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GrifterMage
PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2015 7:52 pm 
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Winter.Wolf wrote:
If a judge catches you doing that in tourney you will at least get a game loss and maybe more severe penalties.
Not really, no-the penalty for Insufficient Shuffling (which is the penalty applied if the judge doesn't believe you're trying to cheat) is just a warning. The judge will educate the player and the deck will be shuffled more properly, but as long as it isn't repeated nothing further will happen. It's only when it's repeated or the judge believes you're trying to cheat that harsher penalties apply.

Winter.Wolf wrote:
When you see pros shuffling you may see something that LOOKS like mana weaving because they often pile shuffle first but they are not sorting their lands into separate piles. Pile shuffling IS acceptable as long as you are not doing so in such a manner as to create a discernible pattern.
What the pros are doing in these cases is counting the number of cards in the deck (to make sure they haven't forgotten a card somewhere) and ensuring that their sleeves aren't sticking together. It's more "pile counting" than "pile shuffling"--as far as judges are concerned a "pile shuffle", especially a patterned one, isn't a shuffle at all.

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Dr_Demento
PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2015 9:00 pm 
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peldone wrote:
I appreciate the reasonable nature of your remarks. I am unclear on what, about the shuffle, I described would be considered a poor shuffle. According to researchers 7 riffle shuffles are enough to mix a deck of cards thoroughly and that more than 7 does not improve the mixing. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/09/scien ... umber.html . I listed 5-10 shuffles being done by each player which would mean that if each player shuffled their deck 5 times and their opponent shuffled their deck 5 times each deck would get shuffled 10 times. If the opponent declined to shuffle after you only shuffled 5 times it could be shuffled too little. Since riffle shuffling 7 times is enough to mix the cards thoroughly it shouldn't matter if you stack all your lands on top first but I think that most people will mana weave their deck first and according to Wizards mana weaving is not illegal if it is followed by other forms of shuffling http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazi ... /20060707a .

If you are shuffling correctly, then your results should look like the MTGO shuffler, because that is the randomness that riffle shuffles are trying to approach. If the Shuffler algorithm is off, then we could have issues, but that is also a ton of data to collect from the end user side of things.

If I may make a suggestion. Instead of testing the shuffler, test the theory you posited in your original post. Have a program that shuffles the same deck* in two different ways, one via random replacement, and one via your method. Then have it display both decks to you side-by-side, unlabeled, in a random order, and see if you can determine which if which. Basically the Pepsi challenge for shufflers.

*By shuffle a deck, I imagine you would just have an array with 24 'L's and 36 'S's

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Winter.Wolf
PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2015 10:07 pm 
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GrifterMage wrote:
Winter.Wolf wrote:
If a judge catches you doing that in tourney you will at least get a game loss and maybe more severe penalties.
Not really, no-the penalty for Insufficient Shuffling (which is the penalty applied if the judge doesn't believe you're trying to cheat) is just a warning. The judge will educate the player and the deck will be shuffled more properly, but as long as it isn't repeated nothing further will happen. It's only when it's repeated or the judge believes you're trying to cheat that harsher penalties apply.

Winter.Wolf wrote:
When you see pros shuffling you may see something that LOOKS like mana weaving because they often pile shuffle first but they are not sorting their lands into separate piles. Pile shuffling IS acceptable as long as you are not doing so in such a manner as to create a discernible pattern.
What the pros are doing in these cases is counting the number of cards in the deck (to make sure they haven't forgotten a card somewhere) and ensuring that their sleeves aren't sticking together. It's more "pile counting" than "pile shuffling"--as far as judges are concerned a "pile shuffle", especially a patterned one, isn't a shuffle at all.


I do believe that deliberate mana-weaving counts as intentional cheating. At least it did when I played Tourney Magic.

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peldone
PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2015 10:38 pm 
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iamSam Wrote:

My friend refuses to shuffle, but rather cuts his deck 2 times, because 2 is closest to the golden number. When I showed him this, he said he thinks it's **** because he doesn't understand math. How should I help him?


It takes 2,500 overhand shuffles or cuts to randomize a deck so you could just require him to cut that many times. https://www.math.hmc.edu/funfacts/ffile ... .4-6.shtml


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peldone
PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2015 11:26 pm 
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Winter.Wolf Wrote:
My point re: Cheating on the WotC forums is that weaving your cards makes your shuffle non-random. Not merely insufficiently random. If a judge catches you doing that in tourney you will at least get a game loss and maybe more severe penalties. Don't mana weave. 5-10 is a big range. I would say 7-8 is a better range of shuffles. Of course sleeves make it more complicated to shuffle thoroughly without ruining your cards for trading purposes so learning how to do that well is important.

When you see pros shuffling you may see something that LOOKS like mana weaving because they often pile shuffle first but they are not sorting their lands into separate piles. Pile shuffling IS acceptable as long as you are not doing so in such a manner as to create a discernible pattern. Yes there are also cheaters on the Pro Tour and when they get caught it is a big deal and they get huge bans. But those guys are (perhaps slowly) getting weeded out and are not the norm.


According to an article on Wizards http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazi ... /20060707a Mana weaving and Pile shuffling are okay providing the deck is sufficiently randomized afterwards but neither is okay by themselves. Granted I would never take apart my deck and separate the lands and then mana weave them in which is what it sounds like you think. Even if I shuffled thoroughly afterwards it would look like I was trying to cheat. I mix my played cards together(this is where I mana weave mostly by picking up my land pile and the graveyard and side shuffling them together), side-board, pile shuffle to count my deck, and then shuffle as normal.


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peldone
PostPosted: Fri Oct 02, 2015 11:39 pm 
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Quote:
If you are shuffling correctly, then your results should look like the MTGO shuffler, because that is the randomness that riffle shuffles are trying to approach. If the Shuffler algorithm is off, then we could have issues, but that is also a ton of data to collect from the end user side of things.


While I think that 7-8 riffle shuffles are enough to randomize a deck. I don't think this is the same as making the deck random which a computer does quite easily. Proving that there is a difference will be a challenge.

Quote:
If I may make a suggestion. Instead of testing the shuffler, test the theory you posited in your original post. Have a program that shuffles the same deck* in two different ways, one via random replacement, and one via your method. Then have it display both decks to you side-by-side, unlabeled, in a random order, and see if you can determine which if which. Basically the Pepsi challenge for shufflers.

*By shuffle a deck, I imagine you would just have an array with 24 'L's and 36 'S's


I have been thinking about how to test this more efficiently and I think I have a good idea. In every properly shuffled deck you can get 60 test cases. Each sequential group of 11 cards would be a test case because the top eleven cards depend upon the final cut.


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GrifterMage
PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2015 9:25 pm 
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Winter.Wolf wrote:
I do believe that deliberate mana-weaving counts as intentional cheating. At least it did when I played Tourney Magic.
It's a bit of a gray area; while mana weaving without shuffling afterwards is indeed against the rules, it's perfectly legal to do anything you like with your deck before you shuffle--you just need to shuffle properly. And importantly, in order for a judge to classify something as cheating, they must believe the person doing it knows that what they're doing's against the rules.

Almost all people who mana weave will shuffle afterwards and believe that it's fine...which it is, as long as the shuffle was thorough enough that the mana weaving was useless. If the judge believes it wasn't, you have a situation where the rules have been broken but the player believes they've acted legally. Hence, Insufficient Shuffling.

In order for a player to be DQ'd for mana weaving, the judge must believe both that the player was not sufficiently randomizing their deck after the weave and that the player knew it was illegal and deliberately did so anyway.

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Falterfire
PostPosted: Sun Oct 04, 2015 12:32 pm 
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iamsam wrote:
My friend refuses to shuffle, but rather cuts his deck 2 times, because 2 is closest to the golden number. When I showed him this, he said he thinks it's **** because he doesn't understand math. How should I help him?

That's so obviously wrong I'm not sure how he can't see it, but this is the simplest way I can think to explain it:

Ask him if he would agree that a random shuffle could produce any sequence of cards. (If he disagrees here, I'd just give up - At that point I'm not sure he understands what the point of shuffling is at all.)

If he does agree, give him four cards numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4 stacked in that order and ask him to use his method to put them in reverse order. A real shuffle could theoretically produce that result, but there is no way for his 'shuffle' to do so, therefore it must not be a real shuffle. (If he says 'Well if I cut three times I could get there, add another card and have him do it again. Repeat until he gets the point that you can't just cut a low number of times to shuffle a stack of 60 cards)


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Cauchy
PostPosted: Mon Oct 05, 2015 7:39 am 
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peldone wrote:
In a tourament the opponent interleaves the cards another 5-10 times. This is a real world shuffle and will provide more competitive and skill intensive games than a randomized deck of cards. And because real world players shuffle instead of randomize their decks everyone is on the same playing field. Switching MTGO to a true shuffle would decrease mana screw and flood for all players making playing online more fun and less frustrating.


Maybe it would be more fun to play online if there were less mana screw or flooding. However, it will be very difficult to define exactly how a "non-random" shuffle should be executed online. There are several upsides to using a randomization of the deck (like it is implemented now); it complies with the rules and with the spirit of the rules, it is the same for all. If you start to do something else to emulate a real-world insufficient shuffle then people may shuffle more or less insufficiently. How should you stack the cards before you shuffle? How many times would you interleave? If you let it be up to the user to choose then you are introducing an element into the online game which is not part of the paper game. Online you would go for the shuffle set-up which is in your favor and that is not something you can do in paper without intentional cheating?


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