Liar’s dice, as played in bars and nightclubs in San Francisco is for two or more patrons in which deception is an essential element.
In “single hand” games, each player is given a set of dice, all players roll once, and the bids relate to the dice each player can see…plus all the concealed dice.
Whereas in “common hand” games, there is one set of dice which is passed from player to player.
The bids relate to the dice as they are in front of the bidder after selected dice have been re-rolled.
The “Common hand” version is for two players. The first caller is determined at random. Both players then roll their dice at the same time, and examine their hands
“Hands” are called style, similar to poker, and the game may be played with poker dice.
For a given number of unknown dice n, the probability that exactly a certain quantity q of any face value are showing, P(q), is w here C(n,q) is the number of unique subsets of q dice out of the set of n unknown dice.
In other words, the number of dice with any particular face value follows the biomal distribution.
For the same n, the probability P'(q) that at least q dice are showing a given face is the sum of P(x) for all x such that q ≤ x ≤ n. P′(q)=∑x=qnC(n,x)⋅(1/6)x⋅(5/6)n−x These equations can be used to calculate and chart the probability of exactly q and at least q for any or multiple n.
For most purposes, it is sufficient to know the following facts of dice probability:
The expected quantity of any face value among a number of unknown dice is one-sixth the total unknown dice.
A bid of the expected quantity (or twice the expected value when playing with wilds), rounded down, has a greater than 5o percent chance of being correct and the highest chance of being exactly correct
We were throwing Liar’s Dice at the Occidental Cigar Club in our revitalized downtown neighborhood.
After a group encounter, I had only one remaining opponent. On his forearm was a tattoo depicting The Virgin Mother, Mary, circled by three crosses.
It looked like the image carried by one of the 49er’s most promising player.
This professional football player is a Catholic young man, recently mugged in our city’s fashion district, just a few blocks away. He survived a gunshot wound that, short of a miracle, would have been lethal.
I declared:
“If I win this roll, I’m going to donate the money to The Carmelite Monastery of Christo Rey.”
“You do what you like,” he said, “but I don’t want to know anything about it.”
“I saw your ink on the arm, man. A Crucifix. Assumed you are Christian.”
“That was in the long ago, brother. No more of that superstition.”
He threw a killer bluff, and I was given a sound beating.
What he did with the winnings remains a mystery.
As Leonard Cohen observes in “Everybody Knows”:
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows