Loaded Dice?

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While we all know that there are such things as loaded dice, we tend to assume that normal dice are just that - normal - and that each face has a 1 in 6 chance of landing face up.
However we were just wondering... the spots on a dice are often made with small indentations on the face, which are filled with a contrasting colour to the dice. But that indentation represents a space rather than the solid plastic the dice is made from. The 1 is always opposite the 6, and you might think that as less material is missing on the 1 side than on the side with the 6, that this might shift the centre of gravity a bit? Maybe the face with the 1 is slightly heavier? Maybe there is a slightly higher chance of getting a 6 than a 1?
We found these dice in a shop, and the label said that the spots were size compensated to try and make the dice totally fair.
More research is probably needed....

[@Eragon954]

Casino dice solve that problem with another creative solution. They fill the pips with white plastic with the same density as the main plastic. Furthermore, they are translucent as to avoid pockets of unmelted and uneven plastic in the core.

[@Marconius6]

I was about to comment this: casinos are already aware of this issue and use their own special dice to get around it.

[@JimCoder]

Yes. Also the pips are filled flush with the die face unlike those here. Casinos and manufacturers are incredibly cautious about such things.

[@pauldzim]

I believe they are also translucent so that weights cannot be concealed inside

[@niceasmd9890]

Another issue with commonly bought dice that isn't discussed here is that dice with rounded corners are tumbled to create the rounded corners - thrown in giant metal drums and rattled around until they have rounded corners. Problem with this is that the dice cease to be balanced. If you want balanced dice with rounded corners, the backgammon community has dice similar to casino dice (in so far as they are precision milled to be as close to perfectly balanced as possible)

[@trequor]

​@@topherthe11th23 The thing is that anyone who could do such a thing is probably very good at sleight of hand anyways. Capable enough to swap the casino dice for loaded dice and back again

[@jimmydesouza4375]

If you have a die and you are wondering if it is "loaded", fill up a cup with water, fill the water with salt until it reaches saturation, and then put the die in. If it is within the normal weight and size range for a playing die it will float, you can then just give it little flicks and prods, if it has no tendency to settle on any specific number, it's fair, if it does have a tendency, it's loaded.

[@jimmydesouza4375]

@@topherthe11th23 That has an advantage of working with dice that are not bouyant as well.

[@magicianwizard4294]

@@topherthe11th23 That's interesting. You wouldn't need to use all 4 orientations; just using two orientations should be enough. If the cube was balanced along only one axis (weight is radially distributed around the axis but one corner is heavier than the opposite), reorienting the cube so that said axis is now horizontal would uncover the imbalance between the two corners.

[@TealScarab]

Now I’m wondering if it’ll work with soup broth lol

[@Sihgilanu]

@@topherthe11th23 but then you have to keep whatever hairbrained contraption you've attempted to describe on hand, which is markedly more complicated than just... salt and water i suspect you're aware of that, but satire is awfully difficult to discern through text.

[@gastonbell108]

Is urine a reasonable substitute? Asking for a friend.

[@ravenfaebowie]

You know, I've never really thought about that before

[@Netbug]

Oof.

[@KingDrakoTyrell]

I don’t get it

[@TLOEric]

Honestly, same

[@IntergalacticBrowny]

I found this channel 7 years ago and come back to it every once in a while to make sure tim is doing alright, in this ever changing world its nice to see tim still showing off little oddities hes collected over his life

[@attendantgraingaming]

I can’t believe this dude is still making videos weekly, keep on the grind my guy

[@threeholepunchmike3549]

not even weekly, few times weekly

[@attendantgraingaming]

@@threeholepunchmike3549 amazing

[@phonotical]

I think he sits down a few days a month to record stuff, you can tell because he's in the same outfit, it's not like he's going to a studio every other day to do things 🤷

[@stropheon]

He's every kids' dream grandpa.

[@valhatan3907]

His channel has been around for 7 years now

[@crackerjaq9974]

Fun fact, official casino-grade dice will have accounted for the whole "1 pip vs 6 pips weight problem" by carving the pips on the lesser sides deeper, and carving the higher number pips more shallow, so that the same amount of material is taken from all sides

[@judacris]

It is common to see such "non-loaded" dice in Mahjong sets where the one has a bigger dimple than the rest of the numbers. Those dice also often have rounded corners with no pointy edges.

[@TheOwlman]

_Scarne on Dice_ said that casino dice used for playing craps have the recesses filled with a pigmented filler of the same density as the body material with the faces then polished and ground perfectly flat and square. Presumably balancing the size of the spots to equalise the removed mass is cheaper, though I do wonder if it still affects the dynamic balance.

