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[Taco Lobster]

What's most hilarious about this all is the underlying assumption that this ordering of the discard pile actually works.  Unless it's paired with a way of manipulating the shuffle, it doesn't do anything.  It mostly arises as a response to bad luck, e.g. you get a hand with two Witches, you play one, get annoyed that they collided, and discard the one in play first and the one in your hand last.  That's the typical situation - an irrational, human response to bad luck, not some diabolically clever and impossible way to cheat/exploit the game.

I think there is a whole universe of gray scales between conciously not putting two cards together are already seperated as response to bad luck and arranging your village-smithychain from the table into VSVSVSVSVGGGGG.

I agree, and maybe that's part of the disconnect that's caused 5 pages of posting.  I'm contemplating the former, and I would likely be annoyed at the later (though, again, I don't think there's anyway to call it cheating if it's done as part of the discard at clean-up). 

What about putting the stack of smithies and villages in one pile, the coins and victory cards in another, and riffle shuffling them at the end of the turn prior to discarding them?  That's another example of introducing "randomness" to a non-random set that seems inoffensive to me.

[DStu]

Okay, but how do I discard then?  Every act of playing cards orders them in a certain way.  Every act of discarding either preserves or disrupts that order.  Do you have to discard in a way that favors you least?  Do you have to determine the most neutral order of the discard?  If I discard the clumps with the hopes that I will pick up the action clump in my next hand (hooray City stack!), does that constitute manipulating the discard pile?  Do I have a duty to shuffle the cards if I think dumping a clump of action cards in the discard pile will result in a better hand in the future? 

Note that if the rule was along the lines of "randomize your cards in play and hand, and then discard," that'd make me happy in the same irrational way because I would feel like I was de-clumping the cards.

If we could look into each others head, or I could assume you to be honest all the time, I would prefer both "order them in a way to get good starting conditions for mixing" and "don't care".
I proposed the first for the starting deck of 7Copper3Estate myself, and at least for overhand shuffling it is significantly better. But the further we get into the game, and if we can not assume the opponent to be honest, I would become highly suspicious if they starts arranging the deck into any specific order, simply because it's not easy to verify with 7C3E1S3G3T2D3P if the order the deck is put is really a "better" state for mixing than it was before.

You could get better mixing for terminals, but ignore the treasure and "accidently" they keep clumb together, which would result in a deck which is probably better both than the non-preprocessed deck and the perfectly shuffled deck.

Edit: But if we talk about discarding a hand that look like 4 Treasure 1 Victory 2 Terminals, I think it's still possible to decide if we are preprocessing the shuffle with good intentions.

[ftl]

New attempt at reformulating it so that Taco Lobster gets it!

For a given discard pile, you might have

A) Discarded things while only caring about what's on top of the pile
or
B) Discarded things while trying to put them in such a way as to manipulate future draws.

For any given shuffle, you might have

1) A good shuffle; things are mostly randomized.
or
2) A bad shuffle; patterns that were there in the discard persist after shuffling.

If you have (1) a good shuffle, then it doesn't matter whether you had (A) or (B). So why not just do (A)?
If you have (2) a bad shuffle, then (B) is deliberate cheating, AND will prevent you from recognizing that you had a bad shuffle, so the honest thing to do is (A).

To summarize:

1+A = OKAY!
2+A = OKAY! Or, at least, honest, though you should shuffle better.
1+B = OKAY!
2+B = NO! BAD! CHEATING!

Therefore, the honest thing to do is (A). Because IF you do (B), you're either doing something which has no effect (and why would anybody do that???) OR you're implying that you will do a bad shuffle, thus making this action matter.

[Robz888]

IANAL, but I remember being told by law students that if you believe that the actions you will take will kill someone, this is attempted murder. At least in Germany.  But of course that was after some beer, so i don't know. Is OT anyway...

IAL, and it depends on the facts, but there comes a point where the act performed and the result desired are so impossibly unconnected that a charge of attempted murder will not fly.  Most of the scenarios I've posited here are ones that get hashed out in Criminal Law classes all the time.

But the scenarios pertaining to Dominion--ordering the discard and shuffling inadequately--are not at all unconnected!

The reason I have a problem with you giving some deliberate order to your discard pile (other than the perfectly reasonable hiding cards under the top card aspect), is that it is very, very easy to subsequently cheat by not shuffling your deck properly.

To use your murder analogies, if you are sitting at the Dominion table with your gun in front of you, and you say, "I'm not going to kill anyone--goodness, no! that would be wrong--but what's the harm in me loading my gun with bullets and aiming it at your head? I'm not going to kill you, you know. Pointing my gun at your head isn't murder!"

