UnKle Ks Kool Blog

8 1's out of 9 dice in 1 roll

9 out of 9 would have been more amazing.

In 1980 in Lapaz, Bolivia on the 2nd floor of the WMPL mission house, I was playing 10,000 with 7 dice. I then decided to add two more dice. In one roll 8 out of 9 dice were ones.

In the game, 10,000,
3 ones in one roll = 1000 points
4 ones = 2000 points
5 ones = 4000 points
6 ones = 8000 points
7 ones = 16,000 points (but in 10,000, you can't go over 10,000)
8 ones in one roll would have been 32,000 points
9 ones would have been 64,000 points, which would have been good if we were playing 100,000

With 2 dice the odds are 1 in 36
With 3 dice the odds are 1 in 216
With 4 dice the odds are 1 in 1296
With 5 dice the odds are 1 in 7776
With 6 dice the odds are 1 in 46,656
With 7 dice the odds are 1 in 279,936
With 8 dice the odds are 1 in 1,679,616
With 9 dice the odds are 1 in 10,077,696

8 ones out of 9 would be 1 in 839,808 (8 dice odds divided by 2 for the 9th die)

This means that on average, you would have to roll the dice 839,808 times to get 8 ones out of 9 dice. That is a lot of rolls.

At 5 seconds a roll that would be

4,199,040 seconds or
69,984 minutes or
1166 hours or
146 days (at 8 hours per day--no lunch breaks or bathroom breaks) or
6 months (if you take Sundays off)

posted by UnKle K @ 12/07/2005 12:17:00 PM