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[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?

[Rabid]

TCCCEETCCCCE However it gets cut no terminal conflict.


And for those ordering their discards. Either it has no effect or you are cheating due to lack of shuffling.

[Fabian]

You guys weaving your deck seriously need to stop. It's cheating no matter what, ranging from somewhat mildish cheating to pretty severe mega cheating depending on how exactly you do it and why exactly you do it. In any case, don't do it, and randomize your damn decks.

[Taco Lobster]

I don't understand.  How is it cheating to order your discard pile if you also shuffle a sufficient amount to randomize your deck?  At best, it's attempting to compensate for the fact that mechanical shuffling doesn't always do the best job randomizing the deck.  At worst, it's superstitious.  In no event is it cheating if the deck is randomized (again, subject to the limitations imposed by mechanical shuffling).

[Rabid]

I would view this as at best superstitious.
If it has any effect on the outcome it is cheating.
Attempting to "compensate" for poor shuffling technique is in my opinion cheating.

[Ozle]

I don't understand.  How is it cheating to order your discard pile if you also shuffle a sufficient amount to randomize your deck?  At best, it's attempting to compensate for the fact that mechanical shuffling doesn't always do the best job randomizing the deck.  At worst, it's superstitious.  In no event is it cheating if the deck is randomized (again, subject to the limitations imposed by mechanical shuffling).

Because people don't often shuffle well enough, whether deliberate cheating, laziness or want to protect the cards. So putting them back seperately will have an effect.

Put two cards together in a deck of 25 cards, then shuffle them how you would in a game. Chances are for most people they are still together a significant portion of the time, unless you do the spread them out on the table style or are aware of the need to shuffle REALLY thoroughly.

[Taco Lobster]

Whatever.  Mechanical shuffling doesn't always do a terrific job of randomizing cards.  Plus, as I already noted, it's easy enough to handle through discarding order if that's somehow less offensive.   

How about this: is it cheating when you have a good engine that can draw your entire deck to put the treasures in one pile, the actions in another, and riffle shuffle the whole thing together as your initial randomization?  Again, this could be accomplished through careful discarding if one is so inclined.

[Fabian]

"Attempting to compensate for the fact that mechanical shuffling doesn't always do the best job randomizing the deck."

I understand a lot of people just don't really consider it, or don't really care, or haven't thought very hard about it until now, or something else similar. But if you read the above, think about it for a few seconds, and still don't understand that this is VERY CLEARLY cheating, by definition (if the rule is "your deck should be randomized"), then I just don't know what to tell you. This is not my opinion, and it's not up for debate. If the deck is supposed to be randomized, and you take steps to "compensate" deck order, that's not following the rules.

[Taco Lobster]

Is it cheating if I sacrifice a duck before shuffling my deck because I believe it will cause the gods to bless my draws?  By your logic, that's an attempt to compensate for deck order, so it must be cheating, even if it has no effect (which should be the case if you shuffle correctly after performing whatever magical rituals make you feel better about the randomization process).

As for cheating, show me the rule about the order you discard. This can easily be done without touching the discard pile. 

[Ozle]

Is it cheating if I sacrifice a duck before shuffling my deck?  By your logic, that's an attempt to compensate for deck order, so it must be cheating, even if it has no effect (which should be the case if you shuffle correctly after performing whatever magical rituals make you feel better about the randomization process).

If you believe that sacrificing a duck will help you get a better shuffle, then yes you are attempting to cheat.

However, you wont be sucessful in trying to cheat because the duck does nothing.

plus, you'll get through a lot of ducks in a chapel'd deck!

[Taco Lobster]

So is it attempted cheating when football players pray to god to help them win?

Seriously?  Why hasn't the NFL cracked down on this?

Edit: Also, I just committed attempted murder by creating a voodoo doll of Paris Hilton and stabbing it with a pin.

Edit2:  Also, anyone have a good recipe for duck?

[Ozle]

So is it attempted cheating when football players pray to god to help them win?

Seriously?  Why hasn't the NFL cracked down on this?

Because God doesn't exist, therefore thier attempt at cheating fails.

[Ozle]

So is it attempted cheating when football players pray to god to help them win?

Seriously?  Why hasn't the NFL cracked down on this?

Edit: Also, I just committed attempted murder by creating a voodoo doll of Paris Hilton and stabbing it with a pin.

Do you really believe that Vodoo exists? Because if you dont then that example doesnt work...

[Taco Lobster]

Heck, I believe sacrificing a duck improves my shuffle luck.  Voodoo's not that far up the road.  And, even if I don't believe in voodoo, I'm sure someone, somewhere does and has attempted murder in this way.  I don't envy the prosecutor who brings the case.

[Taco Lobster]

The real problem here is shuffling, all the rest is lipstick on a pig.  If you're randomizing your deck by shuffling, none of this matters.  If you're not randomizing your deck by shuffling, you're also cheating by breaking that rule (you're just not doing a particularly good job at cheating). 

Theoretically, in every shuffle, you are hoping that you get a good hand, or a particular card.  That hope, even should it blossom into belief, is still not cheating.

And none of this matters because you can get 90% of the way there through discard order, which has no applicable rules to stop you from discarding in a certain order.  So, really, if you're hung up on someone performing silly shuffle routines, demand a cut of their deck or ask that they shuffle some more until you feel it's sufficiently randomized.  No need to call someone a cheater when what they are doing shouldn't have any affect on the game unless they are also committing another form of cheating (not randomizing their deck).

[olneyce]

This is one of those issues that's not a big enough deal to really worry about.  But it absolutely is cheating.  It's just that there are degrees of cheating.  In a friendly game at my house, I wouldn't even bother to mention it.  No point in being antagonistic.  But if we're talking about what people OUGHT to do, it is extremely clear that you should strive for zero awareness of where any given card might be in your deck.  To the extent that you make any deliberate effort to influence the placement of cards, you are cheating.

[Taco Lobster]

This is one of those issues that's not a big enough deal to really worry about.  But it absolutely is cheating.  It's just that there are degrees of cheating.  In a friendly game at my house, I wouldn't even bother to mention it.  No point in being antagonistic.  But if we're talking about what people OUGHT to do, it is extremely clear that you should strive for zero awareness of where any given card might be in your deck.  To the extent that you make any deliberate effort to influence the placement of cards, you are cheating.

Again, how is it cheating?  The cheating component, if any, is insufficiently randomizing such that the order of the discard pile matters.  Your definition (strive to have zero awareness) would make keeping track of your cards into cheating (e.g., I haven't drawn my gold yet, and I have 3 cards in my deck, so one of them must be my gold).

If you can't find a rule that's being broken, it's not cheating.  There is technically a rule about the gained card going on top of your discard pile, so, if you're really feeling petty, you can cite that as authority against rearranging your discard pile.  There is no rule about the order in which you discard your cards, and if you choose to do so as action, treasure, action, treasure, etc., you are not cheating in any way, shape, or form. 

[ftl]

If you're randomizing your deck by shuffling, none of this matters.  If you're not randomizing your deck by shuffling, you're also cheating by breaking that rule (you're just not doing a particularly good job at cheating). 

Well, think about it this way - what happens if you don't shuffle well?

I mean, it happens. Sometimes you get lazy and only do one or two quick riffle or overhand shuffles because the other guy just started his turn and come on, you only need to draw one card for his Margrave, people are waiting for you to respond! So sometimes bad shuffles happen.

And sometimes that'll benefit you and sometimes it'll hurt you. Depending on how exactly your shuffle is bad, maybe cards that were together end up staying together, or maybe cards that were bought later in the shuffle end up being higher in the deck, or whatever non-randomness your mistake introduces. But if, prior to the shuffle, you rearrange the discard pile so that if you shuffle badly, then it benefits you... well, that's just a recipe for encouraging lazy shuffling. If you make a mistake and it's your fault, it should either hurt you (on average) or have no effect (on average), you shouldn't be rewarded for a bad shuffling effort.

[Rabid]

Its all about intent.
Discarding in an order to try to influence the next shuffle is cheating.
Discarding in the same order to hide hidden information from your opponent is not.

[rrenaud]

This is starting to generate more heat than light.

Basically, placing cards in a funny order during discard should not matter at all, because your shuffling should randomize away any information that you build into the discard via clever discarding.  Ergo, it follows that if you are discarding in a way such that you intend to modify the uniform randomness of the deck post shuffle, you must be either cheating or delusional or both.

Deducing unobserved information (say, proportion of treasures left in the draw) as a function of just observed information (cards you've seen/remembered about the deck as you've drawn it) is totally fine, and obviously not what olneyce meant by striving to have no knowledge of the unobserved.  It meant that you shouldn't bias the the distribution of the unobserved deck through clever placement of cards into the discard and a lack of shuffling.

[dondon151]

Sometimes when I feel the urge to order my deck, I keep on shuffling and cutting my deck until I don't know where my cards are anymore.

[Taco Lobster]

There's a broken causal chain between "I put my deck in order" and "I randomize my deck" that leads to "I get the draws I want."  I can shuffle my cards any way I choose so long as I randomize them afterwards.  I can put them in alphabetical order, by color, even by artist's last name.  It doesn't matter as long as I randomize them, and that's not cheating.  End of story.

And, there's still the discard order which no one has bothered to address.  Even if ordering your discard pile is somehow cheating because you have the amazing ability to randomize cards to preserve the original order you put them in, it's not cheating to discard your cards in a certain order to create the same outcome (which you can then use your magical randomizing ability to retain that order because you're mad skilled like that).

Am I really the only one who plays action cards in one stack, treasure in another stack, sets aside the victory cards in a third stack, and then riffle shuffle each pile into the other on my first shuffle of a good engine deck that draws itself?  Is that cheating?  Why?  Am I supposed to put each stack on top of the other and then shuffle?  Don't I know the order of the deck still?  Do I have to shuffle my hand before I discard?  How much do I have to do to purge the knowledge of my card order prior to randomizing my cards to avoid cheating?  Isn't that the point of randomizing the cards?

[Donald X.]

I don't understand.  How is it cheating to order your discard pile if you also shuffle a sufficient amount to randomize your deck?

There are two environments to play in: ones where the players make the rules, and ones where some higher authority does. Let us refer to these two environments as "kitchen table" and "tournament." We could add "digital" as a third environment, but the shuffling is automatically good there, although I guess some people do blow it on that algorithm.

At the kitchen table, feel free to play whatever variants you want. If everyone agrees to the variant it's fine, if someone disagrees but someone else secretly does it anyway it's cheating. This seems really straightforward. You can all agree to sort your decks rather than shuffling them or whatever you like.

At a tournament, there are two problems with ordering your deck before shuffling thoroughly.

1. It's stalling. It's not okay if it has an effect on your randomizing, and if it has no effect it is an action with no effect that takes up time. We only have so much time for these tournament games. This, by itself, is enough to always prohibit it from all tournaments.

2. It's clear that you're trying to cheat. I mean get real. The entire point of the ordering is that it may help your draws. It doesn't matter if you then shuffle thoroughly; you don't get to try to cheat, just as you don't get to cheat. Trying to cheat, even with no chance of success, is itself cheating (a different kind of cheating, since you failed at the first kind). Similarly attempted murder is illegal even if no-one dies. wtf, right? I mean what if you just want to try but fail to kill someone because you're superstitious? Well local laws may vary.

