What is the secret being constantly succesful in tournaments

[Smeborg]

There is a strong psychological element in BB, as in chess. You need to play in an authoritative manner that maintains pressure on the opponent at all times. If you give up (mentally), or fail to press him, he will notice, and take advantage.

Having played you in person, can I ask if your hang ups about dice being 'true' part of this? Also, you have a tendency not to announce squares you are counting for player movement or the ST+assist calculations for blocks prior to rolling, which I found unusual and a bit disconcerting. It certainly made me concentrate harder on your turns!

I like to share dice, I prefer GW/NAF block dice and I prefer to use D6s that I know to be true, such as the professional backgammon dice that I carry. This is because I have personally tested some Australian tournament give-away dice (the sort that many Aussie coaches use) and found them to be obviously biased (I am not accusing the coaches using them of knowing they are biased). For example, 100 rolls of a pair of dice commonly used in Aussie tournaments produced 23 sixes and 11 ones (rolls of 2,3,4,5, were all in the range of 15-17). The Aussie tourney coach habit of spilling 80-100 dice onto the board and then picking which ones to use before each roll is something I find very disconcerting indeed. I guess the habit was started by Babs and spread from the early days of CanCon, but I am just guessing. My knowing that some of these 80-100 dice will surely be less than true does not help my feelings! I have also had a bad experience in a tourney in NZ where my opponent appeared to be using dice (D6) that were actually crooked (I mean they looked well out of shape!). He refused to use my dice, and with the greatest reluctance allowed me to share his D6 dice (although most turns he tried to prevent me doing this by hiding them in his hands!). Not a good feeling, spoilt the tournament for me. I try to solve the issue by being up-front about it before the game starts. Some tournaments (e.g. the Chaos Cup, one of the Majors) specify in their rules that coaches are to share dice for the game.

When I move a player I have often (usually) counted the squares in my head, this applies especially to simple no-risk moves. My apologies for the disconcertation. Similarly for blocking, usually I will simply announce how many dice I am using, my apologies if I have been omitting this step. I am always happy to be pulled up if I have got something like this wrong, of if my opponent wants me to count the squares out loud. I had a fancied opponent at the last World Cup who persistently moved players without counting, and I had many times during the game to ask him to take back the move as he was taking one more square of movement than he was entitled to. So I understand where you are coming from.

All the best, thanks for the feedback.

[Fassbinder75]

I like to share dice, I prefer GW/NAF block dice and I prefer to use D6s that I know to be true, such as the professional backgammon dice that I carry. This is because I have personally tested some Australian tournament give-away dice (the sort that many Aussie coaches use) and found them to be obviously biased (I am not accusing the coaches using them of knowing they are biased). For example, 100 rolls of a pair of dice commonly used in Aussie tournaments produced 23 sixes and 11 ones (rolls of 2,3,4,5, were all in the range of 15-17). The Aussie tourney coach habit of spilling 80-100 dice onto the board and then picking which ones to use before each roll is something I find very disconcerting indeed. I guess the habit was started by Babs and spread from the early days of CanCon, but I am just guessing. My knowing that some of these 80-100 dice will surely be less than true does not help my feelings! I have also had a bad experience in a tourney in NZ where my opponent appeared to be using dice (D6) that were actually crooked (I mean they looked well out of shape!). He refused to use my dice, and with the greatest reluctance allowed me to share his D6 dice (although most turns he tried to prevent me doing this by hiding them in his hands!). Not a good feeling, spoilt the tournament for me. I try to solve the issue by being up-front about it before the game starts. Some tournaments (e.g. the Chaos Cup, one of the Majors) specify in their rules that coaches are to share dice for the game.

When I move a player I have often (usually) counted the squares in my head, this applies especially to simple no-risk moves. My apologies for the disconcertation. Similarly for blocking, usually I will simply announce how many dice I am using, my apologies if I have been omitting this step. I am always happy to be pulled up if I have got something like this wrong, of if my opponent wants me to count the squares out loud. I had a fancied opponent at the last World Cup who persistently moved players without counting, and I had many times during the game to ask him to take back the move as he was taking one more square of movement than he was entitled to. So I understand where you are coming from.

All the best, thanks for the feedback.

I should have added that I didn't think that what you were doing wes a form of gamesmanship at the time - its only after you wrote that post that it made me wonder if that it was 'affected behaviour'. Thanks for the explanation though, and apologies if you felt that I may have cast aspersions on your play style.

With the 'crooked dice' sitatuion it is tough. No one wants to be seen as petty or so competitive that they're willing to call someone on their dice, but it puts you in an uncomfortable spot and I would have done the same. Anyone who doesn't want to share dice is an instant red flag for me.

I find it a little bit irritating when players cycle through large swathes of dice, but it is an irrational irritation because my head knows that a red NAF die is the same as a yellow or orange one -its the superstitious belief by my opponent that somehow keeping dice fresh makes them roll better when called upon that irks.

