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Baffle box rolling procedure

Posted By: Colin Owen
Date: Wednesday, 14 March 2012, at 4:27 a.m.

In Response To: Baffle box rolling procedure (Daniel Murphy)

You seem to misunderstand me Daniel. Let me clarify. There are several people posting here who imply that an imperfect baffle box is useless. That is, any that have been shown to be susceptible to some manipulation of the roll IF DONE BY HAND or are, because of their construction, at least doubted as to their ability to generate perfect randomness (without cups). To me, that is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Use that box instead WITH cups, and it will be far better than using no box at all.

I will answer your questions. I would say that setting up the dice by hand is objectionable, as it is against the spirit of generating random rolls, and therefore of the game - however futile it might (hopefully) be. But if we were using any of my best two or three baffle boxes (I own four) I would still feel confident that my opponents rolls were very close to random.

The great majority of current rule sets require that both players agree to the baffle box being used. If my opponent allows this, and we are using my box or a tournament supplied one that I feel happy with, then I must accede to not using cups if they so wish. But personally, I would prefer that they use cups and also shake the dice up and down at least a couple of times. Best IMO would be that baffle box preference exists in the rules, and that either player can also require cups and shaking.

I agree with Tom's point that baffle boxes help standardize what constitutes a bona fide roll, but feel that his suggestions as to how to cast the dice into the box by hand create further vagueness. I have done fairly extensive tests on rolling speeds, and found that dropping dice into a cup before casting was, on average, 0.88 seconds slower than dropping the dice straight into the box. I believe this amounts to an extra 5 minutes in an typical 11 point match. If either player has doubts, it seems like time well spent.

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