We are not talking about sacrificing ducks; ordering your deck has a direct effect on the final order, even if you shuffle thoroughly, which sacrificing a duck does not. Sacrificing a duck would be way heavy stalling though.

[Taco Lobster]

Ergo, it follows that if you are discarding in a way such that you intend to modify the uniform randomness of the deck post shuffle, you must be either cheating or delusional or both.

Which action is the cheating?  The discarding, or the not sufficiently randomizing the deck?  If it's the discarding, how is that cheating?  What rule does it break? 

I guess I just don't understand what the correct way of discarding is in order to avoid cheating under this very liberal definition.  If I end up with stacks of treasures, stacks of actions, and stacks of victory cards because that's the finished state of playing an ordered turn, how do I put those in my discard pile and not cheat?  Seriously - how?  I can't shuffle them together because I could be doing so in the hopes of avoiding clumps.  I can't put them in a stack in my discard pile, because I can do so in the hopes that they do clump and that I get a bunch of treasure. 

[Taco Lobster]

2. It's clear that you're trying to cheat. I mean get real. The entire point of the ordering is that it may help your draws.

Maybe I'm a really bad shuffler, and I can't adequately randomize my deck.  If I were to shuffle without doing some additional pre-randomization (because, let's face it, the cards end up in non-random clumps through the act of playing them) my shuffle would be even less random than if I just shuffled the clumps (which would stay as non-random clumps).

The cheating component is inadequate randomization.  I have no disagreement with that.  But that's solved through additional shuffling/randomization techniques, not by dictating the order in which a player discards or initially assembles their deck for the shuffle and somehow divining their intent.   

[Fabian]

"additional pre-randomization"

I don't think these words mean what you think they mean.

[RisingJaguar]

Ergo, it follows that if you are discarding in a way such that you intend to modify the uniform randomness of the deck post shuffle, you must be either cheating or delusional or both.

Which action is the cheating?  The discarding, or the not sufficiently randomizing the deck?  If it's the discarding, how is that cheating?  What rule does it break? 

I guess I just don't understand what the correct way of discarding is in order to avoid cheating under this very liberal definition.  If I end up with stacks of treasures, stacks of actions, and stacks of victory cards because that's the finished state of playing an ordered turn, how do I put those in my discard pile and not cheat?  Seriously - how?  I can't shuffle them together because I could be doing so in the hopes of avoiding clumps.  I can't put them in a stack in my discard pile, because I can do so in the hopes that they do clump and that I get a bunch of treasure.

The post shuffling is the problem, he says the sentence before that the silly order shouldn't matter hypothetically if you have amazing shuffling.  But a lot of us do not, and don't have the patience to do that.

Also if you have two decks, both shuffled the same, one with 'normal' order, one with 'funny' order.  The funny order inherently has been altered, even if its marginal. 

What it sounds like for your case, you seem to be doing okay.  I presume you take care POST shuffle to compensate, and have no clue where cards are.  That's not to say everyone else does that as well, and those people (with intention to distort the order before and after shuffle) are cheating.

[rrenaud]

Discard in any way you want.  Just make sure you shuffle enough that the discard order doesn't matter.

Or fuck it, admit that dominion sucks IRL compared to on iso, and just play on iso while you still can.  Problem solved .

[theory]

Maybe it's a combination of multiple factors.

Stacking the deck doesn't itself mean you cheat if you then generate a true random shuffle.  And you do need to discard in some way, and there is no obligation to "spread out" your stuff before starting your random shuffle.

Generating a random shuffle is clearly not cheating.

The problem is that no person in real life generates perfect randomness with their shuffle, and players know it.  It is therefore cheating to stack the deck with the intent that your subsequent pseudorandom shuffle generates better than expected outcomes.  What if you just happen to like to stack your card types before shuffling, for aesthetic reasons?  Then it's your obligation to do your best to generate a true random shuffle.  This obligation is not present if you are unaware of the arrangement of your discards.

[Taco Lobster]

Also if you have two decks, both shuffled the same, one with 'normal' order, one with 'funny' order.  The funny order inherently has been altered, even if its marginal. 

What it sounds like for your case, you seem to be doing okay.  I presume you take care POST shuffle to compensate, and have no clue where cards are.  That's not to say everyone else does that as well, and those people (with intention to distort the order before and after shuffle) are cheating.

Absolutely.  That's why I keep emphasizing the need to shuffle. 

I guess I look at it like this: the act of playing dominion results in non-random, ordered clumps of cards.  That's just as much a non-random starting point as the carefully laid out action, treasure, action, treasure method.  To avoid ending up with a large number of non-random clumps, you order the discard pile so as not to have clumps.  Then you shuffle like mad because that should do an even better job of breaking up the non-random clumps.  Finally, if you want some tournament style rules, you provide the opponent an opportunity to cut the deck and/or demand further shuffling. 

It's not possible to enforce a vague rule based on the intent of the order of your discard or your style of shuffling.  It is possible to add precautions to increase randomness, which is a much better way of addressing the problem than trying to bring cheating into the picture.

[Taco Lobster]

Discard in any way you want.  Just make sure you shuffle enough that the discard order doesn't matter.

Or fuck it, admit that dominion sucks IRL compared to on iso, and just play on iso while you still can.  Problem solved .

Done!

[ftl]

Maybe I'm a really bad shuffler, and I can't adequately randomize my deck.  If I were to shuffle without doing some additional pre-randomization (because, let's face it, the cards end up in non-random clumps through the act of playing them) my shuffle would be even less random than if I just shuffled the clumps (which would stay as non-random clumps).

The statistician in me cries at this

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.

[RisingJaguar]

Also if you have two decks, both shuffled the same, one with 'normal' order, one with 'funny' order.  The funny order inherently has been altered, even if its marginal. 

What it sounds like for your case, you seem to be doing okay.  I presume you take care POST shuffle to compensate, and have no clue where cards are.  That's not to say everyone else does that as well, and those people (with intention to distort the order before and after shuffle) are cheating.

Absolutely.  That's why I keep emphasizing the need to shuffle. 

I guess I look at it like this: the act of playing dominion results in non-random, ordered clumps of cards.  That's just as much a non-random starting point as the carefully laid out action, treasure, action, treasure method.  To avoid ending up with a large number of non-random clumps, you order the discard pile so as not to have clumps.  Then you shuffle like mad because that should do an even better job of breaking up the non-random clumps.

That's great shuffling! Better than me.  But you're probably only defending a small portion of people, and definitely not the people this thread was created for. 

[Taco Lobster]

Maybe I'm a really bad shuffler, and I can't adequately randomize my deck.  If I were to shuffle without doing some additional pre-randomization (because, let's face it, the cards end up in non-random clumps through the act of playing them) my shuffle would be even less random than if I just shuffled the clumps (which would stay as non-random clumps).

The statistician in me cries at this

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.

See subsequent post clarifying the point.  Is there an obligation to put your discard in non-randomized clumps? 

[jonts26]

Am I really the only one who plays action cards in one stack, treasure in another stack, sets aside the victory cards in a third stack, and then riffle shuffle each pile into the other on my first shuffle of a good engine deck that draws itself?  Is that cheating?  Why? 

Well you are only supposed to have one discard pile and since you aren't allowed to look through your discard pile, ordering your cards before you reshuffle is in fact cheating in and of itself.

EDIT: Also, the rules state you must place discarded cards on top of the discard pile. The cards which are discarded together can be placed in any order.

[Axxle]

Isn't there a rule that you can't look through your discard unless a card allows you to?

edit: jonts26 beat me to it.

[Taco Lobster]

Well you are only supposed to have one discard pile and since you aren't allowed to look through your discard pile, ordering your cards before you reshuffle is in fact cheating in and of itself.

I do have one discard pile.  I could just as easily discard my cards in the order I want rather than piling them and riffle shuffling.  I'm not talking about the discard pile at this point, I'm talking about cleaning up the piles of cards in front of you after drawing and playing your entire deck. 

EDIT: Also, the rules state you must place discarded cards on top of the discard pile. The cards which are discarded together can be placed in any order.

So no one else does this with an engine that draws itself?  Do you play with cards randomly strewn in front of you so they don't form non-random clumps, or do you just dump the clumps into the discard pile.

[variance]

Can honestly say I feel dumber after reading this thread. And so...to add to the debate I would love to see someone prove, mathematically, how the placement of two cards pre-shuffle can effect outcome of the inherent draw (given that the shuffle was considered 'adequate' by a casino's standards). 

pro-tip: I'm trying

[jonts26]

Well you are only supposed to have one discard pile and since you aren't allowed to look through your discard pile, ordering your cards before you reshuffle is in fact cheating in and of itself.

I do have one discard pile.  I could just as easily discard my cards in the order I want rather than piling them and riffle shuffling.  I'm not talking about the discard pile at this point, I'm talking about cleaning up the piles of cards in front of you after drawing and playing your entire deck. 

EDIT: Also, the rules state you must place discarded cards on top of the discard pile. The cards which are discarded together can be placed in any order.

So no one else does this with an engine that draws itself?  Do you play with cards randomly strewn in front of you so they don't form non-random clumps, or do you just dump the clumps into the discard pile.

Apologies, I misread your post. It seemed to me like you were organizing your cards before you shuffled your discard pile to make a new draw deck. But everything I said is still true. You can discard your current hand however you feel like. If you want to shuffle it before you do, go nuts.

And if you do draw your whole deck you can order all of your cards however you want before discarding. But you still have to randomize them when you make your draw pile.

[ftl]

I would love to see someone prove, mathematically, how the placement of two cards pre-shuffle can effect outcome of the inherent draw (given that the shuffle was considered 'adequate' by a casino's standards). 

I strongly suspect that an average shuffle in a game of Dominion would not be considered adequate by casino standards. What would be far more relevant would be a proof of how the placement of two cards pre-shuffle can affect the outcome of draws assuming a sufficiently *bad* shuffle.

[Taco Lobster]

I'm really curious now - how do people play engine decks/shuffle them when they are finished with a turn?  Just scoop em on up?  Do you throw down the handful of victory cards prior to doing the scoop, or do you discard them and then do the scoop?  Can't you manipulate the way you scoop to influence the outcome of your deck to the same extent as ordering your deck? 

Does any of this change if the intent is to avoid the non-random clumps as opposed to ordering the cards for a better turn? 

[jonts26]

I'm really curious now - how do people play engine decks/shuffle them when they are finished with a turn?  Just scoop em on up?  Do you throw down the handful of victory cards prior to doing the scoop, or do you discard them and then do the scoop?  Can't you manipulate the way you scoop to influence the outcome of your deck to the same extent as ordering your deck? 

Does any of this change if the intent is to avoid the non-random clumps as opposed to ordering the cards for a better turn?

As has been already stated, if the shuffle is good enough, the order of the discard has no statistical effect on the order of the draw pile. If the shuffle is bad, you are cheating either intentionally or unintentionally. Personally I just scoop them all up and throw them on the discard. But I think I do a fairly good job in shuffling. At least, I shuffle way more than most of the other people I play with, and usually incorporate multiple methods per shuffle.

[Robz888]

I'm really curious now - how do people play engine decks/shuffle them when they are finished with a turn?  Just scoop em on up?  Do you throw down the handful of victory cards prior to doing the scoop, or do you discard them and then do the scoop?  Can't you manipulate the way you scoop to influence the outcome of your deck to the same extent as ordering your deck? 

Does any of this change if the intent is to avoid the non-random clumps as opposed to ordering the cards for a better turn?

You can't manipulate anything. You MUST shuffle enough so that it doesn't matter what order the cards went into the discard. Do the cool bridge shuffle 7 times. Make the cards into a "Go Fish" fishy pond. Offer your neighbor a cut. Why is this so confusing?

[Taco Lobster]

As has been already stated, if the shuffle is good enough, the order of the discard has no statistical effect on the order of the draw pile. If the shuffle is bad, you are cheating either intentionally or unintentionally.

I know, that's what I've been saying for 2 pages now!    

But people keep saying that because mechanical shuffles are inherently non-random, any ordering of your discard pile is cheating.  That leads me to the question of how people are handling the non-random clumps that occur through playing Dominion. 

[ftl]

 

I'm really curious now - how do people play engine decks/shuffle them when they are finished with a turn?  Just scoop em on up?  Do you throw down the handful of victory cards prior to doing the scoop, or do you discard them and then do the scoop? 

I hadn't really thought about it. When I play, I place actions in a tree structure to keep track of actions, and then treasures off to the side after I'm done with my action phase. Usually, afterwards I'll rearrange them when counting the total treasure, especially if it's a huge engine; it's easier to place them in groups and be like 'ok, these four grand markets get me one province, these four treasures get me another, and the remainder here is $X which I spend on other stuff'. Whatever green is left in my hand I just hold on to or put down. Then I pick everything up, put it in a deck and start shuffling.

Can't you manipulate the way you scoop to influence the outcome of your deck to the same extent as ordering your deck? 

Yes, manipulating the scoop to influence the outcome of your shuffling is the same thing as reordering your discard to affect your shuffling which is equivalent to lots of other undetectable but unfair tricks to manipulate what happens post-shuffle.

Does any of this change if the intent is to avoid the non-random clumps as opposed to ordering the cards for a better turn? 

If your intent is to avoid some particular card ordering - then that's inherently non-random!

There's nothing 'non-random' about clumps. What IS non-random is deliberately manipulating what cards go where in order to prevent them.

If you have a good shuffle, then clumps will appear as often as they're statistically likely to appear, with no need to pre-arrange the cards. If you have a bad shuffle, then a lack of clumps is just as non-random as a clump.

If you're deliberately changing the order of cards, while looking at them, before you shuffle, the ONLY reason you could possibly be doing this is if your shuffle isn't good enough and you're attempting to influence the deck order. The solution to this is to shuffle more, while not looking at the cards.

[Taco Lobster]

You can't manipulate anything. You MUST shuffle enough so that it doesn't matter what order the cards went into the discard. Do the cool bridge shuffle 7 times. Make the cards into a "Go Fish" fishy pond. Offer your neighbor a cut. Why is this so confusing?

I have no idea why it's so confusing.  I've been saying that for 2 pages and people are still saying that it's cheating or somehow depends on the intent when you discard/order the discard pile.  I keep saying it doesn't matter as long as you shuffle enough to sufficiently randomize the deck and, if you're still worried, let the opponent demand further shuffling and/or a cut.

[Ozle]

Think its time for everyone to disagree and go seperate ways on this one. Its been three pages and no closer to a concensus, so no reason anyone to get even more worked up over it

[Taco Lobster]

If your intent is to avoid some particular card ordering - then that's inherently non-random!

There's nothing 'non-random' about clumps. What IS non-random is deliberately manipulating what cards go where in order to prevent them.

How is there nothing non-random about the clumps that happen from playing the game?  Every dominion player I've ever seen will have their actions in a pile/tree after playing them, their treasures in another pile/on-top, and their victory cards in hand.  Three clumps of non-random cards.  Now you need to discard them and I ask, how?  How do I discard them with the intent to have my discard be random?  We've apparently established/assumed that shuffling does not introduce enough randomness, and if I choose the order I put the cards in the discard pile, that's not random.  How do I get random order in my discard pile?

[yuma]

Well I certainly didn't intend to make another ethics debate page similar to the point counter controversy of 2011, but thanks for all the feedback.

I think what I am taking from everyone's feedback is this:

It doesn't really matter in what order you put cards into your discard IF you efficiently shuffle your deck. It also doesn't matter how you shuffle as long as it is done well. However, arranging cards in your discard is of bad taste--and according to some is illegal--and has an aura of cheating because it implies that you don't plan on effectively shuffling your deck. 


I think I will show some of these points to my friends and establish some houserules for in regard to shuffling.

Again, thanks for the feedback and sorry for any conflict because of the discussion.

[ftl]

How do I discard them with the intent to have my discard be random? 

You can't. You're looking at them; the human brain is very terrible at producing randomness. There is no such thing as 'arranging the cards to be random' - it's a contradiction in terms. If you rearrange them deliberately, you're changing from something that looks obviously non-random (and, in fact, is obviously non-random) to something that looks random (but isn't, it's as non-random as it was before).

To make them random, you flip them over so you can't see them, and you shuffle.

We've apparently established/assumed that shuffling does not introduce enough randomness, and if I choose the order I put the cards in the discard pile, that's not random.  How do I get random order in my discard pile?

Shuffle more.

It's okay if they start out extremely non-random. If you have enough shuffles, and shuffle well enough, you'll randomize them.

The big trap is if you rearrange them so that they LOOK random to the naked eye... and then you shuffle them badly, and then you can't tell that you've shuffled them badly because it 'looks' random, without clumps.

THAT'S what people often do by 'separating' things in their discard pile. They get away with bad shuffles, and then don't notice their bad shuffles because they're rearranging cards to fit a misguided notion of randomnesss.

It's better to just put the cards down, and then shuffle. It's okay if they start out obviously looking not random! That's good! That means that if you shuffle badly, it'll be easy for you to see and shuffle better next time!

It doesn't really matter in what order you put cards into your discard IF you efficiently shuffle your deck. It also doesn't matter how you shuffle as long as it is done well. However, arranging cards in your discard is of bad taste--and according to some is illegal--and has an aura of cheating because it implies that you don't plan on effectively shuffling your deck. 

That is a summary I entirely agree with, 100%.

[Taco Lobster]

THAT'S what people often do by 'separating' things in their discard pile. They get away with bad shuffles, and then don't notice their bad shuffles because they're rearranging cards to fit a misguided notion of randomnesss.

It's better to just put the cards down, and then shuffle. It's okay if they start out obviously looking not random! That's good! That means that if you shuffle badly, it'll be easy for you to see and shuffle better next time!

Okay, fair enough - I can see what you mean about the ordered discard pile creating the appearance of impropriety, particularly if it is part of a two-step combo where the second step is bad shuffling.  I would find that behavior to be douchey.  But, again, the solution as we both keep saying is to require additional shuffling/randominization.  We don't need to call anyone a cheater, or attempt to determine their intent when they discard/shuffle - those are irrelevant pieces of information.  The only relevant question is whether the deck is sufficiently randomized, irrespective of their intent regarding its randomization.  Intent has nothing to do with whether the deck is random if an appropriate process for randomization is followed (e.g., multiple shuffles using varying techniques).  Pre-ordering the cards in advance of a shuffle is nothing more than blowing on the dice.

[Fabian]

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.

[Taco Lobster]

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.

[Fabian]

Such a sneaky strategy, editing in stuff after I've +1'd your post Now I had to unvote and everything.

[tlloyd]

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.

[eHalcyon]

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.

[Robz888]

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.

[ftl]

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.

[ashersky]

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.

[Robz888]

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.

[eHalcyon]

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.

[ashersky]

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?

[DStu]

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.

[Robz888]

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.

[ashersky]

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.

[Robz888]

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!

[eHalcyon]

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".

[DStu]

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.

[eHalcyon]

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.

[ftl]

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.

[DStu]

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.

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

[Taco Lobster]

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!

[WanderingWinder]

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]

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.

[RisingJaguar]

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?...

[Taco Lobster]

As I said before, good luck prosecuting the voodoo practioner for attempted murder.

[WanderingWinder]

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.

No, you just need to come up with a way that sufficiently randomizes your deck. I never said that that's impossible.
Look, it's not that complicated. You have to follow the rules, and that means discard on top. You need to sufficiently randomize your deck, which means lots of shuffling at the least. And you shouldn't be trying to consciously take advantage of any lack of randomness by the order of your discards.
Of course, if you can come up with a perfect randomization algorithm, then great, and it doesn't matter which order you discard in, except still follow the discard-on-top rule.
The big issue is trying to pathologically take advantage of the inherent lack of randomness you get from shuffling. Like, I assume we're talking friendly games, so you don't want to bend over backwards trying to get stuff perfectly random. But because it's friendly you can also not try to weirdly discard to take advantage of things.

[WanderingWinder]

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!

Yeah, attempted murder is still bad even if you don't actually succeed in killing the guy. I don't understand what's hard about that. And because you're 'taking an action', it's not just in thought. Clearly.

[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.

[RisingJaguar]

As I said before, good luck prosecuting the voodoo practioner for attempted murder.

The point wasn't to catch every single cheater out there by the slimmest of margins or figure out how to catch people in the act of cheating.  It's to define what constitutes as cheating.  We're just trying to set general guidelines on what constitutes as cheating. 

[Ozle]

on a side note, I just tried the sacrificing a duck thing and its complately untrue, drew both torturers same hand.

[danno]

See http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/course/topics/winning_number.html

7 shuffles and your conscience is clean.

Seems like a lot of sacrificed bits over this issue ...

Cheers

Dan

[Ozle]

7 shuffles with 52 cards though, so I reckon anything less than 30 and your good with 4 or 5?
(In the same way it says that 2 decks would need to be shuffled 9 times)

[ecq]

This thread is way too complicated.  It can all be resolved by common sense.  Put cards on top of the discard pile in whatever order is quickest.  When you shuffle, do so thoroughly.  If, after shuffling, you think you might get screwed by cards being discarded in whatever order, shuffle more.  I've heard the magic number of 7 shuffles for a poker deck as well (and had it drilled into me by my card shark grandmother).

In other words, take any neurotic discard behavior and turn it into neurotic shuffling behavior.

Also, learn to live with the fact that randomness doesn't always look random.  Yesterday on Isotropic I had a draw pile of > 20 cards, 6 of which were Golds.  I drew 5 Golds in one hand (the 6th missed the next shuffle, argh).  It happens once in a blue moon and doesn't mean the random number generator or your shuffling is broken.  It's a problem if you never see a hand like that.

[DStu]

7 shuffles with 52 cards though, so I reckon anything less than 30 and your good with 4 or 5?
(In the same way it says that 2 decks would need to be shuffled 9 times)

If you're refer to the paper, I think 7 is too low, as this is only the 3/2log n-term, ignoring the \theta, which you also want to have to be greater than zero. And I don't think that number decreases much, as it's only logarithmically dependend on n, so 25 cards about one shuffle less than 50.

