| |
BGonline.org Forums
A Very Tough Ruling in the Cleveland Finals
Posted By: Henrik Bukkjaer In Response To: A Very Tough Ruling in the Cleveland Finals (Stick)
Date: Saturday, 2 April 2011, at 7:35 a.m.
>> Have you tried it...
He he he, you don't know me, clearly!
I considered two responses to your post - one slick response, simply offering you a favorable prop bet on your claims (one second delay for picking up split dice), and then the response I chose to write, a LONG post answering all your questions and claims, and stating my thoughts on the subject. So here goes, my longest BGO post to date.
Best regards, Henrik
--------
>> I don't know how quick and agile players are in DK but it would be more than two tenths of a second if the person picking up the dice. My estimate is 1 second. Have you tried it on a professional board? I have.
Yes, and my best guess would be that I've done it more thorough than you have (if you have actually tried measuring this as you claim):
I set up 30 checkers (a typical midgame position). I then randomly placed 8 precision dice LHS and 8 RHS, placed my iPhone stopwatch in the bearoff tray and grabbed my cup.
Now I reach out, start the stopwatch, pick up one pair of dice (one LSH and one RHS), throw them in the cup, pick up the next pair, etc. stopped the clock after the final pair was picked up.
Now I placed all 16 dice on the RHS (spread them out randomly tossed from the cup), and repeated the experiment. Each time for the RHS I did two trials one where I grabbed a pair of dice lying as close to each other as possible, and one where I didn't pick up touching dice, but took a pair at least three inches from each other (which would be the correct way to do this because you are comparing pickup times for dice thrown by an opponent trying to make you spend as much time as possible, so it would be wrong to assume the RHS dice would be lying right next to each other).
The result is that is takes 12 seconds to pick up 8 pair of dice LHS+RHS split. It takes 9-11 seconds to pick them up RHS non-split, depending on the spread/pairing, a "realistic" mix would give you 10,4 seconds. That's a difference of 2/10 per pair.
Now even if you go to the utmost extreme, and glue together the dice in 8 pairs, and place them clear of the checkers RHS, you'd spend 6 seconds picking them up. That's still below that 1 second difference you claim to have tested.
I'd be happy to challenge your claim in a prop bet. You pickup RHS dice, me picking up RHS+LHS, and if I can't break below half a second difference, you win.
Anyway, this is irrelevant. Because the scenario where a player on purpose toss his dice split between the sides, is not to be considered. He should clearly not be allowed to. It's sort of like "what if your opponent constantly put the checkers off-set on the pips or on the hinge/edge of the bar so they drop to the playing surface after he hits the clock", etc. Tilts over the clock when hitting the plunger? There's a lot of things you can do that is clearly not within the spirit of the rules.
>> Again, have you tried it? It's quite easy to roll them left to right or right to left and have them split. You also can't assume that me costing myself time is equally valuable as me costing my opponent time. If I'm playing UBK or Francois or any other player who usually uses up a hefty sum of their time the fact that I wasted 60 seconds of my own and cost them only 20 seconds of their clock can still be advantageous to me.
I did also try that, yes, but I must admit that I have now tried it with different cups (no lip, small lip, big lipped, and different shapes (round, oval). It depends a lot on the cup you use, how easy it is. But you really have to roll on the bar more or less to be certain to split them. It will be very clear that you aim to split the dice when you do it.
Keep in mind that when you roll, the dice must leave the cup simultaneously! About the time problems you mention, it's correct, your own time and your opponent's time may very well carry different equity. Point taken.
>> These seem like pretty lame workarounds. I have a better idea of what constitutes a valid roll, both dice flat on your side of the board along with all the other usual specifications.
I'm far from sure those would be lame workarounds, depends on how you word them, the basic idea is that no player aims to split the dice on purpose - shouldn't be that difficult, and I don't think you'd see this going Europe, so I don't know how players behave there or in what spirit matches are played.
But if you're that afraid of split rolling, you could tighten up the rule to state "flat on the same side of the board"?
>> As for your listed advantages I find the majority of them null and void ... #4 ... On top of that, since most of these positions tend to be straight races and the moves are more or less forced, how often do you think it costs anyone time? On top of that, as I always say, learn to roll, it's not that hard. #5 - The number or rerolls will be greatly reduced. I ask, have you conducted any studies?
Of course, it's a matter of taste. I never ask to roll LHS but if it became the norm that I was allowed to without asking, I probably would once in a while, particular on boards where re-rolling happens often - I don't know. However, I meet people regularly that ask to roll LHS, and they would for sure feel this rule was an improvement over the current DBgF rule. For my sake it would be as well, since I always say yes, and with the alternative rule I don't have to worry if I allowed or not, and when my opponent starts rolling back on the RHS etc.
You're correct that the US rule (strict RHS rolling) gets rid of the same issues.
Then we're left with the lefties. (The one with the disabled people I just threw in for the sake of it, because of that post in the other thread). Maybe most lefties in the game today are so used to strict RHS rolling so they don't mind it. That's not the same as they wouldn't prefer free choice if they got it. Especially for new lefties entering the game. When ever I see newcomers, hobby-players or family games, I often see people rolling LHS. That probably means that in those situations, they prefer rolling there - because of some reason it's easier for them - whether that being checkers, lefties, whatever.
And for a lefty to roll RHS/LHS, the difference probably has to do with boardsize, seating positino relative to the board, bar height, etc.
I guess we could conduct an experiment, play a couple of games where you roll strictly LHS - that would be similar to a lefty rolling strictly RHS. I haven't done this experiment myself BTW, maybe I should.
>>I particularly like that the dice on my side mean it's my turn and the dice on the other side mean it's the other players turn. What if, as a TD, there's a dispute in a match with no spectators or biased spectators. You're called over and Player A said it was his roll on the board whereas Player B said he had rolled the dice. Coin flip time?
You can only be talking about clocked matches, since in non-clocked matches each player has his own pair of dice. And in clocked matches (like I have mentioned before) it's the clock determining who's turn it is, not the dice.
So you're left with only one scenario where such a dispute could happen: In a clocked match, player A rolls and hits the clock. Player B don't pick up the dice but starts moving (Player A's roll). I honestly cannot imagine that going on in a clocked match. I think it's too imaginative.
------
Anyway, as I wrote to Chuck - in the DBgF, we're really openminded to discuss these rule changes, we're always looking out for the trends in other federations, and we do like to discuss these things thoroughly before deciding on a change or deciding to keep the current rule. In our discussion forums, we have a designated thread - open for all - to discuss rules, changes/suggestions, and tournament formats.
I'm not convinced yet, if the current DBgF rule, the current US rule or the new suggestion discussed here is to be preferred.
Let me emphasize, that we don't go around and change the rules all the time, if a change is not making a real difference, it's put on hold until a major change triggers a rule revision. We're only on the 3rd major set of rules for the 25 year history of the federation.
>> ...as I always say, learn to roll, it's not that hard.
It would probably not be that hard either, to learn picking up the dice on the other side of the bar once in a while? :-)
| |
BGonline.org Forums is maintained by Stick with WebBBS 5.12.