I would say that because you are doing the former (ordering your discard/loading your gun and pointing it at me), it's hard to take you at your word that you aren't doing the latter (incorrectly shuffling/murdering me).

[Taco Lobster]

Therefore, the honest thing to do is (A). Because IF you do (B), you're either doing something which has no effect (and why would anybody do that???) OR you're implying that you will do a bad shuffle, thus making this action matter.

Maybe my clarifying posts have helped in explaining that I'm not talking about some complex weave.  If I have played my hole deck, and I have a stack of action cards and a stack of treasure cards, there's no way for me to be indifferent and/or unaware of the order of discard.  I either choose to put them in clumps into the discard pile (which, if shuffling is inadequte, could result in me getting clusters of coins or action cards) or I put them into the discard pile in some other way which is equally non-random (riffle shuffling the treasures in with the action cards). 

Or, take the two witches example.  I am aware of the discard order when I've played one witch and have another in hand.  I can't become unaware of that fact. 

But, as you note, all of the above is irrelevant/unimportant as long as adequate shuffling is in place.  That's why it doesn't matter how I discard, or what I intend to do when I discard.  Rather than try to divine my unspoken intention, you can just ask me to shuffle antoher 2-3 times, which cures the problem and only highlights the irrationality of my caring about the order of the discard.  Why call someone a cheater when you can just take the appropriate action to prevent any deck manipulation from being successful.

[RisingJaguar]

What's most hilarious about this all is the underlying assumption that this ordering of the discard pile actually works.  Unless it's paired with a way of manipulating the shuffle, it doesn't do anything.  It mostly arises as a response to bad luck, e.g. you get a hand with two Witches, you play one, get annoyed that they collided, and discard the one in play first and the one in your hand last.  That's the typical situation - an irrational, human response to bad luck, not some diabolically clever and impossible way to cheat/exploit the game.

The thing is though why would you rearrange the discard in the first place, hence (at the very least) showing more likelyhood of INTENT to manipulate the shuffle.  You, which you have pointed out many times, do not intend to manipulate the shuffle.  You're fine.

Also the witch scenario you mention is much different than the one that was originally proposed (or at least how I interpret it).  You took it as XXXXXXWXXXXW.  I take it as WXXXXXXXXXXW.  There's a fundamental problem with the second one (reordering your discard).  That's what we're mostly concerned about. 

You're mixing the two up with how to clean-up.  I think you're fine, let it be. 

[Taco Lobster]

IANAL, but I remember being told by law students that if you believe that the actions you will take will kill someone, this is attempted murder. At least in Germany.  But of course that was after some beer, so i don't know. Is OT anyway...

IAL, and it depends on the facts, but there comes a point where the act performed and the result desired are so impossibly unconnected that a charge of attempted murder will not fly.  Most of the scenarios I've posited here are ones that get hashed out in Criminal Law classes all the time.

But the scenarios pertaining to Dominion--ordering the discard and shuffling inadequately--are not at all unconnected!

The reason I have a problem with you giving some deliberate order to your discard pile (other than the perfectly reasonable hiding cards under the top card aspect), is that it is very, very easy to subsequently cheat by not shuffling your deck properly.

To use your murder analogies, if you are sitting at the Dominion table with your gun in front of you, and you say, "I'm not going to kill anyone--goodness, no! that would be wrong--but what's the harm in me loading my gun with bullets and aiming it at your head? I'm not going to kill you, you know. Pointing my gun at your head isn't murder!"

I would say that because you are doing the former (ordering your discard/loading your gun and pointing it at me), it's hard to take you at your word that you aren't doing the latter (incorrectly shuffling/murdering me).

And I would say that you taking the gun, removing all the bullets, and handing it back to me, prevents me from murdering anyone.  Adequate shuffling of an ordered discard pile is the same as removing the bullets from the gun.  I'm in no way, shape, or form stating that inadequate shuffling is not cheating or against the rules.  It absolutely is.  But that's the thing to care about - the shuffling, not the discarding or the intent behind the discarding.

Plus, the gun analogy is rather inapt.  It's more like I have some complicated rube goldberg device that will kill you, and the complexity is so great that, even prior to removing the bullets from the gun at the very end, it's nearly impossible for me to reliably activate it to pull the trigger. 

[theory]

I guess Taco Lobster's point is: if you call someone a cheater because they have consciously manipulated their discard in a beneficial manner, then you are implying some kind of obligation to discard in a non-beneficial manner, because it is impossible not to consciously manipulate your discard. 