[@ColonelSandersLite]

No, the fill would be a *lot* cheaper. Dealing with this by varying the diameters of the holes means you need to operate and maintain 6 different sets of high precision bits, with attendant jigs, placement in the jigs, tool changes, etc. And you need a complicated quality control process to ensure that no single hole is out of tolerance in any direction. Since the fill on casino style dice is the same density as the body material, it genuinely doesn't matter if one hole is slightly bigger, smaller, deeper, or rougher than it's supposed to be. So long as it's not a cosmetic issue, it's totally fine. This means they can just cast the holes right into the body of the die with no risk of weighting the die. The old school way of balancing casino die sides was to use the same bit for each side and then control the depths of the holes. That's still a lot cheaper than dealing with varied diameters. Even so, this was largely abandoned for the fill method. All this being said, I do find it somewhat amusing that casinos put as much effort as they did into ensuring they had fair dice as the games they use them in were never fair to begin with.

[@TheOwlman]

@@ColonelSandersLite Interesting, thanks.

[@PaulFisher]

​@@ColonelSandersLite the games may be unfair, but they are *precisely*, *transparently*, and *verifiably* unfair.

[@Chocomint_Queen]

There's already dice with the numbers made of the same plastic, but a different colour, so they weigh the same on all sides.

[@HelenoPaiva]

There are several methods to understand if a dice is fair or not. 1- let it float on salty water, and make sure it spins freely around. 2- use a precise caliper and a sure that all sides have the same thickness. 2- roll the dice randomly several times, the more the better. The amount of each side up should follow a uniform distribution. Run a chi squared statistical test and you can be be sure they are not biased (but if you just plot the graph, it’ll likely be quite clear after a couple hundred throws.).

[@manuelh.4147]

The dice @1:40 only have a larger 1 for the optics. All the other dots are the same. And the quality of the corners shows that these are not balanced dice

[@jimmy_kirk]

Yeah, I noticed the edges were all chipped and uneven, the paint job was horrible... they wouldn't be my first choice of dice.

[@Eat_Pie]

Always wondered this! Very happy to see Tim talk about it!

[@JohnDoe-ti2np]

Dice that are carefully engineered to be unbiased are called precision dice. That's the keyword you need to know if you want to search for and purchase them.

[@andriana5311]

This is a really good comment

[@bdeamon1]

When I was younger, I had a board game that came with a larger "one" divet. Whenever my family would play board games that required dice, my dad insisted we use that set and referred to it as "the good dice"

[@RuleofCarnage]

Interestingly over multiple trials of non-casino dice, they tend to come up 1 more often than 6, which is counter what you'd expect if the weight of removed pips was a significant factor. This is due to the fact that the drag factor from the friction of the extra pips dragging as they skid across the table easily outweighs the difference from the weight difference of the pips. As such, dice which enlarge the one pip to combat the removed weight are actually less likely to be fair rather than more.

[@benjaminoechsli1941]

I've seen dice with a larger "one" pip before, never thought about _why_ that was! Brilliant! 🎲

[@existereOracle]

if I recall, henry segerman made somthing similar using hexagonal tiles. I believe he called them "optidice"

[@gmanplaysgames256]

Never really thought about that, I suppose the difference in the distribution of mass WOULD have a slight effect on the outcome, but I think at how small of a scale that typical dice are made, the effect is so minute that it doesn't matter all that much, unless maybe you're rolling a lot of dice?

[@antonliakhovitch8306]

In casinos, "the long run" is the only thing that matters. In a lot of games, the casino has an edge of only a few percent. So, if a player can cheat in a way that makes them win maybe 5% more often, they'll start winning money instead of losing money (on average)

[@Enigma758]

Fill the depressions with clear resin.

[@DoctaM364]

Crazy how i just thought about this very idea 2 days ago and now it's in my recommended

[@HolloMatlala1]

1:20 flip I never thought the 1 and 6 where uneven

[@JamesBaxterAHorse]

Really liked this one

[@SaiyanInTraining]

Wouldnt the ultimate solution be to just paint the pips instead of carving them out.

[@grandillusions]

Maybe the paint would wear off over time...

[@Juanjishop]

Can’t they make the holes less or more deep depending on the amount of holes?

[@Zzues]

Love your videos!

[@mrnuke999]

For some reason I always thought that since the opposite sides of a die always add up to seven pips that it would balance it self out.

[@darrelldog5]

All these years. Never even thought of that... Wow!...

[@ShiftySkunk]

Or instead of etching the dots, they could just print them on with ink / dye.

[@BackForwardPunch]

The ink would have some minimal amount of weight as well. I think filling it back would be the ideal solution

[@antonliakhovitch8306]

​@@BackForwardPunchAnd that's what casino dice do!

[@ColonelSandersLite]

There's a major problems with that approach though - The paint gets worn off surprisingly quickly. It's a widely known issue in nerdier circles. Dice without some form of etched/carved/impressed markings have all the durability of wet tissue paper.

