I'm curious, Why do some players shuffle the draft pack after taking a card and before passing it? I notice that it's normally only the more experienced drafters that do this.

Do they think that by shuffling the rare/uncommons into the middle that people are going to somehow think they're not as good since they aren't at the back?

Do they think they can "hide" the rare so it'll wheel?

To me, it only seems to make the drafting process take longer. First, I have to wait for you to shuffle the cards before you pass them, then, for some less experienced drafters, it probably takes them longer to go through the pack, making them pay more attention to each card.

It seems to me to be a underhanded tactic to give the more experienced players an edge over less experienced players. Are good players that paranoid that they might get beaten by someone with less skill unless they "hide" certain cards from them? They already have the edge in experience and skill, so why the need to accentuate it further by doing this?

Well, presumably each drafter looks at each card in the pack, so 'hiding cards' isn't much of a motivation.

I shuffle packs because I tend to move cards I'm interested in to the front of the pack as I go through it, and I don't want the next person to get the pack to be able to look at the first three cards and say, "Oh, this guy's obviously in " or whatever.

It also can help against less experienced people to make it less clear the rarity of the card you took. If you take a common P1P1 over a solid uncommon or rare, that says a lot about what you've taken (e.g., there's a decent chance you grabbed a Triplicate Spirits). Yes, the next guy can count up the cards of each rarity, but it's less likely they'll do that when all the cards are shuffled together.

I shuffle packs. I do it to pick out the bet cards, and I shuffle through those cards the way I shuffle my hand when I'm thinking of a play.

Some people do it so they can mix up the order of rares and uncommons. For example, in Theros, someone first picking a common and passing a rare is probably going into black or red or white bc of Gray Merchant and Lightning Strike and Wingsteed Rider.

More experienced players don't care about this so much, because the information's there regardless of rare/uncommon/pack order.

Sometimes in paper draft drafters glimpse the pack a person is looking through, and that person, to "hide" their picks, will shuffle the pack.

I don't think it slows a draft down at all. There's a very specific amount of time you're supposed to draft/deckbuild, and the amount of time it takes to draft based on shuffling has never resulted in either drafting going over time or deckbuilding.

I'm curious about that time factor. The only paper drafts I did, and that was long ago, there was a judge with a stopwatch who called time, and we all passed the packs at the same time. It took me a while to see that online, this is not so, but packs are passed as soon as possible.

Experienced drafters are probably just killing time before passing, after they decided on the pick. They don't want to give the next player extra time to make their pick, and they already 'made' theirs, so they shuffle to kill the time.

This reminds me of another card game I play (tarot), which is like bridge in that it helps to order cards by suit and rank in your hand. A player once told me he deduced my cards left in hand from I pulled the cards I played. Since then, I've never ordered the cards, I just keep them jumbled as they are dealt to me.

I always thought people did it because if I know the order of the cards I passed you, I can maybe see what you take if you don't shuffle first. Also, many people consciously or unconsciously sort the packs so shuffle to un sort it.

Either that or people just like to have something to do with their hands.

This makes the most sense. Maybe I'll start shuffling my pack BEFORE I make my pick.

Still, aren't "Wandering Eyes" against the rules during a draft?

Zlehtnoba,
I've never had such a rigid time frame where a judge kept time for each pick. Most drafts I do start with a 50 minute clock to do the draft and make your deck. How quickly or slowly you make your pick depends on you, but people would start complaining about you if you're sitting there with multiple packs waiting and holding up the draft.

I often move what I'm considering to the front. If I do, I will sometimes shuffle the pack just a little before passing it on. I don;t think there's really any advantage to it (Moving "under consideration" to the front and leaving it might send a stronger signal to "stay outta my color. Splash this at most" but would probably not be kosher to do deliberately), so I normally don't bother. Early picks, most people will be able to tell what commons/uncommons/rares are missing and later on nobody cares.

I've also never seen a draft nazi with a stopwatch, but then I'm usually in a more casual environment.

it also may have to do with print runs. packs are only semi-random. in older sets especially you could memorize the orders and gain insight into what was picked. shuffling makes that harder. these days they try to do better to make those hard to guess, but it may just be an ingrained habit.

or I could be completely wrong.