I do think you'd need a sample size larger than a 100 rolls to find out if a die isn't true if it is not obviously loaded. Maybe in the region of 1000-5000 I would think might show a preference to one or another side. Babs tried this a few years back with some tourney d6's that he thought were 'off' and I don't believe he could prove it. From what I've read on the wider web about it, the difference in weights between engraved sides is very, very slight and needs a huge sample size to show deviation, much, much bigger than 1 or even 6 Blood Bowl games. That aside, I'm happy to roll those green backgammon dice of yours

[Itchen Masack]

I havent read everything in the thread as walls of text make it impossible for me but...

The secret of winning tourneys is to do the boring things. Get your position right before doing the risky bits. This is the difference I've seen between the decent coaches and the best coaches.
Even when fully in charge of a match these coaches are careful not to give the opponent anything. I personally will never be one of the top coaches as I have a general 'it will be alright' attitude to life

Lot of coaches blame the dice, but really in an equal match up, there are likely only a very few key dice rolls that make any difference to the end result.

[lunchmoney]

I personally will never be one of the top coaches as I have a general 'it will be alright' attitude to life
.

Says the Goblin Number 1

[Smeborg]

I do think you'd need a sample size larger than a 100 rolls to find out if a die isn't true if it is not obviously loaded. Maybe in the region of 1000-5000 I would think might show a preference to one or another side.

I do not claim to be a statistician, but I am confident that 100 rolls is enough to prove bias if you get the results that I got. 100 rolls with the backgammon dice, for example, showed an even distribution. Even rolling a 100 times (well, 50 x 2 dice) and recording the results is tedious to do. I recall, however, an experiment someone tried with the old small standard GW dice using a purely mechanical shaker and a large number of rolls. IIRC it produced 29% ones!

All the best.

[Darkson]

From what I recall of the rng thread, dice need to rolled 1000s of times for it to be a "true" sample size.

[mubo]

From what I recall of the rng thread, dice need to rolled 1000s of times for it to be a "true" sample size.

It's not really to do with having a "true" sample size, it's about whether you have sufficient power to detect the effect size.
If the truth is that a 6 is 2x as likely as a 1 (as Smeborg seems to suggest here), you won't need that many samples (100s). While if it is 5% more likely you will need 10,000s.

You are however right in this case, the numbers reported above would not be considered significant, according to chi2 at least. But this is probably a bad test.
> obs <- c(11, 16,17,16,17,23)
> exp <- rep(100/6, 6)
> res <- data.frame(obs, exp)
> res$X = with(res, ((obs-exp)**2)/exp)
> 1-pchisq(sum(res$X), df=5)
[1] 0.4933735

[Arioso]

Sadly this thread went way off-topic. Though i know that dices play their role in being succesful, i initially wanted to know more about how and when to change strategy during a game. When to adapt and simply when to "go for it".

But probably this can't be generalized. Maybe there are't that many "patterns" that repeat?

I must admit though that there are some races which make winning easier (undead, elves, lizards (?), dwarfes (?) than others)

[Jimmy Fantastic]

Use Undead. Also some people just don't have it in them to "git gud". You can practice loads, watch replays of top coaches on fumbbl etc etc but some people just have different ceilings.

[Pipey]

I think preparation is nearly half the battle - coming up with a roster and skill choices to deal with the challenges of a specific field (or likely field).

That and putting all the basics together well - position, risk management, clock management.

Stepping up and down the risk-reward ladder is also key, just as Joemanji says.

An experienced coach can beat an inexperienced one with lots of low risk plays, but against another experienced coach you have to gamble at the right time to succeed; low risk all the way won't do the job. Changing gears like this as the match ebbs and flows is also important. If you're in a position of dominance, take low risks and reap the rewards; if you're struggling (either a bad matchup, or a bad match situation) then you need to go high risk at the right time.

A few thoughts. People who play like this tend to be pretty consistent in my experience.

[Elyoukey]

i don't know at which level of the learning curve you are, but i saw by teaching bb to people that checking risk and reward is not always easy. Some people just don't get the reward or the risk right.
i think it is the hardest thing to understand: what do you really gain.

last sunday i saw a rookie game, where a gutter runner took huge risks by crossing thrue a slann blitzer several 4+ (without diving tackle) dodges with the ball to go straight in the middle of the opposing pitch. This was blattant dicing (6, 6 6 3 6 etc...) but in the end it was absolutelly not the right thing to do whenever the reward for the coach seemed to be very high: getting next to the end zone. He did not realize that getting next to the endzone is not good if you are on your own. Lucky for him, the other coach was also a rookie and thus could not handle the situation correctly.

[TheDoc]

I must admit though that there are some races which make winning easier (undead, elves, lizards (?), dwarfes (?) than others)

This is true that some races are "easier" than others to play due to balance etc but that doesn't stop the best coaches being at the top of the leaderboard e.g. Joe, Purplegoo, Indie, Pippy, Geggster (Insert Team England name as appropriate) and Lycos (though Dave is a phenomenon with luck... or is he?).

