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[Kirian]

I'm all but certain Dr. Diaconis has appeared on this board, at least in passing, perhaps in one of the math threads.  Here he is talking to numberphile.  Here's a nice intuitive description of the reason that 7 shuffles is enough (for 52 cards).

With sleeved cards, I tend to riffle by ramming a couple times, overhand a few times, then riffle by ramming again.  How do you shuffle your Dominion cards?

[enfynet]

The best thing about Thunderstone is the plastic coated cards like Hoyle uses. I don't have sleeves so I overhand shuffle. Anything else will destroy the corners of the cards.

[Galzria]

Out of memory of habit, I riffle 2 or 3 times, over hand 5 or 6 times, and then riffle once or twice more. Probably not "perfectly random", but even if cards stay clumped during the over-hands, they're "changing positions" in clumps for the following riffles, which should help a little bit.

Plus, when I over-hand I make a point of sometimes letting the top cards slide, sometimes dropping out the middle, or sometimes moving the bottom up. Again, still clumps, but I like to believe that combined it all adds up to enough.

[blueblimp]

Good video.

I do overhand shuffle for Dominion. Typically, the decks are small enough and the shuffling frequent enough that anything else seems like a pain. In a friendly game, the low quality of overhand shuffle is not a big deal.

[eHalcyon]

The best thing about Thunderstone is the plastic coated cards like Hoyle uses. I don't have sleeves so I overhand shuffle. Anything else will destroy the corners of the cards.

Overhand shuffling is really bad... at least combine it with a pile shuffle or something.

There's also a way to do a really good way of doing a riffle shuffle that I haven't been able to do myself, and I can't seem to find the video first I first saw it.  There's almost no bend to the cards at all and it's super fast.  The whole point of it is not to damage the cards... ugh, I wish I could find that video.

[Lekkit]

Without sleeves I do a table shuffle followed by an overhand shuffle a couple of times. End it with a cut. With sleeves I do the same if the deck is too small to shuffle by taking about half of the deck and mashing it into the other half. I have no idea what this suffle is called, but it's widely used within other card games. I cut the deck in three places every once in a while to get the bottom and top cards mixed in a bit more.

[Awaclus]

2-3 pile shuffles and a few dozen overhand shuffles usually. If it's a bigger deck than typical Dominion decks, then I do more than a few dozen overhand shuffles. It might not be enough to make it even close to being random, but it makes the order extremely complicated to predict which is not much different for practical purposes.

With sleeves, I do probably one pile shuffle and 10 or so shuffles with a technique that's pretty much a riffle shuffle but a lot faster (the deck is sideways, you take around half of it, put it over the other half so that the cards collide, then sweep the bottom half with your thumb so that the top cards fall in between the bottom cards EDIT: i.e. it's the mash shuffle, but with the sweep to make it even faster).

And if it's a game where all players have their own decks, and my opponent hasn't finished shuffling his by the time I'm done (which is usually the case), I continue for a while unless it looks like he's also waiting for me to finish.

[Kirian]

Without sleeves I do a table shuffle followed by an overhand shuffle a couple of times. End it with a cut. With sleeves I do the same if the deck is too small to shuffle by taking about half of the deck and mashing it into the other half. I have no idea what this suffle is called, but it's widely used within other card games. I cut the deck in three places every once in a while to get the bottom and top cards mixed in a bit more.

I don't know if it has a name, but that's what I meant by "riffle by ramming."

[Witherweaver]

Without sleeves I riffle.  With sleeves I do, uh, interlacing?  Sometimes I mix in the "smooshing" method.

Edit: I think by interlacing I mean "riffle by ramming".  Split the deck in half, one half in each hand, hold "sideways" with minor axis orthogonal to the table, and interlace one half with the other. 

[Grujah]

As I MTG player, I do have a definite stance on shuffling.

Pile Shuffle is not a shuffle, it is a way to count if your deck has right number of cards in it.
Riffle Shuffle is best at randomizing, the problem is that is way to hard on the cards.
The best way, IMHO, and I know many MTG players agree, is not mentioned in the video (some people in thread mentioned it). It's the Mash shuffle. It randomizes your deck as fast as riffle, and is easy on the cards. Only downside is that you cannot do it unsleeved, but it has been quite a time since I had to shuffle an unsleeved deck.
Overhand shuffle is not effective at all.
Smosh I've never seen done, really.

