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Author Topic: Shuffle Definition  (Read 84718 times)

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Fabian

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #75 on: February 27, 2012, 07:38:42 pm »
+1

Just in case Taco Lobster's walls of texts for the last couple pages have made people forget:

"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."

"At best, it's attempting to compensate for the fact that mechanical shuffling doesn't always do the best job randomizing the deck."

For all your talk of proper randomization and bla bla, you're very clearly in the wrong, and I hope you haven't convinced anyone reading this thread of anything else.
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Taco Lobster

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #76 on: February 27, 2012, 07:40:07 pm »
0

Just in case Taco Lobster's walls of texts for the last couple pages have made people forget:

"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."

"At best, it's attempting to compensate for the fact that mechanical shuffling doesn't always do the best job randomizing the deck."

For all your talk of proper randomization and bla bla, you're very clearly in the wrong, and I hope you haven't convinced anyone reading this thread of anything else.

Uh, okay.  If you say so, dad.  Feel free to follow-up once you find the rule about the order of discarding/intent to have a better shuffle that's being broken since it's apparently a black and white issue that you've cleanly solved.  You could've done it pages ago and saved everyone from my walls of text.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2012, 07:47:15 pm by Taco Lobster »
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Fabian

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #77 on: February 27, 2012, 07:50:38 pm »
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Such a sneaky strategy, editing in stuff after I've +1'd your post :( Now I had to unvote and everything.
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tlloyd

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #78 on: February 27, 2012, 07:55:50 pm »
0

If you break up clumps you are NOT randomizing your deck. You're rearranging it from one non-random ordering (clumped) to another non-random ordering (not clumped). Neither one of those is inherently 'more random' than the other.

'Pre-randomization' is entirely a mis-nomer. This isn't randomizing your deck - you're rearranging it from one non-random configuration which you don't like to a new non-random configuration which you do like, just in case this non-randomness happens to get preserved through imperfect shuffling.

^ most intelligent thing said through this whole silly debate.

This reminds me of the way back before I discovered Isotropic and my whole family was into in-person Dominion. I (being OCD) would always arrange my hand before my turn: actions, treasures in descending order, victory cards. My brother-in-law (a bit of a numbers guy) intentionally left his hand in whatever order he drew it. Now if you are playing long action chains (and who wasn't back then?), then some order got imposed merely from the play rules. But when our hands were mostly money, that meant we discarded them in very different orders (or in his case, non-order). We both shuffled sincerely, so ... did one of us cheat? What about my sister who liked to shuffle her discard pile (leaving it in the discard pile) after each turn? Cheating?

In my opinion it's as simple as this: if you genuinely shuffle your deck, it shouldn't matter what you did before--therefore what you did before doesn't matter! However, if you believe that what you are doing pre-shuffle does matter, then you shouldn't be doing it.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2012, 07:58:52 pm by tlloyd »
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eHalcyon

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #79 on: February 27, 2012, 10:13:23 pm »
0

From reading the last few pages, it looks like the main confusion is what randomness really entails.  ftl explained it a few times but it seems like there is still misunderstanding.

If you were to randomize the digits from 0-9, there is just as much chance of you getting 0123456789 as there is of you getting 3749182605.  However, the human brain sees a pattern in the former and not in the latter, and we naturally assume that patterns = not random. 

Likewise, drawing a hand of all actions, then a hand of all treasures followed by a hand of all greens seems really non-random to us.  But with perfect randomness, there is just as much chance of drawing these clumps as there is of getting three hands each with mixes of all three.

The human notion of chance and randomness is actually really interesting.  Consider the Gambler's fallacy. :)
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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #80 on: February 27, 2012, 10:26:31 pm »
0

From reading the last few pages, it looks like the main confusion is what randomness really entails.  ftl explained it a few times but it seems like there is still misunderstanding.

If you were to randomize the digits from 0-9, there is just as much chance of you getting 0123456789 as there is of you getting 3749182605.  However, the human brain sees a pattern in the former and not in the latter, and we naturally assume that patterns = not random. 

Likewise, drawing a hand of all actions, then a hand of all treasures followed by a hand of all greens seems really non-random to us.  But with perfect randomness, there is just as much chance of drawing these clumps as there is of getting three hands each with mixes of all three.

