CHEATING or skewed Game Engine? Need a Statistician!

get 100 quarters. Paint a red dot on half of them. Put them all in a bag. Pull them out one by one and record the results.
When you pull out that 12th like quarter in a row, tell me it can't happen. This is an exercise developed by professional sports betters to demonstrate how foolish and dangerous the "doubling up" after a loss method really is!

As I've stated before, I don't have exceptional math skills, Just solid basic math. My experience comes from dealing craps in Las Vegas for over a year. Believe me , I saw it all. Sequences that you would swear are not possible until you see it for yourself. It becomes quite comical when witnessed from the other side of the table.

That's actually a good point having witnessed extremely unlikely sequences over a year!

Well, I'll be damned. Garcia just put up a pink banner (on a Sunday!!) about getting rid of the bunt for a base hit option on Maximum rules. Talk about synchronicity!

For the non-cognoscenti among us, and perhaps those with less than desirable IQ's, here are the maximum rules to which I referred in my previous post and which SOM has just tweaked today for ATG.

Maximum Rules
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Maximum Rules are special rules found only in the computer game (Online and CD-ROM) which enhance the realism of Strat-O-Matic's simulation of baseball by addressing certain limitations that are inherent in a card-and-dice game. They do this by slightly altering the results normally obtained from the cards to improve things like out distribution, opportunities to take extra bases, and upholding extreme performances like Dennis Eckersley's giving up only 4 walks in 73.1 IP in 1990.

This does come at the cost of a small amount of game engine visibility, but the result, again, is a more realistic baseball simulation.
From the CD-ROM game help section Edit

The following is re-printed from the CD-ROM game's help section, edited for relevancy.

One of the beautiful things about the Strat-O-Matic computer game is that you as a gamer have the ability to view the game engine. This is because the computer game is the same game as the board game. Unlike other computer games, you get to see not only the final results of a play, but also how those results were derived.

That being said, we at Strat-O-Matic have not held back the progress of our computer games because of their board game heritage. In order to allow the computer baseball game to move ahead while at the same time supporting a strict port of the board game we developed the "Maximum Rules" as optional extensions to the game.

For the long time Strat-O-Matic board game player the tradeoff is getting an improved game at the cost of a slight loss of game engine visibility.

So, just how is the game engine altered? Well, this depends upon the mix of Maximum Rules that are in play, but the game engine changes fall into one or more of the following categories:

DICE ADJUSTMENTS - Random numbers are used with a series of complex calculations to determine whether or not to override certain play results. If this determination is made another dice roll is made internally and the final play result is displayed on the screen. The on screen dice do not animate until the final play result has been determined.

SPLIT ADJUSTMENTS - Random numbers are used, again with a variety of calculations, to determine whether or not split card readings are to be overriden. The split result is not animated until a final determination is made of the play.

CARD ADJUSTMENTS - Certain portions of card results are overriden. For example, say you turn on the "More baserunning decisions" Maximum Rule. If you get a Single* result the "*" (which means that all baserunners advance just one base) is ignored and a more complex and realistic baserunning system is used.

COMPUTER ONLY RULES - Certain rules only appear in the computer version of the game -- no board game counterpart exists.

SOME EXAMPLES - While it is not possible to describe all adjustments in detail we will provide a couple of simple examples so that you may understand more clearly.

Say that the "Home field advantage" Maximum Rule is turned on. This rule, in general, creates a statistical advantage of approximately 10 points (.010) on the batting average for the home team. This is the traditional major league difference between batting averages at home and on the road. In this case certain play results that would have been outs turn into hits and vice-a-versa. These changes occur "behind the scenes" as random numbers are rolled and compared to statistical probabilities, only "kicking in" in a relatively few instances.

As another example, if you turn on the "Bunt for a basehit" Maximum Rule you are adding a rule where you cannot see what generates the result. We studied real-life baseball to determine how often bunts for basehits are successful (given a number of variables) and we programmed that information into the computer game.

OTHER INFORMATION - Note that all adjustments are made strictly with random numbers and are equally applied to all players in all situations. There is a great deal of computer code dedicated to insure that the desired effects are obtained, and to statistically balance the changes that have been made. While it takes extensive code to implement these rules, only about 5% of plays will be affected even if all Maximum Rules have been turned on.
Maximum Rules in use Edit

The following screenshot indicates what Max Rules are in play by default in all leagues. To access this dialog box in the CD-ROM game, click on the Max Rules button at the bottom of the dialog box shown above. (This image is taken from v13.0 of the CD-ROM game)

Max rules cdromv13


Bunt for base hit
Improve out distribution
Improve baserunning realism
Home field advantage
More baserunning decisions
Realistic throwing errors
Allow extra pre-1920 errors
Pitch-Around option
Correct Board Game Excesses

Excellent stuff. Thanks for posting Druid!

I like how math is now called a conspiracy theory and not understanding how dice work. Once you have at least 200 items to study statistics are very valid. If you see a pattern develop that has a 1 in 700 chance of occurring and people try to tell you that happens all the time, the answer is simple. No it happens once in 700 times, you file that away and if you are consistently seeing items happen that fall against you that should occur 1 in 700 times either you are the unluckiest person on earth or the rolls are not normalized.