[@pingo6able]

I actually bought a set of aluminium dice that were machined to avoid this! the one hole goes the deepest, and the rest going up in order have decreasingly shallower holes.

[@FrankBenlin]

Thank you.

[@TehConqueror]

i think if the white dome bits of the red die are more dense then it should be fine

[@okancanarslan3730]

good idea

[@Suerte-fl2rk]

petition for grandad of KZbin please. i love this guy!

[@scottrastyles2592]

Intetesting way to look at it

[@HolloMatlala1]

1:20 so the 1 is the Original one that determines the others

[@Akira-jd2zr]

or just don't remove ANY material and draw/write the number on each side

[@danforbes3573]

Never really thought that nomal dice could be loade just by shaving a bit off one side.

[@roberttorres4893]

Veru interesting, all dice at least prior were loaded.

[@ryorai5804]

or just have a smooth dice and paint the sides different colors rather than numbers.

[@getmetoine]

Or simply print the number on the die without taking any material

[@PuffyOne1898]

You gave me LOADED DICE???

[@williamrobinson7435]

Lordy-Lord! I'd never thought of this. Now I'm wondering if the variable scalloping of the number indents has an aerodynamic effect on the way the dice fall, but I'm fully aware of how one could well disappear up ones own Christmas tree with these things.. Nice one Tim! 🎄⭐👍

[@phonotical]

Tim collects folk toys right? Does he have a jart? 🤭

[@phonotical]

Or they could make no dents when painting and then the problem is down to the micron level

[@ColonelSandersLite]

There's a major problems with that approach though - The paint gets worn off surprisingly quickly. It's a widely known issue in nerdier circles. Dice without some form of etched/carved/impressed markings have all the durability of wet tissue paper.

[@phonotical]

@@ColonelSandersLite not if it were ceramic.

[@ColonelSandersLite]

@@phonotical Pretty sure it wouldn't really help. That being said, I'm too tired to go into the details of *why* that is right now. If you did it a certain way, you would be dramatically increasing expense for a marginal gain. If you did it another way you would be marginally increasing expense for no real benefit.

[@phonotical]

@@ColonelSandersLite how about you put some effort in to your answer if you're just going to come here, disagree with the first comment you see and the espouse total bs

[@keyaro123]

gamers have these aluminum dice that are perfectly balanced, the sides with less pips have deeper holes so each side is perfectly weighted

[@redbuck1385]

Gamers 😎

[@Loner_Ken]

Don't take Tim out gambling...

[@porbagkilla]

Those dice look like they're made out of teeth

[@remc0s]

Mark Dice

[@vonBelfry]

Doesn't each set of sides on a dice always have a total of 7 pips opposite each other, balancing the dice automatically?

[@GreyMaria]

Hahahahahaha no.

[@ddobrien1]

There's more white filler in the ONE side to even it out.

[@itsmejamesss]

early gang. I love you so much and I appreciate all your cool and unique gizmos, you’re a treasure to humanity and I wish you only the best

[@asrieldreemurr8059]

Loaded dice, one way to cheat many games

[@JMPT]

Grandy Nice 🎲

[@bweshangout]

finger

[@R.Daneel]

Opposite sides of a die always sum to 7 also to aid in balance.

[@GreyMaria]

You didn't understand a single thing that was told to you, did you?

[@R.Daneel]

I realize the word 'also' is two syllables, but follow it along with your finger and sound it out like a big boy. You'll figure it out.

[@AV524]

A curious thought, though it would be loaded against the roller’s favor in most games to be more likely to roll a 1 than a 6 if the 6-side is heavier.

[@LunaC...]

The 6 side is lighter because of the extra material removed from the pips. You'd be more likely to roll a six

[@daddyleon]

For non-native speakers this near-mumbling is sometimes kinda hard to follow.

[@nr-zr5cl]

he's 10,000 decades old give him a break

[@daddyleon]

@@nr-zr5cl Oh you think I'm...complaining or blaming him? I'm not.

[@nr-zr5cl]

@@daddyleon LOOK HERE! LOOK! LISTEN! appearing offline does not stop it! stop giving advice on things you know nothing about!

[@daddyleon]

@@nr-zr5cl Sorry? Did you mean to write it eslewhere?

[@nr-zr5cl]

@@daddyleon mods ban anyone who KNOWS what i said

[@UmaROMC]

Crazy idea, don't take away material but just write it on top for pete's sake ;)

[@Gameboygenius]

That would rub off with time.

[@UmaROMC]

True, but then you can rotate the numbers like the tires on your car, and even out any effects from it being weighted too! At least on at the scale of an astronomical amount of dice-rolls ;)@@Gameboygenius

[@Gameboygenius]

@@UmaROMC I'm more concerned with not seeing the numbers any more. :)

[@kirbymarchbarcena]

The die has cast

[@Art_40096]

2nd

[@attendantgraingaming]

E😊