How would his account be bugged so that Germany always comes up?

It's probably just luck, don't worry about it

I would say its just an extreme accident. He played one med game aswell and the games are a wide range of different games with different players. Just one of the things that happens sometimes, nothing to be alarmed about.

This is indeed a possible but very unlikely result of our weighted system of country selection. For each game you start, your likelihood of playing the same country in the next game decreases a little bit. So for six games in a row; yes, the odds of you playing Germany in all six is very small. However, you also need to factor into that probability the odds of six other players who may be equally "due" to play another country. While this example is unfortunate and extremely rare, its still possible and certainly not a bug.

Look at it this way - you're a statistical anomaly on our site. Also, you probably won't play Germany for another ten years.

Solution: play 50 games, preferably at once.

I haven't played Turkey in a full-press WTA game ever. I've played Austria like 5 or 6 times by now. These things happen. However, I'd be in favor of making the country-assignment algorithm stricter on repeatedly playing one country multiple times. That would necessarily make it less strict on other anomalies, like never getting to play Turkey.

On a side note, does the country assignment algorithm split games up by type, or does it treat all of them equally?

PS. Can someone rig the site to make Valis play 50 Germany's at once?

Random events tend to cluster.

@bas - I can do that.

I think that the games you are currently playing should count as far as decreasing the probability of being assigned a country for a second or third time.

Especially after you have advanced a few years into the game.

@backscratcher They do. The moment you're assigned to a country, they count.

When Valis started his 50 game series, I did take a look at country distribution out of curiosity and found that each player did have a "dominant" power - in other words, one that was selected clearly more than the others. Valis, for example, had 48 Austrias and proceeded to enter the same opening moves for each one.

Statistics question - considering the two possible country assignment systems (weighted vs. totally random), is there a difference in number of games played as each power?

@2WL: The standard deviation for the former would be much reduced.

@leon1122 translating to English: "weighted should mean that the differences in number of games played as each power should be much reduced compared to totally random"?

I'm sort of curious about a different angle on the question - would weighting actually be more likely to create longer "runs" of the same power, or shorter runs, compared to unweighted? I am insufficiently stats nerdy to be able to definitely work out the answer, so I have a feel-pinion that the answer is not straight forward to determine.

48 of 50 were Austria? If that's real, then the algorithm really is FUBAR'd.

He is kidding.