Streaks

Some of my improbable occurrences:

In 1990 I went to one of the Northern Nevada tournaments held at the Peppermill in Reno. This event was the predecessor to Howard Markowitz's Vegas tourneys, and then as now it was the biggest regular tournament in the USA. I checked in to room 512, and pointed out to my roommate that this was a fabulous omen: 512 being 2 to the 9th power, one of us was clearly destined for 9 in a row -- just enough, usually, to win the main event. The next day I went downstairs and entered the Kickoff event and some blitzes. That day I couldn't win a match. In fact, I lost exactly nine in a row.

In the 1991 Connecticut Championship, I won the tournament by winning 5 matches in a row. Not much of a streak -- except that the final score in every match was 9-2.

Finally, I can match your 8 re-rolls to start the game with something equally unlikely: a 256-cube produced by automatic doubles. This would be a little more interesting if it had been a serious game for real money, but the year was 1974 and I was playing against a younger brother and a brother-in-law for one cent per point. Even so, not wanting to strain their financial resources too greatly, I gave them the option of cancelling the automatics, which they eagerly accepted.

A nice article on a subject dear to the heart of gammoners everywhere. Observation of dice phenomena is indeed extremely subjective. One example of this, is the player who observes 3 sets of boxes in a row, then says, "There, the odds against that are 46655 to 1 against!" Well that is the odds against the next three rolls being 6-6, but as nobody counts until the first one has been thrown, the real odds are 1295 to 1, a little more likely. Observations like, "This game has been spoiled by too many doubles", are meaningless, as not only is the perception often incorrect, but also nobody notices the balancing run of 20 or 30 rolls without a double. The truth is that every sequence is unique and beautiful and equally rare, a fact sadly not appreciated by the "....and then he rolled xxx" crowd.

Here's a factoid of some interest. For good players, their winning probability is higher in later rounds than earlier, because when weak players get through to the later rounds they play much worse than normal. I noticed this phenomenon in my own tournaments, and compared notes with other players who reported the same results.