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BGonline.org Forums
This rookie tournament director's opinion (long reply)
Posted By: neilkaz In Response To: This rookie tournament director's opinion (Michael Mesich)
Date: Friday, 10 February 2017, at 7:56 p.m.
(MM) I don't believe the this rule was put in place to be some great time-saver.
(NTK) This is mostly true, however, there is some reason to alleviate some newer players' fear of clocks noting that no one really wants to cock dice a couple of times and have to re-roll when in a major time pressure panic. (Yes, in the past I've had a couple of players who were new to the ABT scene mention this fear to me.)
(MM) I believe this rule is in place to enable rollers to always feel comfortable shaking their cup and rolling their dice with vigor ensuring a good random result even when rolling into a crowded bear-off board.
(NTK) THIS..totally this! One of my pet peeves is players who don't shake well or at all and then roll softly. WTF!?!? We all are entitled to see players at least make a decent attempt to generate random rolls. I certainly am of the opinion that dice that come out of the dice cup and then can be seen to tumble about the playing surface are more likely to be random than dice that are poorly shaken (if at all) and then just plop daintily onto the board.
A few considerations:
1) Just how are you going to cheat me with the dice roll(unless you somehow switched in loads) when I can see both dice tumbling and bouncing along? Now with the new roll we all can roll vigorously and lengthwise along the board.
2) The old rule meant that often players didn't roll lengthwise or usually wouldn't when rolling into a nearly full opposing homeboard during the bearoff. So players would roll sideways across the narrow portion of their side of the board. But this can cause the dice to hop over to the other side of the board resulting in being cocked. So many players roll more softly when rolling sideways. Does this result in a less random roll? It shouldn't when players have cups large enough for dice to tumble over each other inside when shaken well, but not every has large enough cups for their dice or shakes well.
3) Are we all so naive to believe that all dice cheats have been eliminated from face to face tourney play? A major cheat move is to shake one die and conceal the other in your pinkie with the hitting number you need face up. One die plops onto the table as the hidden die comes out of the pinkie hopefully remaining face up. This is much easier to accomplish with a feeble short weak sideways roll then it is with a vigorous lengthwise long roll.
None of us deserve to worry about whether their opp may cheat occasionally (almost none do, but why worry or suspect when you're being jokered off the table roll after roll?). None of deserve to worry about whether the feeble rollers and minimal shakers are producing random dice.
So everyone please shake well and roll vigorously and don't worry anymore when using USBGF rules about dice that land flat on checkers.
Of course there's always the baffle box. .. neilkaz ..
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