How to mitigate consistant poor rolling

[Grogmir]

The first thing that came into mind was - Sorry but your wrong with this statement.

I'm pretty well known in my league as an unlucky roller

Lady luck, we all play to her but over time she sleeps with everyone at everytime - remove her from the equation - laugh when she visits you but don't plan on her help. This is really clear to me as I'm a high level Backgammon player and the Lady is there every roll.

So I half agree with Ianw

Accept that it isn't the dice its me. Bad luck is a symptom of bad play.

That's a bit straight to the point but its true, tighten up your game and you will win more, more to the point you'll see your oppenent fail more! Then you can say he was unlcuky.

Cramy said - and he's right

One simple rule that I follow: Roll the dice as little as possible. The less often you roll the dice, the lower your chances of failure. For your opponent to roll as many dice as possible. The more dice he rolls, the higher the chances of failure for him.

He also said

This post is already full of ideas on how to achieve the above.

and I can add no more either.

Grogmir

[Jural]

A friend of mine is a very poor dice roller. Has been for years. In games like Warhammer 40k, Dungeons and Dragons, Blood Bowl, etc he consistently has rolling beneath the average.

He is a decent Blood Bowl player, however. He mitigates his risk, and doesn't roll too often.

I know it's illogical to say someone has bad luck ALWAYS... but frankly, with this guy, it seems to be true!

Personally, I have lost games because other coaches pulled out miraculous turns, and lost games because I went on a string of bad rolls. However, I would say this sort of thing only happens once every 10-20 games for me. The rest of my victories (And sadly, my losses) were basically deserved!

[Darkson]

I just don't roll any dice. I lose all the time, but at least I can laugh at lady luck.

[sann0638]

I play chess.

[Deathwing]

The trick is probably not to attempt to mitigate bad rolling too much. I had a really bad tournament year in 2006, and by the end I was really hamstringing myself in a lot of ways by being overly cautious. Stupid stuff like pulling players deep because you haven't any confidence in picking up the ball and ending up under pressure deep in your half.... not taking the chances that open up because you're scared of rolling the dice. BB is a risk/reward game, what can happen is that you get in a downward spiral after a poor run.. all logic says that previous luck shouldn't have any bearing, yet it does... it skews your perception of the risk/reward ratio. You're not going to improve your results much by expecting to fail everything and letting it affect your natural game. A bad run of luck is enough to battle against without adding poor tactical play and flawed decision making because of that bad luck.

[Tritex]

I have to agree with whats said above. When dice are against you play all safe (none dice rolls first) followed by dice in your favour (2-3 dice blocks) and only do the dodges / pass / catch / 1 dice blocks after this and hopefully with a re-roll in hand.

I would say that Humans / Amazons/ Norse have best re-roll potential or play a dwarf team that just stands in the way and forms a wall. GL

[fen]

Bad luck is a symptom of bad play.

That's a fantastic little soundbite and something we should all try to remember when things aren't going so well.

[Darkson]

Bad luck is a symptom of bad play.

When you've just failed your 6th 2+ pick-up with reroll in a row, I disagree.

[mattgslater]

That's what I'm saying about individual case vs. whole game luck.

It's ok to say:

"I lost the game 2-1. I thought I was going to force OT, but I failed a 2+ roll with a TRR. That was an unlucky play, and had it not happened that way the game could have gone either way."

It's not ok to say:

"I lost the game 2-1. I thought I was going to force OT, but I failed a 2+ roll with a TRR. That was an unlucky play, and had it not happened that way the game could have gone either way. That means I lost because I was unlucky."

Nope. You lost because you let yourself go down 1-2. Maybe there was another 1-1 roll in there, or a double-skulls that ate a TRR you needed later in the turn, or whatever, but once you broaden it all out to the scope of a single match luck doesn't usually have a lot to do with it. Every once in awhile, a game really could go either way and a single improbable event will turn it around. Consider that two teams playing to a coin-toss. That's possible. But for every time that genuinely happens there are several more times when that single improbable event is only one among several improbable events that would have led to the same outcome and were collectively not-so-improbable, or it happens both ways over the game, or whatever. Likewise, an early casualty on a key player or several early casualties on anyone can screw your game up and give you a steep hill, but more often than not that's your fault too for not protecting him/them well enough. Sorry.

