Is there a stop to Internet Backgammon cheaters?

Unfortunately I think it is you who fails the entry requirements for the group 'those with a brain'.   No one is cheating at backgammon and to think they are shows a lack of maturity and a poor understanding of both the game of backgammon and the nature of microprocessors.

 

 

The device that generates the numbers for the die is unsophisticated and very reliable.  The device that interprets the data (your brain) is very unreliable and tends to operate with a mixture of logic, intuition, emotion and degrees of chemical imbalance.

 

 

If you think losing to someone who rolls incredible numbers is frustrating just wait until you understand the game really well and try being beaten by someone that thinks it is possible to cheat!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Really????? A lack of maturity?  Is that what I have?   Following your logic that must be the case, as I do believe that there is a tool out there that allows players to manipulate the dice in Microsoft's Internet Backgammon.   I have always been a particularly good player.  My strategies are sound, and have proven to be successful over the course of my backgammon experience going back to 1979.   During play it is obvious to me when a player is cheating.  Don't get me wrong I don't believe everyone is cheating and I'm sure there have been occasions when I have suspected a completely inocent player. 

  I believe there are two types of cheaters those who cheat all the time and those who only cheat when they really need to...  Let me explain why I believe this to be the case.   During play when I put someone in a position where it becomes obvious that they are not going to win  if a player who has taken his turns in a timely fashion all game long, (who I have not suspected of cheating during that time) suddenly takes a long time to roll but when he does, rolls exactly the perfect roll to start down the path to recovery, and then continues to roll the perfect roll each subsequent turn until he is victorious i call "RAT"  If this had only happened to me once or twice I wouldn't think much about it; however,  it happens far too often for me to consider it happenstance. It has gotten to the point that by the second game with some players that I can predict what the opponents dice are going to be before I even see them.  I remember once predicting a 3 5 roll only to be surprised that it was a 2 4 I remember thinking "man, I guess I was wrong" but then I started watching his stones bouncing back and forth as he tried to figure out what went wrong. (he miss counted- also during the whole game leading up to this indecent he hadn't taken back any moves.

My question is:  Where does the code run for die rolls?  I am willing to bet the die roll happens on the computer of the person who is moving.  That is to say that you roll your own dice.  If that is the case how hard is it to isolate the memory addresses that hold the values for the die rolls?   Not hard at all. So writing some code that will manipulate that block of memory could be done fairly easily.  I can think of several methods to accomplish this....

 

But I don't think cheating is the biggest problem with this game.....  Quitters are the biggest problem.   I would say 2 in 3 to 4 in 5 players quit when they realize they are not going to win.....  I wish Microsoft would give us the ability to filter players who's stats indicate a propensity to quit or a significant history of being nudged.

 

 Quitters are the biggest problem!! why would you winning is so much better if you have suffered a few losses :)

Of course they cheat.  I found the program years ago, and I played with it to see if it worked; it did.  The dice rolls are generated on your system and then reported to the game over the web.  What you do is open the program, and it displays the codes.  You look for 1-6 and the associated code system.  You then change them, and send it to the game.  There is also an all doubles function. 

There are 2 ways to know if someone is running the software.  The first is very easy.  When the other player takes forever to roll the dice and makes the perfect roll, then it is because he is plugging-in his dice roll on the cheat program.  The other way is when the other player gets doubles almost every time.

If you encounter either of these situation, then just leave.

It is possible you're  all are seeing a pattern in chaos. 

(refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory ) 

This is the basis of the same mathimatical method used to generate a virtual landscape with seemly endless terrain variation.

Regarding you comments on tampering with the outcome, it certainly wouldn't be out of the question.  After all, the numbers are generated from a timer based on the CPU's clock cycle.     From the speed of the system response it does look like it is using the individual client PC's clock to do this, thus making it entirely possible.

More to the point,  I pitty the people that would even bother to program the hack and endlessly 

use it.    They don't have anything more constructive to do than to ruin what can be a plesant game?

I also agree there are alot of just plain poor sports out there.  One shouldn't quit just because your losing.  Stay with it or resign.  Accept a resignation when given.  And if you win because you had a streak of lucky rolls be a good sport and say so.  Your not playing for money so who care's about stats.    I've had just as much fun losing as winning.   Remember, It's just a game.

If a player moves 6 checkers with a doublet, this indicates a bug in the program.

There was a time about 10 years ago when a clever programmer found a way to manipulate the dice on the MSN Gaming Zone.  I don't know if this was patched or not, but this was before the MSN Gaming Zone was completely redesigned.

There are bugs here and there.  Snowie, a backgammon program developed by some of the world's top experts, has a bug where sometimes the first roll will be doublets, which of course is not permitted in backgammon.

However, if your issue is that your opponent seems otheworldly lucky, it is 99.999% likely that you are just misperceiving the actual luck.  Four doublets in a roll will happen 1 time in 1296, but if you play hundreds of games a week, this will almost surely happen once or twice a week.  Moreover, it is almost certain that you will have a sequence where you THINK someone rolled four in a row, when in fact they rolled four doublets in 5 rolls, which is much more likely to occur by chance.

There have been complaints about online dice for as long as online backgammon has existed.  Interestingly, I have never heard of any complaints about either cheating or non-random dice from the true top experts in the world.  They all realize that real dice are equally cruel.