The human notion of chance and randomness is actually really interesting.  Consider the Gambler's fallacy. :)

I've read that in psychological studies, people consistently fail to recognize actual random. They will see a series of coin flips, HHHHHHTHHTTTTTTH, and say "not random, can't be!" And they are wrong. They demand something like HTHTHHTTHTHTT.
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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #81 on: February 27, 2012, 10:29:45 pm »
+1

Yeah, my high school statistics teacher did something like that. He had everyone in the class write down a five-by-five grid of random digits, and then use our graphing calculators to generate one and write it down. He would consistently get 80% accuracy or so in figuring out which of the two was human-generated-randomness and which one was the computer-generated, because all the students would apparently always try to avoid any sort of patterns in their numbers - they'd never put down 1-2-3-4 in a row, never have multiples of the same digit next to each other, and so on. Whereas the calculator RNG would happily do those things with the appropriate probabilities.

OOH! Another anecdote about randomness! I remember reading a game design blog, which basically said that if you're designing a game for a human to play single-player, and it includes a random element, then if you have a fair random number generator, then people will end up thinking that it's biased against them, and to make people conclude that it's a 'fair' RNG you actually have to make it cheat in their favor. Because people gloss over the times that they consistently get more lucky than expected, but always remember the stretches of bad luck.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2012, 10:32:45 pm by ftl »
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ashersky

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #82 on: February 28, 2012, 01:27:12 am »
0

There seems to be a bit of confusion (at least for me) within this argument.  While the topic is titled "Shuffle Definition," there's a bit more discussion on discard rules than shuffling, I think. 

Taco Lobster's argument (in which I see the most merit) is that there is no rule on how or in what order cards from your hand and in-play must be discarded.  For example, if you choose to discard after being Torturer'ed, you may choose the order in which the two cards you discard enter the discard pile, so long as both cards enter the "top" of the pile.  That is not random, you chose the order.  It is NOT cheating.

I believe the same should be said for clean-up.  There is no rule, other than "on top" of the discard pile, for how you clean-up your turn.  (Is there?)  My actions are lined up in chronological order in my play area, my treasures in a pile below that, and victory cards still in hand.  As long as they all go on top of the discard pile (and not the bottom, or cut into the middle), I don't see how an opponent can claim I cheated if I blend the cards being cleaned-up into any order I want.  That includes putting the two terminal attacks at the top and bottom of the <i>stack of cards being cleaned up before placing the entire stack on top of the discard pile.</i>  (Responding to the original idea of splitting terminals.)

You shouldn't (can't) place one of those terminals at the bottom of your discard pile, since the bottom isn't the top.  I don't see why you can't split them up within the same clean-up.  To look at it another way, if you were to discard one card at a time, you could do so in any order, starting with a terminal attack as your first dicard and ending with a terminal attack as your last card.

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #83 on: February 28, 2012, 01:34:17 am »
+1

There seems to be a bit of confusion (at least for me) within this argument.  While the topic is titled "Shuffle Definition," there's a bit more discussion on discard rules than shuffling, I think. 

Taco Lobster's argument (in which I see the most merit) is that there is no rule on how or in what order cards from your hand and in-play must be discarded.  For example, if you choose to discard after being Torturer'ed, you may choose the order in which the two cards you discard enter the discard pile, so long as both cards enter the "top" of the pile.  That is not random, you chose the order.  It is NOT cheating.

I believe the same should be said for clean-up.  There is no rule, other than "on top" of the discard pile, for how you clean-up your turn.  (Is there?)  My actions are lined up in chronological order in my play area, my treasures in a pile below that, and victory cards still in hand.  As long as they all go on top of the discard pile (and not the bottom, or cut into the middle), I don't see how an opponent can claim I cheated if I blend the cards being cleaned-up into any order I want.  That includes putting the two terminal attacks at the top and bottom of the <i>stack of cards being cleaned up before placing the entire stack on top of the discard pile.</i>  (Responding to the original idea of splitting terminals.)

You shouldn't (can't) place one of those terminals at the bottom of your discard pile, since the bottom isn't the top.  I don't see why you can't split them up within the same clean-up.  To look at it another way, if you were to discard one card at a time, you could do so in any order, starting with a terminal attack as your first dicard and ending with a terminal attack as your last card.

Right. I don't think people here were disagreeing with that. You are allowed to put your clean-up cards on top of your deck in any order. You may even do this to strategically "hide" cards from your opponents, because they can only see the top card.