So yeah, it's possible (eventually certain) that luck can make or break a play or player, and it's possible that a play or casualty can make or break your game, but if you're relying on that as an excuse you're missing the bigger picture. Blame luck for making a game closer, making the difference in a close game, or keeping you out of the picture in a game you really weren't in anyway. Don't blame it for putting you in the position for it to be one of those and not another. Likewise, you could end a season 4-8 in part because of a few bad breaks, but don't fall into the trap that says "a little luck and I'm 7-5 instead." A little better play, and you're 7-5, maybe, or 6-6, or whatever.

[fen]

Bad luck is a symptom of bad play.

When you've just failed your 6th 2+ pick-up with reroll in a row, I disagree.

That's a statistical anomoly (1 in 2,176,782,336 iirc) and if it happens you just have to shrug, grin and tell yourself "at least I'm not losing from play mistakes". You can't ever say "It happened because I'm unlucky", the moment you tell yourself you're unlucky you become unlucky. Luck is the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy.

Edit: Seriously, I can't recommend reading "The Luck Factor" by Doctor Richard Wiseman highly enough if you think you're unlucky. The science in the book is peer reviewed (i.e. solid) and it will change your outlook on luck.

[Digger Goreman]

This discussion reminds me of a delightful sign I saw in the pub booth one day:

In days of old, men and women would beat upon the ground with sticks and call upon their gods to save them... this was called witchcraft....

In modern days, men and women beat upon the ground with sicks and call upon their gods to save them... this is called golf (or, Blood Bowl )

[DoubleSkulls]

Bad luck is a symptom of bad play.

When you've just failed your 6th 2+ pick-up with reroll in a row, I disagree.

that was one snippet in a post in which I did say sometimes the dice screw you!

I think Deathwing's post is really relevant. Feeling you are unlucky and playing to minimise risk will probably result in losing more often.

[Darkson]

In modern days, men and women beat upon the ground with sicks and call upon their gods to save them...

Urgh! Which barbaric country uses their infirm in this way?



And I call one game a statistical anomoly.
I call 3 games (and a 4th where he managed to make the pick-up on the 4th turn [with the reroll!]) unlucky!

[johhnytrash]

Win or lose, the dice will play with you and frustrate you to no end. Over the course of a part of the game, they might even seem biased against you. Just accept that this is an illusion, and if you're consistently losing games the problem is probably that you don't get something that the people you're playing with do get. Try to figure out what it is.

That's where I'm at. I've had a quite a few other coaches tell me that my dice were really unlucky, but they may have been being nice. I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. (It also doesn't help I'm drawn to Chaos, Dark Elf and Halfling teams) And some aspects of my play are improving. but for example I'll have a few turns that work out, but my opponent's turn works out better and I start to try to recover after my cage is broken and that's when I start making risky plays and everything falls apart. My last game was Humans vs. Chaos Pact and I lost because of that.

But is it uncanny, my previous game I was playing Orcs and had 4 casualties against me... something was going on there that had to be the dice.

[Cramy]

I think that you just touched on part of the problem. If your opponents turns are going better than yours, and then you have to do risky plays to recover, and those plays fail, then you lost not because of bad luck, but because your opponent was able to force you to do things that you don't want to do.

As in any team sport, you want to be the team that is setting the pace, forcing your opponent to react to what you do. If you are reacting, you are losing.

Now you have to figure-out what went wrong, what forced you to have to react to what your opponent was doing.

A few thoughts to jog your thinking.

Are you patient enough? If you play a slow, fairly bashy team, don't hurry. I often see coaches move their team up the field with the ball, and on the 4th turn or so they don't move forward for one turn (i.e. their cage stalled), and then their ball carrier bolts-out by himself and tries to dash solo towards the EZ. Bad. Ball carrier gets blitzed, loses the ball, and you risk getting scored against at that point. Continue to try to move foreward slowly, forcing your opponent to roll dice. Best case, you end-up scoring. Worst case, you don't score, and it's 0-0 at the half, which is better than losing 1-0 at the half with your opponent receiving the ball. And guess what's likely to happen to your solo ball carrier once he is on the ground ...

With stunties, you need to be very aggressive. You will fall, break, die, etc... But put fear in your opponent's mind as he knows that no matter what he does, there's a dodging or flying Halfling coming at him. Again, you can get your opponent to react to this and do things that he wasn't planning to do.

Hope this helps.