Shuffling ensures that you aren't sending illegal signals through pack ordering, and it doesn't hurt anything, so a lot of players do it. I personally don't rearrange cards in the pack when I draft, and I find it mildly annoying to sort through a shuffled pack, so I don't do it, but in general it is a benign thing.

Also, in most cases, it benefits you as a player to have the person sitting next to you know what you are drafting, so hiding the fact that you took a common is probably disadvantageous in general.

What do you mean by illegal signals?

This is completely untrue. You must have the nicest meta in your country. If someone knows/guesses correctly I'm in a color and they don't see a card they want in the pack, they'll hate the crap out of that pack to screw me over. This has happened to everyone I know who drafts regularly, and frequently. Hell, last paper draft I did some guy just decided to hate on green in general, always taking green cards out of packs when he didn't want a card from the pack, including wasting his early picks on Netcaster Spiders and the like, which really bolster a green deck. Worse, he still lost terribly, and had probably 7-8 playable green spells that he didn't play.

I'm not sure what illegal signals are either, unless you think picking cards out of a pack provides illegal signals?

By illegal signals I meant illegal communication, like telling the person next to you, "hey, I'm in red." Reordering the pack to send similar information would be equally illegal. For example, lets say I open Soul of Theros, Triplicate Spirits, and Cone of Flame Pack 1. I want to pick the Soul but I don't want my opponent going into white, so I put the Cone of Flame+any red cards in the front of the pack and the Triplicate Spirits and all the white cards in the back. I'm not guaranteed to get my message across but I am sure as heck trying to communicate to the person on my left, which is illegal. Likewise, if you pull the cards you interested in to the front of the pack and pass it without reordering, it is also sending an unintentional message, would could be likened to talking to yourself while you make a pick. These kinds of things are pretty lax at FNM level of enforcement but some people like to practice good competitive habits.

@Rstme: I wouldn't call my meta friendly, but I would consider it competitive (Well, at least Spikey), so hate drafting is fairly rare, and when it does occur, it isn't targeted (why would you even target a hate draft, is that Soul of Shandalar that much more scary in the person to your left's hands then the person three to your left's hands?).

I was going to post a similar thread myself, glad to see someone else had the same thinking.

I suspected deliberate sequencing would be viewed as illegal signalling... I always assumed that the difference was that shufflers were deliberately trying to conceal signals (make it less convenient for the next player to discern the rarity of the card you took means you obviously aren't concerned about them reading signals from you and you'd rather they not know what you're drafting so as to avoid that player hatedrafting your best cards in the next round), while nonshufflers were deliberately trying to keep signals clear and convenient for hope of neighbor drafters knowing enough about one anothers' colors to avoid overlapping and cutting each other. But I was never sure.

Is there documentation anywhere about what exactly constitutes illegal signalling? If I ordered my pack in collector# order before passing (thus grouping colors together and perhaps making guessing what color I took easier) would that be illegal?

In my experience, signals are not about what's missing, they are about what's left. Rarity is such an obvious thing it's hard to credit somebody wouldn't notice what rarities are missing.

Putting your color in front to signal what you took is a new one. Never occurred to me. Oh the joys of online drafting!

@Dr_D I wouldn't call my meta competitive because it's in New York, so there's a wide variety of players at different playskill levels. So a pod might have 3-4 really good players, 2 average players, and 2-3 new players... like the guy to which I was referring.

I never thought about ordering packs before too. I have in the past made a crack about how I was going to, prior to even opening my packs, passing the guy on my left a foil Plummet, and lo and behold when one was in the pack I put it right front and center for us to lol about.

At FNMs I enjoy myself and send signals with my pack orders all the time, but normally for amusement purposes, like putting Chronmanticore at the front of the pack as a dare or trying to guess what the player next to me will pick (which is actually signalling in a way, but I normally do it pack 3 when it shouldn't matter any more).

I have two card shops I play at. At the first shop, which includes more skilled players, they actively talk about their first picks and any bomb rares that they are able to wrangle. In this group people generally stay out of other peoples colors if they can avoid it.

At the second shop, which includes a couple of people who know what they are doing and several newbies, they never talk the entire draft (which I prefer, and is the proper way to do it) but about half the people will just grab semi-good **** no matter what color it's in which makes it impossible to read proper signals. I had one guy in that group after the draft, he points to a pile of about 10-13 cards and states, "Those are the cards I wanted to draft. The rest of these I'm just gonna have to find some way to work them in."