What others, including myself, are saying, is that you shouldn't deliberately space out your terminals, or something, because you don't want to draw them together. How you arranged them shouldn't matter, because you are obligated to shuffle your deck thoroughly. So a discard arrangement that seeks to take advantage of your own bad shuffling is tantamount to cheating.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #84 on: February 28, 2012, 01:40:47 am »
+1

snip

If you read the OP, he describes a player putting one witch on top and another on the bottom of the discard pile, which would violate the rule of discarding only to the top of the discard pile.

The arguments that have followed deal with the intention behind a strange discard order.  Ideally, the order in which you discard should not matter (aside from strategically hiding which card your opponent can see) since your shuffle will randomize the deck anyway, meaning that the starting permutation should not make a difference. 

However, we acknowledge that our shuffling is imperfect.  The discussions of cheating revolve around this fact, and how someone might purposefully change the order of discard to improve their draws after imperfect shuffling (such as in the OP's example where someone tried to space out their witches to lower the chance of terminal collision).  Even if it has no effect, the intention is there and is tantamount to cheating.  However, given bad shuffling, it very well COULD have an impact on draws.
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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #85 on: February 28, 2012, 01:56:39 am »
0

Right. I don't think people here were disagreeing with that. You are allowed to put your clean-up cards on top of your deck in any order. You may even do this to strategically "hide" cards from your opponents, because they can only see the top card.

What others, including myself, are saying, is that you shouldn't deliberately space out your terminals, or something, because you don't want to draw them together. How you arranged them shouldn't matter, because you are obligated to shuffle your deck thoroughly. So a discard arrangement that seeks to take advantage of your own bad shuffling is tantamount to cheating.

That makes sense, sort of, but seems to have an inherent contradiction built in.  I can clean up my cards in any order <i>I choose</i> but I should not <i>deliberately</i> do anything to affect the order in which they go into the discard pile, because any discard pre-arrangement could be advantageous.  So what order is the correct non-order of discarding during clean-up?  Isn't placing my cards on top of my discard pile going to be a deliberate act, no matter the order?  The question then becomes "how I can discard my cards without doing something that may be cheating, even accidentally?"

No one wants to draw their terminals together (generally), which is why we shuffle so much and hope for the best.  Whether the terminals start out next to each other in the discard pile before shuffling has no real affect if shuffling is adequate (as has been pointed out often).  So how could discarding them in any order (including far apart) within one clean-up matter, or be called cheating?
« Last Edit: February 28, 2012, 02:07:27 am by ashersky »
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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #86 on: February 28, 2012, 02:19:59 am »
0

Attempting to "compensate" for poor shuffling technique is in my opinion cheating.

I'm not sure here. It's signigicantly harder to get a good shuffled deck from a bad starting state than from a good one. For example, in the starting deck, I always manually mix the 3 Estates with the Coppers before shuffling.  Now that probably is also no cheating under your definitions, before there is no definition how the starting deck has to look like before shuffling, other than it has to contain 3 Estates and 7 Coppers. But it's done for the same reason, to compensate for poor shuffling or (experessed positively) to improve the shuffling.

And pile shuffling is more or less also only another way to improve the starting state for your "real" shuffle.

I think it starts getting cheating if you decide for which cards you improve the starting states and for which not. So you mix the terminals, to "improve their mixing", but don't care about your Golds clumping together.


One word to the cutting: I don't really see that cutting has a great effect here. I guess cutting comes from games where you with a bunch of people all play with one single deck. Depending on how you distribute cards, cutting now either totally messes up an arangement in the cards or has the possibility to give the good cards just to someone else as intended by the cheater. Now here anybody has their own deck, and what matters is not only the position of the cards in the sequence (depsite for missing the shuffle) but also their relative postitions. So I think cutting has to be replaced by "real" shuffling if it should have the intended effect.
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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #87 on: February 28, 2012, 02:26:05 am »
+1

Right. I don't think people here were disagreeing with that. You are allowed to put your clean-up cards on top of your deck in any order. You may even do this to strategically "hide" cards from your opponents, because they can only see the top card.

What others, including myself, are saying, is that you shouldn't deliberately space out your terminals, or something, because you don't want to draw them together. How you arranged them shouldn't matter, because you are obligated to shuffle your deck thoroughly. So a discard arrangement that seeks to take advantage of your own bad shuffling is tantamount to cheating.

