RECON wrote:

In the game in which my luck score was -180.21..

In this game you rolled a total of 19,304 dice.  Losing 180 more than expected is bad luck to be sure, yielding  a -1.3 score using the LuckStat/sqrt(TotalRolls) method, but it is bound to happen.

There are other ways to interpret these statistics.  Let's look a little closer at the specifics.  You had 9749 Kills, but only 9555 Deaths, giving you a +194 kill differential.  You killed 194 more armies than would be expected given the number of total battles ..if all battles were equal.

There are a number of things that could cause this, but it's very likely that your armies were "lucky" enough to be on the offensive (where your odds of winning are higher) more than on the defensive.  For whatever reasons, your opponents didn't attack you as much as you attacked them.

Also worth noting in that game: you were "lucky" enough to be in a game where a player (who looks to have been in good position) was booted.

But the subjects of these last two paragraphs aren't really about luck, ..are they?

M57 has emphasized what I have come to the conclusion of:

Having good luck is nice and there is never too much of a nice thing like luck in a game with dice rolls BUT ultimately I believe luck is not the controlling factor when it comes to winning, it is your strategy and your opponents lack thereof.

As a matter of fact my studying of the luck statistics in just my games has pretty clearly shown that the luck statistics are good enough to prove that your individual luck is NOT the most important part of who wins each game.

RECON

RECON wrote:

As a matter of fact my studying of the luck statistics in just my games has pretty clearly shown that the luck statistics are good enough to prove that your individual luck is NOT the most important part of who wins each game.

Consider that if you are able to back out the noise and give the numbers context, LS often are more often the deciding factor in determining who wins.

For instance, I would be willing to bet that if you took a closer look at those 4 games you mentioned where the worst Lstat won, you will find that those players' LStats took a dive towards the end of the game ..when they had substantially larger bonuses than their opponents and could easily afford to lose more than their share of armies.  Certainly, their stats were not poor in the first half of the game, not unless there were other extenuating circumstances (like boots - easy to identify, and alliances - a bit trickier to spot), but as I mentioned before those things have very little to do with luck.

This is one of the reasons I have requested that on the LS page the data reflects the range chosen with the history slider at the bottom of the graph.

If you want to do a more controlled survey, look at 20 two-player games on the same board where the second player to move won, and compare those numbers to 20 two-player games where the first player to move won.

SquintGnome wrote:

Agreed, luck is not all that matters.

Another important aspect of how luck affects a game is when you get lucky. ...

Unfortunately, the amount of times you get lucky on this website may be inversely proportional to how many times you "get lucky" in RL

:)

AttilaTheHun wrote:

SquintGnome wrote:

Agreed, luck is not all that matters.

Another important aspect of how luck affects a game is when you get lucky. ...

Unfortunately, the amount of times you get lucky on this website may be inversely proportional to how many times you "get lucky" in RL

 

:)

The unfortunate truth comes to light.

I am not the kind of guy who complains against bad luck. Well... sometimes :)

But what about starting second 11 times in a row on my classical games 1 vs 1 on Antastic against FiveRocketCars ?  (Antastic being a board where the starting position is crucial when you play against an expert like 5RC).