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Yes re cups with baffle boxes..YES and YES again
Posted By: Phil Simborg In Response To: Yes re cups with baffle boxes..YES and YES again (Jon)
Date: Thursday, 10 September 2009, at 2:11 p.m.
Since you couldn't find them, here are Joe Russell's comments and my additions listing what we (and many others) believe are the advantages of the baffle box:
Joe Russell On Baffle Boxes:
There are many reasons one would prefer a baffle-box and cups: 1. It is actually faster since you don't have to shake as much and there are very few cocked rolls and almost no rolls off the board; 2. If facilitates randomness; 3. There is little difference in 'aesthetics' in shaking your dice once or twice and rolling into a baffle-box and having the dice delivered to the board a second later or shaking for an extra second or two and delivering the dice to the board yourself; 4. Some people may prefer to shake less for physical reasons. They may have physical ailments that are exacerbated by excessive shaking. I have a partially-torn rotator cuff. My shoulder hurts at the end of a weekend of playing backgammon; 5. It makes you feel very comfortable playing someone you don't know, even if you have no reason to suspect they may be a cheater. It gives you peace of mind; 6. There is a built-in bias in clocked matches against the player that must roll on the side of the bear-off, since he will end up with more cocked rolls and waste more time re-rolling, a baffle-box eliminates this bias.
To this, I added: 1. You NEVER have to worry about dice flying off the table or in your face. 2. When taping a match, you will always have the dice ending up in the same area, so you can focus on that area and see all the rolls 3. You don't have to worry about individual "oddities" of rolling...I used to hate playing with a guy who had his fingers over the end of the cup and the dice hit them; another guy I play never shakes after he has rolled doubles; another guy used to roll so gently the dice hardly tumbled; another used to roll against the inner bar so the dice didn't travel very far; another used to drop them straight down and sometimes, if it wasn't from very high, the dice didn't bounce much--all of these irritations are eliminated with the baffle box.
And to my last point, Neil Kazaross stated that he was sure that some of those people who rolled in odd ways were doing it intentionally or at least not caring if their poor rolling manners might be giving them an advantage.
I could add a long list of people who agree that the baffle box adds greatly to the game without detracting, and I personally believe that many people who object have not given it a fair try. I, personally, have converted many to appreciating baffle boxes not by arguing or debating, but simply by letting them try it for a few games and see how they like it.
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