Rest assured that the software that "rolls" the dice is designed and implemented with the utmost care, considering how important it is to the game. The values of the dice are generated using a server-based random number generator utilizing a hardware issued seed number, so they are guaranteed to be random and cannot be altered or influenced by any user actions in any way.
Here are some site statistics gathered as of June 2010:
| • Number of completed games (excluding canceled and short games): | 194,870 |
| • Average number of rolls to complete a game: | 49.74 |
| • Total number of times the dice have been rolled in those games: | 9,692,035 |
Visit the
Backgammon Dice Statistics page for the must up-to-date site statistics.
Randomness and probability can be very counter-intuitive, so it might seem like something that is supposed to be random is happening too often or not often enough when in fact it is to be expected based on statistics.
For example, statistically, the chances of rolling any doubles is 1 in 6. Accordingly, the probability to roll two doubles in a row (e.g. double 5s followed by double 3s) is 1 in 6*6 and three doubles in a row is 1 in 6*6*6. Since the average a backgammon game takes 49 rolls of the dice to complete, rolling three doubles in a row happens approximately in 1 of every 4.4 games. As you can see, it is actually quite common despite what intuition might tell you.
Moreover, the chances of rolling double 6s three times in a row is 36*36*36, which means double 6s are rolled three times in a row approximately in 1 of every 952 games. So even this is not that uncommon of an occurrence, and is far more likely than winning a lottery.
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