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Clocks + Random Dice Generator ?

Posted By: MaX
Date: Friday, 11 September 2009, at 2:40 p.m.

In Response To: Clocks + Random Dice Generator ? (Joe Russell)

Joe said: "I would prefer the seed process be a little more complex"

I agree. Actually what I proposed has still a security issue: player B could manipulate the device in such a manner that, once player A has entered his key, it generates a key for player B so that the resulting seed is favorable to player B. For example, generating sequences where the dice is biased in a specific manner (giving B more doubles, or simply making a give roll more likely than it should be): the fact B knows about this bias is to his advantage. I would say this would be pretty hard to implement if the RNG and the seed generation are accurately chosen. On top of that, if the device it picked randomly from a poll of devices (e.g. provided by the tournament director, or borrowed from another random player) then the risk goes way down.

One cheap workaround: each player, on top of entering his key in the device, also has to write it down on a piece of paper and show it (only) at the end. This way, the manipulated device cannot generate the key for B. But this requires pens and paper. Fail ! :)

"What if you felt like that you may have been cheated and wanted to verify the roll sequence, how would you find out what integer(s) your opponent selected, would it be stored and displayed at the end of the match?"

Yes, stored and shown at match end. Actually it is in possible to do this anytime, as soon as you've a suspect, but then you would have to generate a new seed and use it to continue the match.

With 2 devices you could also do onthe fly checking: you enter the two keys in the 2 devices and press the roll button on the two each time. The shown rolls must be identical on both. If one device is tweaked, that won't be the case. Requires 2 devices and to press roll no both, but otherwise that's very efficent. Maybe the two devices can be somehow linked so that pressing roll on one also "presses" it on the other (small integrated cable, wifi, rules accurately positioned over the two buttons ...).

"Don't forget to add a score keeping feature"

Right. Score-keeping errors are more frequent than one expects.

MaX.

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