What ho my hearties,

Gray's Ghost and I have been running a test for a little while now and we thought some of you may be interested in the results.

When you play a scenario, before you start check the statistics page for that scenario, because this is what we have been doing, among other things.

First of all if your opponent is within ten places of your position then the dice rolls will average out between you and there is a fifty-fifty chance of either of you getting a PK or FTE.

However, if there is a difference of more than ten things get interesting.

Between ten and twenty-two places there is a 59% chance that the higher player will roll higher than you by one pip, or get a PK or FTE.

Above twenty-two places things get complex.

We disagreed on the number but in essence it was about 30 (+ or - 2) that percentage goes up to 71%. In other words we had different results given that I'm still new here and he's been around a little longer.

Above that and the dice roll will almost certainly be a difference of three or greater - 89% of the time (and on the first shot head to head we noticed that it was 5 points difference in 82% of the time) and if their better shooting doesn't get you then in 72% of the games where we lost, and we lost lots, then your opponent gets a PK or FTE.

This was why Gray's Ghost worked hard to get to the top of the "Baron's Last Flight" Scenario, and since then his stats for that scenario have just got better and better thanks to this knowledge.

So we thought we would share what we have discovered.

What we realised is that if you are a newby at a scenario then you are going to be cannon fodder for quite a long time unless you only play against other newbies. It makes choosing your leagues rather important as now both Gray's Ghost and my statistics have taken a thumping.

It also means that if you play in a Camel V Camel league with pokerguy, Capt-Tuttle, Pirolo1, Fullnavy or Pumba71 then you really don't have much hope of winning it and are there for the experience.

So we're off to create leagues where we have an average or better than average status so the difference between ourselves and pokerguy isn't so great.

The better you are the better the game makes you.

Have fun.

BMBug

Now before anyone sets off on a charge about statistics, we cannot change the die rolls or the frequency of PK and FTE, but this test has run since Easter and covers in excess of four hundred games. That's a lot of dice throws and a lot of anally retentive recording, because we also had to compare throws with statistics. We now are just going to play the game and enjoy ourselves with a little more knowledge on why, sometimes, we get stuffed royally.

Yeah, I know ksnake, DON'T STALL SO MUCH