Seems like the elegant answer to this is to allow your opponent to arrange your pre-shuffle discard, then you shuffle without looking at it.  You now have every incentive to randomize it as perfectly as possible.

[Taco Lobster]

The thing is though why would you rearrange the discard in the first place, hence (at the very least) showing more likelyhood of INTENT to manipulate the shuffle.  You, which you have pointed out many times, do not intend to manipulate the shuffle.  You're fine.

Because I'm an irrational human with a less than perfect understanding of probability.  I know that my two Witches ended up in the same hand, I can't control it, and yet I want to take some action to stop that bad luck from happening again.  So, I put one Witch at the front of the hand, and one Witch at the back of the hand. 

Also the witch scenario you mention is much different than the one that was originally proposed (or at least how I interpret it).  You took it as XXXXXXWXXXXW.  I take it as WXXXXXXXXXXW.  There's a fundamental problem with the second one (reordering your discard).  That's what we're mostly concerned about. 

You're mixing the two up with how to clean-up.  I think you're fine, let it be.

I guess I just don't see a difference between ordering the cards in the clean-up and ordering them in the discard pile.  They are both done with the same intent, and they're each as likely to actually succeed in influencing the final outcome of the shuffle. 

[Taco Lobster]

Seems like the elegant answer to this is to allow your opponent to arrange your pre-shuffle discard, then you shuffle without looking at it.  You now have every incentive to randomize it as perfectly as possible.

Isn't it even more elegant to shuffle the deck a few extra times and just ignore/not care about what someone thinks they're actually doing when they discard?

Also, thanks to all of you continuing the discussion.  I'd be surprised if you even noticed the ordering of my discards when I play, with the possible exception of how I clean up an action chain (and, honestly, I'm surprised everyone doesn't clean up an action chain the same way).

[theory]

Seems like the elegant answer to this is to allow your opponent to arrange your pre-shuffle discard, then you shuffle without looking at it.  You now have every incentive to randomize it as perfectly as possible.

Isn't it even more elegant to shuffle the deck a few extra times and just ignore/not care about what someone thinks they're actually doing when they discard?

My interpretation of this discussion was that people are bad at shuffling and lack proper incentives to shuffle properly.  It is also very difficult to tell whether someone is adequately shuffling or not, especially with a skilled card-handler.  Cutting the deck is not sufficient, as you can still set up your deck to be biased in your favor after a cut, and having your opponents shuffle creates the opposite problem (i.e., malicious shuffling).

So if you really wanted to be hyper vigilant in a tournament setting, it seems best to force the players themselves to have maximum incentive to make sure their deck is random.  The only way to do this is if they have no knowledge of how the deck is set up but suspect that it may have been rigged against them in some way.

[Robz888]

Seems like the elegant answer to this is to allow your opponent to arrange your pre-shuffle discard, then you shuffle without looking at it.  You now have every incentive to randomize it as perfectly as possible.

Isn't it even more elegant to shuffle the deck a few extra times and just ignore/not care about what someone thinks they're actually doing when they discard?

Also, thanks to all of you continuing the discussion.  I'd be surprised if you even noticed the ordering of my discards when I play, with the possible exception of how I clean up an action chain (and, honestly, I'm surprised everyone doesn't clean up an action chain the same way).

I'm surprised everyone doesn't just lump their cards into a pile and put them on top of the discard as quickly as possible to keep the game moving. It takes about 2 seconds: Scoop up cards, put cards in discard.

[RisingJaguar]

The thing is though why would you rearrange the discard in the first place, hence (at the very least) showing more likelyhood of INTENT to manipulate the shuffle.  You, which you have pointed out many times, do not intend to manipulate the shuffle.  You're fine.

Because I'm an irrational human with a less than perfect understanding of probability.  I know that my two Witches ended up in the same hand, I can't control it, and yet I want to take some action to stop that bad luck from happening again.  So, I put one Witch at the front of the hand, and one Witch at the back of the hand. 

You want to take action to stop bad luck from happening again? That sounds like intent to alter the randomization to me? What happened to you shuffling like crazy to avoid this?

Also the witch scenario you mention is much different than the one that was originally proposed (or at least how I interpret it).  You took it as XXXXXXWXXXXW.  I take it as WXXXXXXXXXXW.  There's a fundamental problem with the second one (reordering your discard).  That's what we're mostly concerned about. 

You're mixing the two up with how to clean-up.  I think you're fine, let it be.

I guess I just don't see a difference between ordering the cards in the clean-up and ordering them in the discard pile.  They are both done with the same intent, and they're each as likely to actually succeed in influencing the final outcome of the shuffle.