Let's take a simple example how many times should your opponents eighth inning begin with a roll on the hitter's card and then continue the streak on the hitter's card. These are usually very negative because this frequently will come against your very best late inning pitcher who is most favorable. If you see 8 straight rolls on the hitters card that should happen about once every other season. To get 14 straight rolls against you in the eighth inning you will see once in about 700 seasons. In other words the average stratomatic player should never see it, maybe one person one time might have something so unfortunate. That is the odds of what occurred happened, it is simple math about the likelihood and some of our more fortunate players knowing the programmer and how the code is working is not comforting nor does it change basic math.

2.00 1.00 81.00
4.00 2.00 40.50
8.00 3.00 20.25
16.00 4.00 10.13
32.00 5.00 5.06
64.00 6.00 2.53
128.00 7.00 1.27
256.00 8.00 0.63
512.00 9.00 0.32
1,024.00 10.00 0.16
2,048.00 11.00 0.08
4,096.00 12.00 0.04
8,192.00 13.00 0.02
16,384.00 14.00 0.01

Thank you, Charlie. Can you share the equation you used back on pg 1 of this discussion to determine that my scenario only had 1 chance in 625 of occurring (simplifying your stated 1.6 in 1000)? Thanks.

get 100 quarters. Paint a red dot on half of them. Put them all in a bag. Pull them out one by one and record the results.
When you pull out that 12th like quarter in a row, tell me it can't happen. This is an exercise developed by professional sports betters to demonstrate how foolish and dangerous the "doubling up" after a loss method really is!

As I've stated before, I don't have exceptional math skills, Just solid basic math. My experience comes from dealing craps in Las Vegas for over a year. Believe me , I saw it all. Sequences that you would swear are not possible until you see it for yourself. It becomes quite comical when witnessed from the other side of the table.

Steve,
Thank you for your several comments. But what if we find out that some of these "1 chance in 625" situations are happening significantly more often than that?

Additional factors can also include your roster construction and settings. I've seen teams with bad starting pitchers and only 3 relief pitchers (who are all R1). Then they complain about bad rolls and bad performance when those relief pitchers are pitching 100s of innings at F0 -- well a lot of your rolls are getting pushed to the opposing batters cards.

get 100 quarters. Paint a red dot on half of them. Put them all in a bag. Pull them out one by one and record the results.
When you pull out that 12th like quarter in a row, tell me it can't happen. This is an exercise developed by professional sports betters to demonstrate how foolish and dangerous the "doubling up" after a loss method really is!

As I've stated before, I don't have exceptional math skills, Just solid basic math. My experience comes from dealing craps in Las Vegas for over a year. Believe me , I saw it all. Sequences that you would swear are not possible until you see it for yourself. It becomes quite comical when witnessed from the other side of the table.

Steve,
Thank you for your several comments. But what if we find out that some of these "1 chance in 625" situations are happening significantly more often than that?

I really think a lot of it has to do with the fact that human beings tend to have selective memory, and most people focus on the injustices rather than the justices.

get 100 quarters. Paint a red dot on half of them. Put them all in a bag. Pull them out one by one and record the results.
When you pull out that 12th like quarter in a row, tell me it can't happen. This is an exercise developed by professional sports betters to demonstrate how foolish and dangerous the "doubling up" after a loss method really is!

As I've stated before, I don't have exceptional math skills, Just solid basic math. My experience comes from dealing craps in Las Vegas for over a year. Believe me , I saw it all. Sequences that you would swear are not possible until you see it for yourself. It becomes quite comical when witnessed from the other side of the table.

Well it should happen once every forty bags. If it happens every bag either you have too many dots, you are feeling the ink or someone is peeking. If you worked craps in Las Vegas you know that noone in management believes, Oh he just got lucky over and over again. If you ran a craps table that lost money 12 nights in a row, you would’t be working the 13th

I like how math is now called a conspiracy theory and not understanding how dice work. Once you have at least 200 items to study statistics are very valid. If you see a pattern develop that has a 1 in 700 chance of occurring and people try to tell you that happens all the time, the answer is simple. No it happens once in 700 times, you file that away and if you are consistently seeing items happen that fall against you that should occur 1 in 700 times either you are the unluckiest person on earth or the rolls are not normalized.

Let's take a simple example how many times should your opponents eighth inning begin with a roll on the hitter's card and then continue the streak on the hitter's card. These are usually very negative because this frequently will come against your very best late inning pitcher who is most favorable. If you see 8 straight rolls on the hitters card that should happen about once every other season. To get 14 straight rolls against you in the eighth inning you will see once in about 700 seasons. In other words the average stratomatic player should never see it, maybe one person one time might have something so unfortunate. That is the odds of what occurred happened, it is simple math about the likelihood and some of our more fortunate players knowing the programmer and how the code is working is not comforting nor does it change basic math.

2.00 1.00 81.00
4.00 2.00 40.50
8.00 3.00 20.25
16.00 4.00 10.13
32.00 5.00 5.06
64.00 6.00 2.53
128.00 7.00 1.27
256.00 8.00 0.63
512.00 9.00 0.32
1,024.00 10.00 0.16
2,048.00 11.00 0.08
4,096.00 12.00 0.04
8,192.00 13.00 0.02
16,384.00 14.00 0.01

Thank you, Charlie. Can you share the equation you used back on pg 1 of this discussion to determine that my scenario only had 1 chance in 625 of occurring (simplifying your stated 1.6 in 1000)? Thanks.

https://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx