Backgammon: Dice Distribution (Lesson 33)

In this lesson, I offer a simple introduction on how to use the "dice distribution" on XG to recognise the value in future rolls and decisions over the board. A very useful feature which can have a huge impact on you gaining insight into the right and wrong checker plays and why.
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*There are further features on 'dice distribution' such as identifying equity gain and loss after the cube has been turned, which you may want to look into after, to see how cube placement can have an effect on checker play.

[@tylerhay6560]

You’ve single-handedly rekindled my fascination with this amazing game! Subscribed and many thanks! Keep them coming!

[@BackgammonisBeautiful]

Many thanks Tyler

[@GrumblinDice]

Terrific in-depth explanation- really helped- thank you 🎲👍🎲

[@BackgammonisBeautiful]

Thanks for watching :)

[@travisroberts4498]

Nice video friend..... I like it

[@BackgammonisBeautiful]

Thanks, Travis. You're on the list to get on the channel :)

[@JogvanJespersenPGA]

Great content. Have you made any videos when you talk about the volatility of a position? Under Analysis and 'Dice distribution' at the bottom you can see the value displayed.

[@BackgammonisBeautiful]

Thanks. Not specifically on volatility, but I have a whole playlist of cubing videos :)

[@JogvanJespersenPGA]

@@BackgammonisBeautiful Thanks for your answer. I had a short session with top player who said he had spent a lot of time looking at volatility on cube decisions. As I remember he did it to figure out the risk of shipping the cube.

[@paulmckenna3688]

Thanks, Dan, for another great video. Can you say something about DICE DISTRIBUTION > GRAPH and the options ‘1st roll’, ‘1st & 2nd roll’, ‘2nd roll’ please? I’m sure that there’s a wealth of info contained there which I’m not fully grasping. The implications from the resulting graphs are not particularly intuitive to me.
Thanks.

[@BackgammonisBeautiful]

Hi Paul. The first roll/second roll differentiates between your opponent's next roll and your next roll. "1st and 2nd" is a mix of the above and not particularly helpful I've found. The graph is something I do not use as much as the other features explained in the video but it basically displays the range of equity loss and gain across rolls. Good luck investigating further.

[@paulmckenna3688]

@@BackgammonisBeautiful thanks. I’ll keep looking and see if any greater illumination emerges 😃 💡

[@jeffreyroberts4156]

I've often wondered how to use this feature under the 'Analyze' pull-down menu. Thanks for clarifying. Would you know if there is anywhere in XG2 that shows the dice distribution of an entire match? What I mean is, for example, if within a 7pt match there contained a total number of rolls for me and my opponent 165 and 180 respectively; as well as total rolls containing doubles of 22 and 40, respectively. The metrics for the # of doubles and the percentage ratios are found on the 'Dice' tab for the match summary. Since the average double ratio to the total rolls should be 6/36 or 16.7%, in this example I was short and my opponent long for average doubles. Is there a way to see how many specific doubles were thrown more than the other doubles? Let's say for those 40 doubles my opponent threw, how many 55's came up compared to the other five doubles?

[@BackgammonisBeautiful]

If you have created a profile, you can look under "Dice" at the ratio of doubles rolled across one or many matches. I'm not sure you can do this on specific rolls, unless you do this manually.

[@jeffreyroberts4156]

@@BackgammonisBeautiful ok...thanks

[@BackgammonisBeautiful]

@@jeffreyroberts4156 On further investigation, you can go to Profile/Dice/Details, then change at bottom to show "Occurrences" instead of percentages. You can then display your dice/opponent's dice/total dice which should reveal then how many of a specific roll you have rolled. If you only want to look at say 10 matches, you'll need to create a profile with those matches in. You can also export the data under 'Dice" to get further details. Hope this helps!

[@jeffreyroberts4156]

@@BackgammonisBeautiful That's awesome! Thanks for researching this, sir! It's been suggested for years now but have you heard anything about the possibility of an XG3?

[@jeffreyroberts4156]

@@BackgammonisBeautiful Sorry to keep bugging you but you mentioned above that I could export the data under 'Dice'. How do I go about that? Txs.