One is wrong (reordering your discard pile after the fact, it's in the rules, see the second post).  One is a bit more gray but i think within the rules.  They do sound very similar, but the one distinction is a problem. 

[DStu]

I guess I just don't see a difference between ordering the cards in the clean-up and ordering them in the discard pile.  They are both done with the same intent, and they're each as likely to actually succeed in influencing the final outcome of the shuffle.

I think the points are: In the cleanup, you anyway have some freedom how to discard without anyone even noticing what you are doing. So if you now start do put more work into it, like it is when you arrange VSVSVSGGG or pick some cards during the shuffle and put them somewhere else, you are getting suspicious.

There are ways to preprocess, either as you said riffle-shuffle action-chains, where anybody will see your good intentions to improve randomness, or pileshuffling, here at least everybody will think that you have no control on what you are doing (even if that's might not be true, see above). If you now start cherry-picking some cards and put them somewhere else, there is the possibility to decrease the quality of the starting state, and it might not be easy to tell if you are really doing (by the rules the opponent does not even see the deck, so how should he tell? But even when he looks at the starting distribution, as soon as there are more than 3 types of cards it starts getting difficult).
So when you decrease the quality of the starting state, you try to worsen the shuffling, even if not much of this survives the shuffling, a little bit may, and even if not, why should I trust someone who tries to reduce the quality of the shuffling? Especially if he puts some work into it?

[Taco Lobster]

So if you really wanted to be hyper vigilant in a tournament setting, it seems best to force the players themselves to have maximum incentive to make sure their deck is random.  The only way to do this is if they have no knowledge of how the deck is set up but suspect that it may have been rigged against them in some way.

It seems like you're saying you wouldn't want opponent shuffling of the deck in general because it provides an opportunity for malicious shuffling, but wouldn't the opportunity be even greater with your opponent ordering the pre-shuffle discard pile?

I don't have any problem with your proposed rule, per se.  It just seems like additional shuffling is a simpler (and faster) way of addressing the problem than randomizing the discard. 

Out of curiosity, is shuffle manipulation a skill that easily learned and deployed?  It seems like the problem of adequate shuffling is more pronounced in a game such as Magic, which has actual dollars at stake in the highest level tournaments, and, though there are rules governing the shuffle, I'm not aware of any rule about the original order of your deck prior to shuffling.  I believe there are rules against pile shuffling and/or a rule requiring 3-5 riffle shuffles instead. 

[DStu]

It seems like you're saying you wouldn't want opponent shuffling of the deck in general because it provides an opportunity for malicious shuffling, but wouldn't the opportunity be even greater with your opponent ordering the pre-shuffle discard pile?

I don't think so. No matter what distribution they give you, if you pile-shuffle with a "random" number of stacks (or even irregularly) and afterward riffleshuffle enough, there should not survive much of the starting state.

The point is that now it is not the same person that is maniplating the starting state and shuffling, so by putting work into manipulating the starting state they don't get suspicous of trying to cheat and thus not shuffling properly, AND given the opponent manipulates, their best tactics is to shuffle as good as possible to get rid of the manipulations.

[rrenaud]

Seems like the elegant answer to this is to allow your opponent to arrange your pre-shuffle discard, then you shuffle without looking at it.  You now have every incentive to randomize it as perfectly as possible.

Isn't it even more elegant to shuffle the deck a few extra times and just ignore/not care about what someone thinks they're actually doing when they discard?

Also, thanks to all of you continuing the discussion.  I'd be surprised if you even noticed the ordering of my discards when I play, with the possible exception of how I clean up an action chain (and, honestly, I'm surprised everyone doesn't clean up an action chain the same way).

I think it is more elegant to have a system that solves the incentive problem.  The burden is on me for randomizing your deck, so now I can't complain that you are doing whatever possibly shady things to gain an advantage.  If you got an advantage because I didn't randomize your deck well enough, the problem is on me.

[Taco Lobster]

You want to take action to stop bad luck from happening again? That sounds like intent to alter the randomization to me? What happened to you shuffling like crazy to avoid this?

It is intent to alter the randomization.  It's just not effective because I shuffle like crazy.  It's like in an rpg, where players will roll (or not roll) with a particular die because of it's result on the prior roll.  Some players won't roll a die that came up a 1 because they think it's stuck on bad luck.  Other players won't roll a die that came up 20 because they think the 20 has been used up.  They're both irrational choices to try to influence luck, but the intervening randomization event (rolling the die, shuffling the deck) prevents either from being successful.