Table 3 gives numbers. What may rescue you with lower numbers is that we are not talking about 25 distinct cards, but usually many of them will be same.

Edit: If you think "real" shuffling will take to long and you want some preprocessing, do pile shuffling. That way you can't take advantage over "real" randomness because you can't* really influence the ....... wait ....

What about this: You play BMU, so every discard will consist of 6 cards. Now if your buy is always at the same position of this discarded cards, and you are pileshuffling on say 3 or 6 piles, you clumb all your buys together, which in the beginning will be the good cards (and in the end the bad ones). Assumming not perfect shuffling now this will result in a probably better deck than it would be without pile shuffling...

[Taco Lobster]

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.

[Taco Lobster]

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!

Yeah, attempted murder is still bad even if you don't actually succeed in killing the guy. I don't understand what's hard about that. And because you're 'taking an action', it's not just in thought. Clearly.

Great.  Call the police, I just committed attempted murder by taking an action with the intent to kill someone.  If I attempt to kill someone by charging my phone, with the full intent of killing someone, that's not attempted murder, and if they die, that's not murder.

[Taco Lobster]

What if I don't understand how Mine works, and I think the gained card goes in my discard pile instead of in my hand.  Intending to cheat, I put the card in my hand instead.  Did I just cheat because I had the intent to cheat and took an action, even though I could legally take that action?

[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.

[WanderingWinder]

What if I don't understand how Mine works, and I think the gained card goes in my discard pile instead of in my hand.  Intending to cheat, I put the card in my hand instead.  Did I just cheat because I had the intent to cheat and took an action, even though I could legally take that action?

Yes.

[Taco Lobster]

This thread is way too complicated.  It can all be resolved by common sense.  Put cards on top of the discard pile in whatever order is quickest.  When you shuffle, do so thoroughly.  If, after shuffling, you think you might get screwed by cards being discarded in whatever order, shuffle more.  I've heard the magic number of 7 shuffles for a poker deck as well (and had it drilled into me by my card shark grandmother).

In other words, take any neurotic discard behavior and turn it into neurotic shuffling behavior.

Also, learn to live with the fact that randomness doesn't always look random.  Yesterday on Isotropic I had a draw pile of > 20 cards, 6 of which were Golds.  I drew 5 Golds in one hand (the 6th missed the next shuffle, argh).  It happens once in a blue moon and doesn't mean the random number generator or your shuffling is broken.  It's a problem if you never see a hand like that.

I agree.  This whole discarding issue is (a) negligible and (b) irrational.  To start saying it's cheating to take an action which you're allowed to do (discarding your cards in any order) when it doesn't have an effect (because you shuffled sufficiently), is absurd.

I think this quote from A Few Good Men sums up my feelings:

Lieutenant Dave Spradling: I'm going to charge him with possession and being under the influence while on duty. You plead guilty I recommend 30 days in the brig with loss of rank and pay.
Kaffee: It was oregano, Dave. It was 10 dollars worth of oregano.
Lieutenant Dave Spradling: Yeah, but your client thought it was marijuana.
Kaffee: My client's a moron that's not against the law.
Lieutenant Dave Spradling: Kaffee, I have people to answer to just like you do. I'm going to charge him.
Kaffee: With what? Possession of a condiment?

[Taco Lobster]

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.

[DStu]

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!

Yeah, attempted murder is still bad even if you don't actually succeed in killing the guy. I don't understand what's hard about that. And because you're 'taking an action', it's not just in thought. Clearly.

Great.  Call the police, I just committed attempted murder by taking an action with the intent to kill someone.  If I attempt to kill someone by charging my phone, with the full intent of killing someone, that's not attempted murder, and if they die, that's not murder.

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...

My opinion: If it's not cheating, it's at least exploiting. If it works or not is hard to tell, because it only doesn't work if you are shuffling correctly. And if you already prepare to exploit the shuffling, why should I believe you that you want to shuffle correctly? And it's hard to tell if you improve an event with 15% probability to one with 20% probability...

[Taco Lobster]

What if I don't understand how Mine works, and I think the gained card goes in my discard pile instead of in my hand.  Intending to cheat, I put the card in my hand instead.  Did I just cheat because I had the intent to cheat and took an action, even though I could legally take that action?

Yes.

Uh, how?  How is that cheating? 

If I play every hand intending to cheat but follow the rules in doing so, is that cheating?

If I bought my dominion cards in the belief that they were magic and would work better for me and me alone, is that cheating?

[Robz888]

What if I don't understand how Mine works, and I think the gained card goes in my discard pile instead of in my hand.  Intending to cheat, I put the card in my hand instead.  Did I just cheat because I had the intent to cheat and took an action, even though I could legally take that action?

Yes.

You obviously attempted to cheat, so that would be a shame on you.

Look, Dominion is a game of strategy, and some luck. It's a fun game and we all love it. If you play in person, it's also a game of constant, thorough shuffling. If you try to manipulate the outcome of a shuffle, you are playing in bad faith, even if you fail to manipulate the outcome of the shuffle. Don't do it. Gained cards on top, in whatever order, and shuffle, shuffle, shuffle shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. (7 times!)

[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. 

[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. 

[greatexpectations]

[DStu]

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 we obviously are not at such a point with shuffling. It is absolutely clear that even with 7 or 10 shufflings, you don't get a perfectly mixed state. So there is some remaining influence of the starting state. You want to manipulate the starting state so that the outcome of the (imperfect) shuffle is to your favour.