That makes sense, sort of, but seems to have an inherent contradiction built in.  I can clean up my cards in any order <i>I choose</i> but I should not <i>deliberately</i> do anything to affect the order in which they go into the discard pile, because any discard pre-arrangement could be advantageous.  So what order is the correct non-order of discarding during clean-up?  Isn't placing my cards on top of my discard pile going to be a deliberate act, no matter the order?  The question then becomes "how I can discard my cards without doing something that may be cheating, even accidentally?"

No one wants to draw their terminals together (generally), which is why we shuffle so much and hope for the best.  Whether the terminals start out next to each other in the discard pile before shuffling has no real affect if shuffling is adequate (as has been pointed out often).  So how could discarding them in any order (including far apart) within one clean-up matter, or be called cheating?

I generally just push all my cards together during clean-up and slap them on top of my discard, so it's possible to do it in a non-deliberate way. That said, you are allowed to be deliberate about the top card of your discard. That's all. The order of the rest does not... and should not... and will not, provided you shuffle adequately... matter.

Other people in the thread were saying that they moved cards around in their discard because they believed it would result in better hands later. I suppose its fine to do this if you really, really, really, really, really shuffle well. But it's sort of in bad taste, because if you bother ordering your cards in such a way, it implies that you believe that ordering the discard matters, and if you believe ordering the discard matters, it implies you believe your shuffling will be less than adequate.

Lack of good shuffling is the issue, not ordering the discard. But if you order the discard with much deliberation--other than the top card--it suggests a lack of good shuffling is about to occur.
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ashersky

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #88 on: February 28, 2012, 02:48:23 am »
0

I generally just push all my cards together during clean-up and slap them on top of my discard, so it's possible to do it in a non-deliberate way. That said, you are allowed to be deliberate about the top card of your discard. That's all. The order of the rest does not... and should not... and will not, provided you shuffle adequately... matter.

Agreed here.  I would say, though, that not only can you be deliberate about the top card (the one "shown" to your opponent), but you are able to be just as deliberate about what remains hidden (the cards in your hand when clean-up begins, as there's no requirement to show those to your opponent).  For a simple example: hand starts as Witch-CCCE, play Witch and unluckily draw Witch and C, play 4xC and buy Remodel.  Remodel is currently the top card of your discard pile since it was gained before clean up begins.  I could put my played cards into the discard pile, then my hand, covering up the Witch with the Estate so you didn't know I burned through both that hand.

Other people in the thread were saying that they moved cards around in their discard because they believed it would result in better hands later. I suppose its fine to do this if you really, really, really, really, really shuffle well. But it's sort of in bad taste, because if you bother ordering your cards in such a way, it implies that you believe that ordering the discard matters, and if you believe ordering the discard matters, it implies you believe your shuffling will be less than adequate.

Lack of good shuffling is the issue, not ordering the discard. But if you order the discard with much deliberation--other than the top card--it suggests a lack of good shuffling is about to occur.

If you are deliberately using your discard order during clean-up to try and give yourself better hands post-shuffle, that's lame.  If you have a way of making it work, that's cheating.  So we agree there.

But I think we can agree there is at least one legitimate, and legal, reason for manipulating the discarding portion of clean-up: deciding what will show and what will remain hidden to your opponent.
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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #89 on: February 28, 2012, 02:50:47 am »
+1

I generally just push all my cards together during clean-up and slap them on top of my discard, so it's possible to do it in a non-deliberate way. That said, you are allowed to be deliberate about the top card of your discard. That's all. The order of the rest does not... and should not... and will not, provided you shuffle adequately... matter.

Agreed here.  I would say, though, that not only can you be deliberate about the top card (the one "shown" to your opponent), but you are able to be just as deliberate about what remains hidden (the cards in your hand when clean-up begins, as there's no requirement to show those to your opponent).  For a simple example: hand starts as Witch-CCCE, play Witch and unluckily draw Witch and C, play 4xC and buy Remodel.  Remodel is currently the top card of your discard pile since it was gained before clean up begins.  I could put my played cards into the discard pile, then my hand, covering up the Witch with the Estate so you didn't know I burned through both that hand.

Other people in the thread were saying that they moved cards around in their discard because they believed it would result in better hands later. I suppose its fine to do this if you really, really, really, really, really shuffle well. But it's sort of in bad taste, because if you bother ordering your cards in such a way, it implies that you believe that ordering the discard matters, and if you believe ordering the discard matters, it implies you believe your shuffling will be less than adequate.

