Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[yuma]

Hey all:

Came across a question playing in real life last night with some friends. In one of the games we noticed that a friend had some unusual discard and shuffle patterns.  I noticed once when he had played a witch and on that turn bought a second witch. After this was completed he put the used witch on top of his discard pile and his bought witch on the bottom of the discard pile. When I asked him why, he said so that after he shuffled the two witches would be less likely to collide since one would be shuffled into the top half and the other into the bottom half--this was a game without any +action villages.

This led to me being a little skeptical of the ethics of doing so and led to further questions about our group's shuffling. One person for instance doesn't shuffle but instead twice does this: puts 1 card ontop of another, next on the bottom, the next on the top, the next on the bottom-- "to get a greater separation of cards that were used at the same time," in her words. 

For people that have played in real life tournaments how has shuffling worked? How many shuffles are required? It does not appear that the rulebook has anything to say other than shuffling must occur.

My friends and I resolved to let each player shuffle their own way since we were just playing for fun, but I wanted to know what this community thought.

[WanderingWinder]

That's not actually a shuffling question, and it's illegal. You have to put the cards you gain/discard on TOP of your discard pile. Of course, it's entirely possible to mess with the game by manipulating your shuffles anyway, but you have this in all card games; you shouldn't be doing it, but it's sorta hard to stop.

[tlloyd]

I usually combine standard shuffling with the "next one on top, next one on bottom" method your friend was using. And since I enjoy shuffling, I usually continue to alternate these methods for however many times I can until my next turn--which can be quite a while since my family often plays with 5 or 6 players and we frown on BM.   

[DsnowMan]

I do a poker shuffle: riffle, riffle, strip, riffle, cut. If the deck is really small, sometimes I deal 'randomly' into stacks, reassemble, repeat, then cut. In close games, or with a small deck, I'll offer the cut to my opponent.

I haven't seen a live tourney, but if I ran one I would make offering your opponent the cut mandatory on EVERY shuffle. I know enough about fake shuffles and moving cards to the top of the bottom that I'm sure there's someone in every group of card players that can do it. Once there's something to play for, someone might start cheating.

If you intentionally cheat while playing Dominion, I hope you have as much fun as you deserve.

If you unintentionally/naively cheat while playing Dominion, such as being a terrible shuffler or trying to avoid collisions with discard manipulations... I don't know, that's a gray area. I will insert my actions and early buys into stacks of coppers to 'randomize' my discard pile. I guess that's against the rules, but doesn't feel wrong. I shuffle well to compensate.

[DsnowMan]

On a slight tangent, I have wondered how good the typical player's shuffle is at randomizing the deck. My inspiration is a chapter or two from Stanford Wong's BJ card counting books. He analyzes the way in which cards are picked up from the BJ table by the dealer, stacked in a typical way, then processed through a manual house shuffle.  The research is a bit dated now because of the heavy use of CSMs and automatic shufflers, but the premise was very interesting. The standard casino shuffle, while being very thorough, did not completely remove correlation between certain cards and the distance between them in the shuffled deck.

In dominion speak, your discard pile could look like EECCC 1st buy E CCCC 2nd buy going into the first reshuffle. Is your deck after your first reshuffle truly random, or do those copper clumps and buys end up in predictable places? I think a shuffle study would be really interesting, but damn if I have the time to do it.

[timchen]

That's not actually a shuffling question, and it's illegal. You have to put the cards you gain/discard on TOP of your discard pile. Of course, it's entirely possible to mess with the game by manipulating your shuffles anyway, but you have this in all card games; you shouldn't be doing it, but it's sorta hard to stop.

I don't agree. While the rules says to put it on top, up to now there is no card which putting on top or bottom makes a difference, with ideal shuffle anyway. On the other hand, hand shuffle does not completely remove the correlation between the cards unfortunately, so one can suffer from this symptom that card gained/discarded in the same turn are more likely to be drawn together.

Since it's a game, and we play the game for fun most of the time anyway, I don't see why one should force himself to endure the potential worse draw from effects which is not intended from the design.

[Robz888]

I would say that every player is required to shuffle his or her deck thoroughly enough so that it doesn't matter how you ordered your discard pile.

[Donald X.]

Came across a question playing in real life last night with some friends. In one of the games we noticed that a friend had some unusual discard and shuffle patterns.  I noticed once when he had played a witch and on that turn bought a second witch. After this was completed he put the used witch on top of his discard pile and his bought witch on the bottom of the discard pile. When I asked him why, he said so that after he shuffled the two witches would be less likely to collide since one would be shuffled into the top half and the other into the bottom half--this was a game without any +action villages.

