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Yes re cups with baffle boxes..YES and YES again
Posted By: Jon In Response To: Yes re cups with baffle boxes..YES and YES again (Phil Simborg)
Date: Thursday, 10 September 2009, at 3:14 p.m.
I'm not trying to be difficult, just trying to balance out the discussion with some negative side viewpoints, lets take those points:
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;
I'm 100% sure that picking up the dice and shaking/rolling them would be faster than shaking/putting them in the box. There will be less re-rolls but overall I'd be very surprised if a box would be faster. My verdict: draw
2. If facilitates randomness;
No it doesn't (i.e. this is entirely subjective), I'd be amazed if a box is demonstrably "more random". My verdict: draw
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;
Of course there is, on the one hand your are rolling dice, on the other you are popping them in a box and watching them whirl out the bottom. My verdict: dice
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;
This is rubbish - not your shoulder injury, but the fact that someone could argue that using a box is "less physical", we're talking about rolling dice not push-ups. My verdict: draw
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;
Really? I could see a lot of people being not used to boxes being the opposite of comfortable sitting down with someone who wants to use one. My verdict: draw
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.
Few bearoff moves require much if any thinking time and placing the clock on the opposite side balances this point. My verdict: draw
To this, I added: 1. You NEVER have to worry about dice flying off the table or in your face.
Ever? What if you miss the box/e.g if one dice catches in the cup.
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
This is a valid point but not exactly earth shattering.
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.
Lots of peoples rolling "techniques" actually add to the game in my opinion. Sure if someone is rolling illegally, tell them.
What about the points I made: Boxes are an extra cost, need to be stored somewhere, can be noisy, detract from the playing of the game?
Jon
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