From what I have noticed when playing these guys at tournaments, Fumbbl and league is that they:

(1) Have a strategy of how to play with their team and against your team - this only comes with practice (look at the game played stats for these guys, all of them are high).
(2) They do the basics exceptionally well. Make sure all the non-risk is done, then the minor risk, then the major risk. I have seen a 2D block without block been turned down as it is "too risky" in a particular situation.
(3) There is always plan B. The idea of "What happens if my turn ends here?" is normally very important. Hence they very rarely leave themselves in a bad position.
(4) If they are in a bad situation they have an idea of what is the best and quickest way of resolving it. I saw Lycos push an opposition player into the endzone scoring them a TD to give himself 2 turns to score and win the game.... which he then did. Similar to what Joe/Pippy said about Risk-Reward ladders.

In short it is about playing and then reviewing what you did well and badly then try to remove the bad. Look on the brightside you've won some NAF tourneys. It's better than most.

[txapo]

never play with ogres. That's the secret!

[Vigfus]

One point that I haven't seen mentioned is to think ahead.

I notice that good players are generally able to tell what their opponent will do next turn. In fact I find that top players are able to dictate what is going to happen in the next turn. The reason they can do so is that besides having experience like Joe says, they also have the ability to pretty accurately predict how the other coach will react.
This is especially so with the statistical players, the type that simply calculates risk and that has statistical principals such as don't make any 2D negative blocks, or don't do 4+ dodges or pickups.

This real example from the Amsterdam world cup illustrates this perfectly: a game between a dwarf and an undead player. In his turn 12 the undead player made a block which seemed very strange, involving even a chainpush. The dwarf coach really was puzzled by it and didn't understand it, until he came to turn 14, when it dawned on him that all the undead player had done was made sure that by turn 16 the blitzer on one side of the pitch would not be able to score anymore. The undead player locked down the side where the only other potential scorer was and got the victory. The key play of the game really was that one block, which seemed so strange.
He had looked and had counted squares. And the dwarf coach had cursed a lot when he found out, but admitted he had been outplayed (he was very sporting about it).

The other thing good coaches also tend to do is playing the numbers game. They know that eventually dice will even out. Give them a lot of blocking dice against your players and you'll get a whooping. Why because you'll be making a lot less blocks than they do and there is a good chance that you'll be the one suffering. Moreover, once they have an advantage, they are able to put up the pressure, giving them even more blocks and the team which is the punching bag will just crumble. This is especially the case with hitting teams, but I remember Jimmy also talking about this aspect when playing with his woodelves during a podcast on some American game podcast channel.

There are also some who use tactical patterns to attack. They know what works, and work that way. The patterns usually rely on getting a local superiority (either in quality of playes or in quantity) on a specific part of the field. Against slower teams this can be devestating, especially dwarfs.
The best games in my opinion are those where both players have that level of play and are vying to win this battle of tactical placement.
I find that many coaches do not go very deep into this aspect of the game. Top players all have this ingrained in their game.

[Arioso]

After re - reading the thread with its numerous hidden tipps i stumbled upon some points i'd really like to dig in further again

There are also some who use tactical patterns to attack. They know what works, and work that way

Anybody likes to share some of these Patterns? I Know there is the obvious Lizardman-Side Step Skink Sideline Cage or that WD 2-Turn-TD, but i am interested in more of these plays. Do you really go into a match and think: "hey i got pro elf playing against undead, its best to put the blitzer on that part of the field and one of the catchers there?". If so, then should ppl should have some "data" that they may be willing to share which works better than other things? Do you setup all the same on a kick-off depending on opponent? For example when playing khemri do you setup the tomb guardians on LoS against elves? against Chaos? Patterns like this i was initially looking for (or maybe experiences)

Give them a lot of blocking dice against your players and you'll get a whooping. Why because you'll be making a lot less blocks than they do and there is a good chance that you'll be the one suffering.

As that in general is nothing new, i am really interested if players do these things the same in all their matches (probably not). I.e. do you dodge away from a ST4 Opponent with AG3 and no Reroll if it doesnt matter to positioning? What if it fails, RR it? Is it more important to let the opponent do the block first and not risk the dodge (and hope for a turnover or a push?)

A lot of this may come by practice, i noticed that playing the same opponents again and again in your local leagues and tournaments gives a good overview about how those ppl play and they adapt to your play. Which makes you feel comfortable. Then at Eurobowl for example i played Amazons as Lizards and caught completely by surprise when my opponent used long passes from throwers to catchers in that match (and in the beginning i wonderd why he even bothers to take throwers ant catchers with them). Though i felt i was in advance that match it made me struggle very hard. On Road to NAFC on Fumbbl i played a Woodelf-Darkelf Match where my opponent as darkelf tried every turn to surf a player with his only witch, and had a defensive pattern that took me to serious problems getting the ball with the wd, as i had never seen this pattern before. This match gave more information to me than playing 200+ online games with WE or 20 Tournament Matches before with them.

So maybe playing a lot of different coaches could be a good advice.