This led to me being a little skeptical of the ethics of doing so and led to further questions about our group's shuffling. One person for instance doesn't shuffle but instead twice does this: puts 1 card ontop of another, next on the bottom, the next on the top, the next on the bottom-- "to get a greater separation of cards that were used at the same time," in her words. 

Discarded cards go to the top of the discard pile. The odds are that nothing will ever care about that order, and when you have to look through your discard pile for Counting House or something I would sure not require you to keep the order of the discard pile constant, but whatever, discards go to the top.

Shuffling means randomizing the order of the cards somehow. There are a lot of ways to shuffle, and they are all fine, provided you end up with a randomized deck.

If you do end up with a randomized deck, then the original order does not matter. Thus, putting the cards in a particular order first is at best stalling, and at worst attempting to cheat.

In practice many people are bad shufflers. The solution is for those people to shuffle more. If they are unfamiliar with pile shuffling, you can introduce them to that, and they can alternate pile shuffling with what they're already doing. Pile shuffling is especially appropriate when you are shuffling tiny decks, as you often are in Dominion.

[sitnaltax]

If you do something with your cards to make something about the way the cards come up more or less likely, you are cheating.

[WanderingWinder]

That's not actually a shuffling question, and it's illegal. You have to put the cards you gain/discard on TOP of your discard pile. Of course, it's entirely possible to mess with the game by manipulating your shuffles anyway, but you have this in all card games; you shouldn't be doing it, but it's sorta hard to stop.

I don't agree. While the rules says to put it on top, up to now there is no card which putting on top or bottom makes a difference, with ideal shuffle anyway. On the other hand, hand shuffle does not completely remove the correlation between the cards unfortunately, so one can suffer from this symptom that card gained/discarded in the same turn are more likely to be drawn together.

Since it's a game, and we play the game for fun most of the time anyway, I don't see why one should force himself to endure the potential worse draw from effects which is not intended from the design.

I don't understand. It seems to me that you're saying that you disagree with me, then either a) agreeing or b) saying I'm right but that it doesn't matter. Which is still pretty much agreeing.

[timchen]

No, maybe I didn't say it clearly or I might have misunderstood your point, but what I mean is that I think it is entirely fine to put one's gained cards at the bottom of the discard pile. To the extreme, I will say I think it is perfectly fine to choose to do so with two witches and choose not to do so with treasure maps. And the reason is what I said in the second paragraph.

But of course, it is then very immoral to consciously not to shuffle cleanly. I think it is fine to draw your line there, and shuffle as good as you can. For a game that only lasts 10-15 minutes, I just don't want to spend all my time shuffling, but I also don't want to get the probable result that if I gain a witch when I played a witch they are more likely to clump together than in the ideal shuffling situation.

[Kirian]

Do people really have that much trouble overhand shuffling 5-6 times, then cutting?  Doesn't take that long.  I have no trouble getting random draws in either Dominion or Eminent Domain.

And no... cards go on top, not on bottom.  If you are placing two Witches apart in order to decrease their chances of coming up together, what that means is, as DXV says above, you aren't shuffling enough.

[timchen]

I guess, yeah, I like what Donald said. I understand why he insists rule wise, cards goes to the top. I don't understand  why people want to enforce this rule in the strict sense though.

Indeed usually I don't do pile shuffle and that is probably where the problem comes from. Funnily, I think pile shuffling has the same desired effects as putting cards at the bottom. Probably one morally has to do some other shuffle before pile shuffle.

[ashersky]

Is there a standard understanding of how the cards from your play area should enter the discard pile during clean-up?  If you've played 4 actions, 6 treasures, and gained 2, you probably put the gained cards in first, then randomly pile up the rest, no?  I generally try to mix up the cards in the play area to help the shuffle later on, while still putting that entire stack on top of the discard pile, and don't feel like I'm cheating.

[Davio]

You can actually choose the order of discards.
This way you can hide some unplayed cards from your opponents. This is perfectly legal and talked about in the rulebook.

Only one thing counts when you shuffle: Make sure it's random. I always shuffle up to a point where I have no idea where a (group of) card(s) is anymore. I try to shuffle well enough to overcome standard clunking (due to bad shuffling), but in a random distribution, some clunking will exist. Isotropic also has a tendency to keep my 2 Golds together.

[theory]

In dominion speak, your discard pile could look like EECCC 1st buy E CCCC 2nd buy going into the first reshuffle. Is your deck after your first reshuffle truly random, or do those copper clumps and buys end up in predictable places? I think a shuffle study would be really interesting, but damn if I have the time to do it.

If your initial deck is CCCCCCCEEE or EEECCCCCCC, then when someone cuts your deck, they only have a 4/9 probability of knocking you to 4/3, whereas if you start with a 4/3, there's a much smaller chance the cut will knock you into 5/2.  Add in the fact that most people don't cut all but one or all but two cards, and starting your deck with the Estates at the top or bottom gives you a pretty solid shot at 5/2 even if your deck is cut.