Lack of good shuffling is the issue, not ordering the discard. But if you order the discard with much deliberation--other than the top card--it suggests a lack of good shuffling is about to occur.

If you are deliberately using your discard order during clean-up to try and give yourself better hands post-shuffle, that's lame.  If you have a way of making it work, that's cheating.  So we agree there.

But I think we can agree there is at least one legitimate, and legal, reason for manipulating the discarding portion of clean-up: deciding what will show and what will remain hidden to your opponent.

No argument there!
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eHalcyon

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #90 on: February 28, 2012, 03:26:00 am »
0

Attempting to "compensate" for poor shuffling technique is in my opinion cheating.

I'm not sure here. It's signigicantly harder to get a good shuffled deck from a bad starting state than from a good one. For example, in the starting deck, I always manually mix the 3 Estates with the Coppers before shuffling.  Now that probably is also no cheating under your definitions, before there is no definition how the starting deck has to look like before shuffling, other than it has to contain 3 Estates and 7 Coppers. But it's done for the same reason, to compensate for poor shuffling or (experessed positively) to improve the shuffling.

I am not certain, but it sounds like you are using an incorrect definition of "random" here.  What do you mean by "a good shuffled deck"?  If it is well shuffled (that is, near-perfect randomization), the starting state has absolutely no bearing on the final state.  A "bad starting state" and a good one would both have an equal probability of reaching any possible shuffled state. 

This is why I ask your definition of a "good shuffled deck".  Is it a deck where your hands all tend to be average, rather than having some amazing hands and some worthless hands?  Because with perfect randomization, both the former and the latter are possible.  Again, true randomness means that any possible set of cards may end up together.  If you had five 5 coppers and 5 estates, there is just as much chance of you drawing ccccc as there is of you drawing ccece, even if one "looks" more random to the human mind. 

This concept of compensating for poor shuffling by changing the pre-shuffle order simply doesn't work.  The only real way to compensate for poor shuffling is to shuffle more.  Arranging the cards to try to compensate is arranging the cards with the expectation that it will make some non-random arrangement more likely -- even if that non-random order is what we perceive to be "more random".
« Last Edit: February 28, 2012, 03:32:29 am by eHalcyon »
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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #91 on: February 28, 2012, 03:54:49 am »
0

This is why I ask your definition of a "good shuffled deck". 

My feeling is that nobody really shuffles the deck until each permutation is equally likely. It seems like you need to do something like 7-10* riffleshuffles to mix a 25 card deck until each permutation is approximately equally likely. And that is ignoring non-mathematical effects like cards sticking together due to dirt or whatever.

Not sure if everybody does this every time they reshuffle, but of course that would be a policy one could enforce.

However, concerning the randomness. I know that a "preprocessed" deck is in no way "more" random as than starting with mixing from C7E3. As is a pile-shuffled deck, but nevertheless it was proposed here.
The point is that you don't need to have every permutation of it equally likely. For first, you can swap every Copper with every other Copper, and every other Estate with every other Estate. Than you can swap the Estates with the Coppers in each hand. The only thing you care about is if it's 4/3 or 5/2, and only in some Hinterland settings you care on the the order of them.
So the point is to get the best possible approximation on the probabilities of 4/3 vs 5/2, and I'm quite sure that this can be achieved faster (or you get a better approximation for a given amount of shuffles) if you don't start with a sorted deck, but distribute your Estates.

But I will ask a sim...


* Have only skimmed it, but Theorem 2 (p.4) and Table 4.(p.16) seems to point into this direction. Oh and Table 3 (p.16)of course.
* depending on what you want \theta to be.
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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #92 on: February 28, 2012, 04:03:42 am »
0

However, concerning the randomness. I know that a "preprocessed" deck is in no way "more" random as than starting with mixing from C7E3. As is a pile-shuffled deck, but nevertheless it was proposed here.
The point is that you don't need to have every permutation of it equally likely. For first, you can swap every Copper with every other Copper, and every other Estate with every other Estate. Than you can swap the Estates with the Coppers in each hand. The only thing you care about is if it's 4/3 or 5/2, and only in some Hinterland settings you care on the the order of them.
So the point is to get the best possible approximation on the probabilities of 4/3 vs 5/2, and I'm quite sure that this can be achieved faster (or you get a better approximation for a given amount of shuffles) if you don't start with a sorted deck, but distribute your Estates.

But I will ask a sim...