One is wrong (reordering your discard pile after the fact, it's in the rules, see the second post).  One is a bit more gray but i think within the rules.  They do sound very similar, but the one distinction is a problem.

Except, as this thread has noted in great detail, "shuffling" is not a defined term other than in the most general sense of introducing randomness to the deck.  So, even if there is a rule that prevents me from putting the discarded cards on the bottom of the pile, once I scoop my cards to shuffle, I can tweak them prior to shuffling without breaking any rule. 

[DStu]

Except, as this thread has noted in great detail, "shuffling" is not a defined term other than in the most general sense of introducing randomness to the deck.  So, even if there is a rule that prevents me from putting the discarded cards on the bottom of the pile, once I scoop my cards to shuffle, I can tweak them prior to shuffling without breaking any rule.

If you ask 100 people if you may look at the cards while shuffleling them, how many do you think will say 'yes'?

[theory]

Out of curiosity, is shuffle manipulation a skill that easily learned and deployed?  It seems like the problem of adequate shuffling is more pronounced in a game such as Magic, which has actual dollars at stake in the highest level tournaments, and, though there are rules governing the shuffle, I'm not aware of any rule about the original order of your deck prior to shuffling.  I believe there are rules against pile shuffling and/or a rule requiring 3-5 riffle shuffles instead. 

I don't know about "easily", but it's certainly not a rare skill.  Any noteworthy magician is capable of riffle shuffling perfectly, and then it's not hard to keep track of where certain cards are.  It is especially trivial to keep one card on the bottom of the deck throughout the riffle shuffling.

I'd be very interested to hear from one of our competitive Magic players on how the MtG community handles shuffling.

[Taco Lobster]

I think it is more elegant to have a system that solves the incentive problem.  The burden is on me for randomizing your deck, so now I can't complain that you are doing whatever possibly shady things to gain an advantage.  If you got an advantage because I didn't randomize your deck well enough, the problem is on me.

And I don't have a problem with that approach, but it just seems like a lot of extra work for a problem that largely doesn't exist.  We've been discussing this very much in the abstract, but it's hard to think of what this looks like in the real world.  Even if I separate my two witches, shuffling can undo that.  If there's a fear of inadequate shuffling, allowing my opponent to shuffle solves the problem, as does requiring me to shuffle until my opponent is satisfied. 

[theory]

As any computer programmer knows, the elegant solution is not necessarily the most practical!

Practically, just keep shuffling and accept the 0.001% that you are playing against an expert shuffler.

Elegantly, create proper incentives so that it doesn't matter how skilled you are at shuffling.

[Taco Lobster]

Out of curiosity, is shuffle manipulation a skill that easily learned and deployed?  It seems like the problem of adequate shuffling is more pronounced in a game such as Magic, which has actual dollars at stake in the highest level tournaments, and, though there are rules governing the shuffle, I'm not aware of any rule about the original order of your deck prior to shuffling.  I believe there are rules against pile shuffling and/or a rule requiring 3-5 riffle shuffles instead. 

I don't know about "easily", but it's certainly not a rare skill.  Any noteworthy magician is capable of riffle shuffling perfectly, and then it's not hard to keep track of where certain cards are.  It is especially trivial to keep one card on the bottom of the deck throughout the riffle shuffling.

I don't think that's how magicians work.  I saw a snippet of an interview from Teller the other day, of Penn and Teller (and I probably spelled his name wrong) discussing a classic card trick, and he noted that the deck itself is stacked and the cards that are revealed have been removed from the deck itself.

Honestly, it never occurred to me to keep one card at the bottom because (a) it would probably miss the next shuffle, but, more importantly, (b) that would be cheating.   

[WanderingWinder]

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.

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.

Check out the second post of the thread.

You mean the post where the rule for what you do with a gained card is set forth?  If you can explain how that appiles to discarding from your hand, I'm all ears.

All discards go on top of the discard pile. Not just gains.

Terrific.  That's still not what we're talking about, but terrific.  We're talking about the order in which you discard from your hand into the discard pile.

We're not talking about that. You are. Which is fine. But I wasn't, so we clearly aren't.
On what you're talking about, it's pretty irrelevant. As long as they go on top of the discard pile, you're fine. But trying to re-arrange them in order to get an advantage is at least deceitful.

And man, if you don't find that attempting to murder someone isn't attempted murder just because you can't prove it, remind me not to live near you.
We're not talking enforcement here, we're talking about what's right and wrong. Just because you can't be punished for it doesn't mean you can morally do it.

[DStu]

As any computer programmer knows, the elegant solution is not necessarily the most practical!

You don't think it's practical to put an elephant to Kairo?