[Geronimoo]

I often lose in real life games because I riffle shuffle rigorously while my opponents do 2 overhand shuffles and they tend to have very good turns and very bad turns while I have mostly mediocre turns.

[popsofctown]

I myself am thoroughly pleased with Magic: the Gathering's solution for this.  Floor rules say you can pile shuffle at first if you want to.  Pile shuffling, as I mean it, is drawing the top card of the deck, putting it into one pile, then taking the second card and putting it into the second pile, then taking the third card and putting it into a third pile, then putting the fourth back in the first pile, lather, rinse repeat.  You don't have to use 3, I usually used 6.  After you're done, you put pile one on top, pile three on bottom and pile two in the middle.

Pile shuffling is not shuffling, it doesn't randomize the cards.  It deliberately weaves the cards in your deck throughout your deck in an even consistency.  So I pile shuffle my deck before I get to the tournament table or first thing when I get there. And I know I'm holding a beastly stacked deck now.

Then, each player has to actually randomize their deck in front of eachother.  So I take the deck I've stacked and riffle shuffle and overhand it. I'm ruining the deck.  I'm a little bit OCD about it so I usually keep shuffling it until it "feels good", but if I wanted to win badly I could try to shuffle it as little as my opponent would allow.

Then after the public shuffling, your opponent has the last chance to shuffle your deck as much.  Not just cut, but shuffle (which might have been a recent development around the time I started), cutting won't undo a weave.

Your opponent is the last person to touch your deck.  Once he's done shuffling and cutting it (he's not allowed to look at it, so he is unable to sabotage your deck), you draw whatever card is on top and go.  Most of the time, he sees that you randomized your deck with enough riffle shuffling and simply cuts.

The system always struck me as being fair in a kind of "I'll cut the cookie, you choose which half" kind of way.  The last line of defense is your opponent ensuring your deck is randomized, and if he fails at that duty, you get a strong deck.  If you're worried about an opponent getting good draws, just shuffle his deck well.


Dominion has lots of shuffling of course, but I empathize with the players that want to order their discard pile, then randomize from there.  I'd suggest letting your friends do so and having the player to their left perform their shuffles.

[Lekkit]

I generally do a few overhand shuffles, then a pile shuffle with three piles and then cut the deck. If I have more time I do step 1 and 2 a few times more. I've never had an oppnent say anything to me about it, neither at the Swedish Nationals or at the Dominion World Masters. At the WM you had to randomize one of your opponent's decks before the game and you always had to present the deck after one of your shuffles to one of your opponents. However, only at one game my opponent opted to shuffle my deck. They didn't even do it in the finals.

[Ozle]

Seems like a lot of effort, if you wanted to cheat, just learn how to fake shuffle. Pretty sure if i knew where the two terminals are in my deck i could easily put one on top amd one in the middle, and make it look like it was thoroughly shuffled.

Not that i do of course, was a skill i picked up while learning card magic

My thoughts are, if you suspect someone of deliberately cheating, just dont play them

[dan11295]

What about when you have a very trimmed deck and are only shuffling 2-3 cards? I find it hard to do any real shuffling in that case, you are just moving cards back and forth.

[Thisisnotasmile]

What about when you have a very trimmed deck and are only shuffling 2-3 cards? I find it hard to do any real shuffling in that case, you are just moving cards back and forth.

Move them back and forth under the table so your opponent can not see what order you are putting them in, and then ask him/her to do the same, so that you can't see. The deck will then be ordered in such a way that nobody knows the order.

[sitnaltax]

Somewhat apropos of this, when playing with unsleeved cards, I have found that I can easily distinguish the heavily-worn Coppers and Estates from the other cards from the backs alone.

I would rather not tempt myself to do "one more shuffle" if the top card isn't what I would prefer, so any time when I care, I do my shuffling (which I am confident randomizes the order--I just have too much knowledge) and then offer a cut to an opponent.

[Taco Lobster]

I generally employ a similar strategy when discarding.  If my hand consisted of 2 terminal actions, I will put one at the front of the hand and one at the back in the hopes that when I shuffle, they will stay further apart.

In theory, there shouldn't be any difference between fully ordering your discard pile and then shuffling as compared to just shuffling. 

[RisingJaguar]

Lets say there was a bad cheater... that wanted to put one terminal on top and one on bottom to seperate them. 

TCCCEECCCCET where T= terminals.  Then they take the bottom half and put it on top...

Don't they get CCCCETTCCCEE? Does this cheating actually work or am I missing something?