[Witherweaver]

As I MTG player, I do have a definite stance on shuffling.

Pile Shuffle is not a shuffle, it is a way to count if your deck has right number of cards in it.
Riffle Shuffle is best at randomizing, the problem is that is way to hard on the cards.
The best way, IMHO, and I know many MTG players agree, is not mentioned in the video (some people in thread mentioned it). It's the Mash shuffle. It randomizes your deck as fast as riffle, and is easy on the cards. Only downside is that you cannot do it unsleeved, but it has been quite a time since I had to shuffle an unsleeved deck.
Overhand shuffle is not effective at all.
Smosh I've never seen done, really.

So why is pile shuffling bad for actual shuffling?

Smoosh is, I believe, how dealers in casinos often shuffle if it's not done by a machine.

[eHalcyon]

Pile shuffling alone is no good in a tournament setting (you can rig it really easily), but it's alright in casual play when you can purposely not track where all your cards are going.  And then you complement it with some overhand shuffles.

[Kirian]

It's the Mash shuffle. It randomizes your deck as fast as riffle, and is easy on the cards. Only downside is that you cannot do it unsleeved, but it has been quite a time since I had to shuffle an unsleeved deck.

Thank you for giving it a name!

[Kirian]

So why is pile shuffling bad for actual shuffling?

Pile shuffling is not random; that's the main reason.  It is, in fact, reversible, though someone with more math knowledge than I would have to explain how to invert it.

[Witherweaver]

So why is pile shuffling bad for actual shuffling?

Pile shuffling is not random; that's the main reason.  It is, in fact, reversible, though someone with more math knowledge than I would have to explain how to invert it.

But you could mix up the order you place cards into the piles.  Well, anyway, I saw someone do it in real life a while ago.. it bothered me because it was really slow. 

[Grujah]

So why is pile shuffling bad for actual shuffling?

Pile shuffling is not random; that's the main reason.  It is, in fact, reversible, though someone with more math knowledge than I would have to explain how to invert it.

But you could mix up the order you place cards into the piles.  Well, anyway, I saw someone do it in real life a while ago.. it bothered me because it was really slow.

Even if you do mix up order, you didn't randomize it at all. It has patterns. And you have a lot of info about the card positions (like, second and seventeenth one in original deck are not one next to each other, for example).

In MTG case in particular, if your lands were clumped together in groups, now they will not be (that is, they will be much less clumped than if it was really random).

[werothegreat]

I always mash shuffle.  With unsleeved cards.

[popsofctown]

Yeahhh shuffling!


I think the reason pile "shuffling" became popular is a Darwinian trend where people who do it in MtG or other TCGs tend to win more and have more satisfaction because it essentially stacks your deck.  After an MtG game is finished, your lands and nonland cards are clumped together.  The best case scenario in MtG is to get an even distribution of lands and nonlands.  So when you pile shuffle after a game of MtG is complete, your deck goes from clumpier than true random to less clumpy than true random and you gain a distinct advantage.  Even if you supplement this with truly random shuffling techniques, you've created a starting point that's really good such that if your riffle or mash shuffles fail to completely randomize, it errs on the side of advantage.

Whenever I play MtG I always do "cheat" and pile shuffle before I perform true random shuffles.  There's no rule against it.  MtG's rules dictate that if you're not satisfied with how your opponent shuffled, you can take their deck and shuffle it as much as you like, so if I don't riffle or mash enough to undo the advantage I created by the shuffle, it's my opponent's responsibilty (and capability) to shuffle additionally until it's very close to true random.  That said I do mash shuffle my own deck until I feel comfortable with, I don't deliberately undershuffle.  I just want accidental undershuffles to work in my favor.

If I see my opponent pile shuffle but don't see him riffle or mash shuffle many times, I exercise my right and mash shuffle his deck to make sure he's close to true random.

In Dominion, the effect of pile shuffling is gonna vary.  I tend to put my Smithies and villages together to count actions more easily, so if I pile shuffled I would be wrecking myself.  In other situations it might help you.  In a friendly game of Dominion I think you should probably not pile shuffle at all because it's not randomization and you're just wasting everyone's time.  If you are playing with someone who is new to card games and has trouble randomizing their decks and is having an unfun time from curse clumps or something, then letting him pile shuffle would be ok.  But for the most part other players shouldn't be waiting on you for you to do something that's not randomization.  If everyone doesn't pile shuffle, no one has an advantage.


