it's pretty clear that the squared dice, over a short roll distance, will not turn as much, and the way dice are rolled on a backgammon board, it would seem that squared dice could be set or manipulated more than rounded dice, but I would have to see a study to be sure that this statement is correct...it is just my assumption. However, if squared dice are tossed into a good baffle box, perhaps that would generate better results than using the current, flawed, rounded dice. Again, this would take some testing.
All good food for thought.
And all good reasons to give more credit to electronic dice generators.
One more point. My good friend and student, YanKit Chan, who you all know is blind and an excellent backgammon player and ambassador for the game, has agreed to test the new P-40 Electronic Dicer once we get the talking mode and other refinements completed. And once the app is fully-operational, YanKit and I will form an International Committee to promote backgammon to the visually impaired, using the P-40 Dicer to generate the dice for them. YanKit and I have also worked with Xavier for several years and I am happy to say that XG has many features that allows YanKit to use XG as a study tool as well. And the folks at P-40 have developed checkers that have a different feel to the two different colors so that visually-impaired can tell the colors apart by feel.
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