* Have only skimmed it, but Theorem 2 (p.4) and Table 4.(p.16) seems to point into this direction. Oh and Table 3 (p.16)of course.
* depending on what you want \theta to be.

Ohh, you were specifically referring to the first shuffle and not just giving a random example.  In that case... this is really interesting.  Looking forward to hearing what you find from the simulator. :D
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ftl

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #93 on: February 28, 2012, 04:37:06 am »
0

BTW, to add fuel to the flames, I'll add that I think it's reasonable to expect that anybody who plays Dominion on a regular basis to learn to shuffle reasonably well. It doesn't take long at all to do the right number of riffle-shuffles, as pointed out in that paper, to get a pretty much randomized deck.

People who play Dominion casually, or once every month or two, sure, don't bother them about shuffling. And let them do whatever silly tricks with their discard pile, because whatever. But if you play on a regular basis, just take the few minutes it takes to learn. I never knew how to shuffle for realz until I got into Dominion, and at some point I realized that hacking it with overhand shuffles was just a terrible idea when the whole game relies on a well-shuffled deck, so I learned to riffle-shuffle and it was pretty easy.
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DStu

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #94 on: February 28, 2012, 04:45:38 am »
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Ohh, you were specifically referring to the first shuffle and not just giving a random example.  In that case... this is really interesting.  Looking forward to hearing what you find from the simulator. :D
So following model: Overhandshuffle, you  put 1-3 (uniformly) cards from the top of your right hand to the buttom of you left and iterate this n times.

10.000 MC simulation, probability of starting 5/2 after (1-20) shuffles:
Code: [Select]
a) 1 0.8893 0.9184 0.6891 0.7888 0.5513 0.6767 0.4583 0.593 0.397 0.5304 0.3438 0.4767 0.3047 0.4246 0.2717 0.3998 0.2494 0.3695 0.2284
b) 0.1532 0.0464 0.1542 0.089 0.162 0.1105 0.1693 0.1344 0.1731 0.1353 0.1758 0.1424 0.1719 0.1504 0.1732 0.1553 0.1737 0.1581 0.176 0.1612
still not quite sure if I implemented the shuffling correctly, especially these oszillations worry me a bit, but it seems to converge against the correct probability...

edit:
a) starting EEECCCCCCC
b) starting CECCECCECC
« Last Edit: February 28, 2012, 04:56:18 am by DStu »
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Taco Lobster

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #95 on: February 28, 2012, 10:38:15 am »
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Yeah, by far my favorite part of this thread is being told I don't understand randomness by the same people who tell me the order of my discard matters. Which is it exactly? 

My second favorite is the statement that if you take an action with the intent to influence the deck, irrespective of such action's chance of actually effecting that intent, you are cheating. Just remember, when you hope you will draw a good hand, you are cheating. It's a thoughtcrime!
« Last Edit: February 28, 2012, 10:46:14 am by Taco Lobster »
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #96 on: February 28, 2012, 10:41:13 am »
+1

Yeah, by far my favorite part of this thread is being told I don't understand randomness by the same people who tell me the order of my discard matters. Which is it exactly? 
Both. The order of your discard matters precisely because you aren't sufficiently randomizing things with your shuffles.

Taco Lobster

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #97 on: February 28, 2012, 10:47:38 am »
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Great, then we are back to the question of how to discard given that there's no means to randomize your deck and discarding in any type of order is cheating.
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RisingJaguar

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #98 on: February 28, 2012, 11:14:22 am »
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My second favorite is the statement that if you take an action with the intent to influence the deck, irrespective of such action's chance of actually effecting that intent, you are cheating. Just remember, when you hope you will draw a good hand, you are cheating. It's a thoughtcrime!
If i take an action (take steroids/shoot someone) with the intent to influence the game (get stronger/kill someone), but irrespective of such action's chance of actually effecting the intent (oops i took tylenol/oops I had no bullets), I am cheating. 

Yup that sounds about right, whether I get caught is another story (and irrelevant for our purposes).

I think intent is a pretty strong reasoning for cheating or wrong doing.  Rearranging your discard (lets say after the fact, and take out clean-up phase or forced discards) shows a pretty strong (likelyhood of) intent to cheat. 

Hoping for a good hand as a thoughtcrime? witty... just like sacrificing a duck right?...
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Taco Lobster

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Re: Shuffle Definition
« Reply #99 on: February 28, 2012, 11:16:25 am »
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As I said before, good luck prosecuting the voodoo practioner for attempted murder.
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