I find it interesting to hear/realize that pile shuffling is reversible, because that could have a crazy application for MtG:  if someone plays a game, pile shuffles, then riffle/mash shuffles only one or two times, then when the other opponent takes their right to shuffle the deck, they could perform a procedure that reverses the pile shuffle, then perform no other randomization.  The player who underrandomized would then have a very high likelihood of getting clumpy draws.


Shuffling is kind of a chore.  I hope Donald does the chips in a bag thing when he makes a Dominion spinoff (with due credit of course)

[liopoil]

I can't see where he explains the 7 rifle shuffle number. It seems like an arbitrary line to draw for me - how close to random do you insist on?

Also a rifle shuffle isn't necessarily so random. If you do two perfect rifle shuffles in a row, the deck is unchanged (where perfect means that two piles of 26 are interlocked). Obviously nobody does perfect rifle shuffles.

I hope nobody actually does pile shuffling where you put a card on the piles one at a time in a fixed order. That's just so obviously not random; you chose a fixed system of how you are going to turn one deck order into another! If I ever do pile shuffling, each card goes in whichever pile I feel like putting it in, and my piles are not of equal size. This still is not very good shuffling I think.

[pacovf]

When I do the pile shuffle, I do it with four piles and dealing the cards at random. Sometimes I invert the order of (or overhand shuffle, if they are large) two of the piles.

There's also the Forge shuffle: the more cards you draw, the higher the likelihood that your Forge will be on the bottom of your deck. No matter how or how much I shuffle, if Forge is in my deck, I will always do the Forge shuffle.

[Voltaire]

I hope nobody actually does pile shuffling where you put a card on the piles one at a time in a fixed order. That's just so obviously not random; you chose a fixed system of how you are going to turn one deck order into another! If I ever do pile shuffling, each card goes in whichever pile I feel like putting it in, and my piles are not of equal size. This still is not very good shuffling I think.

You'd think this, but guess who recently witnessed this behavior in a Dominion tournament...

[Awaclus]

I hope nobody actually does pile shuffling where you put a card on the piles one at a time in a fixed order. That's just so obviously not random; you chose a fixed system of how you are going to turn one deck order into another! If I ever do pile shuffling, each card goes in whichever pile I feel like putting it in, and my piles are not of equal size. This still is not very good shuffling I think.

I do that. Deciding the pile individually for each card doesn't randomize the deck any more than a fixed order does, it just takes a lot longer, like around 3-4 times as long as a fixed order does. The purpose of the pile shuffle is not to randomize the deck anyway.

[pacovf]

As speed increases, the pile shuffle transitions into the swoosh shuffle.

[Kirian]

I hope nobody actually does pile shuffling where you put a card on the piles one at a time in a fixed order. That's just so obviously not random; you chose a fixed system of how you are going to turn one deck order into another! If I ever do pile shuffling, each card goes in whichever pile I feel like putting it in, and my piles are not of equal size. This still is not very good shuffling I think.

I do that. Deciding the pile individually for each card doesn't randomize the deck any more than a fixed order does, it just takes a lot longer, like around 3-4 times as long as a fixed order does. The purpose of the pile shuffle is not to randomize the deck anyway.

Which brings up the question, what is the purpose of pile shuffling?  If the intent is not to randomize the cards, then why do it at all?

I'm not meaning this rhetorically either, I don't pile shuffle and I'm genuinely curious.

[Awaclus]

Which brings up the question, what is the purpose of pile shuffling?  If the intent is not to randomize the cards, then why do it at all?

I'm not meaning this rhetorically either, I don't pile shuffle and I'm genuinely curious.

It's to make the order dramatically different. When you overhand shuffle the Silver and Gold piles together, if any given card from that pile is a Gold, the odds are that the card directly underneath it is another Gold and everybody in your casual playgroup knows this even if they're not trying to exploit it. Pile shuffle it a couple of times (in addition to the overhand shuffles that you already did in step 1), and it's still possible to give yourself pretty good odds of predicting the card correctly, but now it requires effort, and in a casual game, it can generally be assumed that nobody's going to put in that effort.