So now than just it is allowed by the rules to choose the order of the discard. Maybe yes. But the rules say: "shuffle", by which they certainly mean: "shuffle as perfect as possible". Now manipulating the starting states while maybe obeying rule one, the order of the discard", is nevertheless against at least the spirit of rule 2, the shuffling. So it's an exploit.

[Taco Lobster]

So now than just it is allowed by the rules to choose the order of the discard. Maybe yes. But the rules say: "shuffle", by which they certainly mean: "shuffle as perfect as possible". Now manipulating the starting states while maybe obeying rule one, the order of the discard", is nevertheless against at least the spirit of rule 2, the shuffling. So it's an exploit.

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.

[DStu]

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.

[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?

[WanderingWinder]

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. 

And I fairly well agree with what you're saying here. If you have some kind of suspicions or problems, having people shuffle there opponent's decks seems like a simple, easy solution. And of course, you're usually playing with friends, so it's not an issue.

[theory]

The point is, seeing someone do repeated riffle shuffles is not necessarily a guarantee that they no longer know the deck's ordering.  Suppose that you open Warehouse/Tunnel.  You discard according to the rules: CCCEEW and CCCCET.  A perfect riffle shuffle will put the W next to the T; on subsequent turns, drop two cards from the bottom as you start the riffle shuffle.  Then cut it to the top.  Even if your opponent cuts the deck again, you've still substantially increased the chance of collision. 

This problem is much worse with something like a Mint/FG opening.  Keeping track of two cards in seven is not hard at all, and you can just keep shuffling until you identify that the two have lined up against each other.

In a tournament setting, there's no real answer to this problem except reorganizing each other's discards.  You need to hide both the initial deck state and the final deck state.

[Taco Lobster]

We're not talking about that. You are. Which is fine. But I wasn't, so we clearly aren't.

Uh, okay.  You were the one telling me the second post answered the question, but that's fine.

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.

I'm saying nothing whatsoever about proof.  Though, that being said, if you can prove that me plugging in my phone to charge it while hoping and intending that this results in the death of another human being, more power to you.  Proof implies that act A caused B, which, in this case, it did not and could not.  I've said nothing about murder not being murder because you can't prove it; I've said it's not murder if the action taken could not possibly result in the consequence desired, which is entirely different.

[eHalcyon]

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.   

But again, this is what is described in the OP -- a player has two witches, placing one on the bottom of the discard pile and the other on the top.  If I had the intent, I could easily keep a card on the top and a card on the bottom through any number of riffle shuffles.  I am no magician, but it is almost trivial to manipulate that. For my last riffle shuffle, I could ensure that the one on the bottom ends up a few cards away from the bottom to ensure that it doesn't miss the next reshuffle.  Voila -- I thus ensure that my two terminals won't collide.

As far as magic tricks go, there are many different kinds and many different ways of doing them.  Depending on the trick, that may involve rigged decks and/or false shuffles.

Oh, and regarding that "loaded gun" analogy.  Yes, I'd feel uncomfortable if you were purposefully ordering your discards/pointing a loaded gun at me.  It would not make me feel better if you said you weren't trying to cheat/going to murder me.  And as you say, it would indeed be OK if your perfect shuffling erased any lingering order of the deck/removed the bullets from the gun.  But since you're the one doing the shuffling, it still remains suspicious.  You can say all you want that you've removed the bullets from your gun, but if you keep pointing it at me I'll still be suspicious.

I really enjoy how SERIOUS this analogy is.

[eHalcyon]

I'm saying nothing whatsoever about proof.  Though, that being said, if you can prove that me plugging in my phone to charge it while hoping and intending that this results in the death of another human being, more power to you.  Proof implies that act A caused B, which, in this case, it did not and could not.  I've said nothing about murder not being murder because you can't prove it; I've said it's not murder if the action taken could not possibly result in the consequence desired, which is entirely different.

I'd still say that the intent to murder someone is morally wrong, even if the way you try to go about it is absurd and unprosecutable.

That said, your analogy does not fit the question at hand.  Charging your phone might not have any real way of causing someone to die, but ordering your discards definitely CAN have influence.  Shuffling more and shuffling better is a way to correct for that, but it doesn't remove the possibility of successful cheating if you have the intent.  This is why I prefer that spectacularly over-the-top loaded gun analogy -- it embodies the intent.

[Taco Lobster]

That said, your analogy does not fit the question at hand.  Charging your phone might not have any real way of causing someone to die, but ordering your discards definitely CAN have influence.  Shuffling more and shuffling better is a way to correct for that, but it doesn't remove the possibility of successful cheating if you have the intent.  This is why I prefer that spectacularly over-the-top loaded gun analogy -- it embodies the intent.

I don't know that it does embody the intent.  As I've expressed, I don't see what I'm doing (ordering my hand as a I discard) as cheating, and I don't see a rule that is being broken by the conduct.  I see my intent as similar to choosing the die that rolled a 20 last time and hoping it will roll a 20 again.  I don't slow down the game, I don't put my discard into a precise order, I just pay attention to the order of my terminals when I discard and I "randomize" my clumps when playing a deck built on action chains.  I shuffle to make sure I don't retain any information about the order of the cards, and I know that the chances of my ordering the cards is very unlikely to create a meaningful improvement in my deck. 

The above is much closer to the rube goldberg analogy.  I can't fully control the outcome, there are additional precautions that prevent me from exercising any real control over the outcome, and my intent is not to take an act that violates any rule of the game.  I don't want to cheat, I'm not trying to cheat, and what I'm doing doesn't have an effect on the game, so it's hard to even call it cheating.

Or, maybe I'm just not a good cheater, and the rule should be designed for those who are.  I could see that.

[ecq]

Oh, and regarding that "loaded gun" analogy.  Yes, I'd feel uncomfortable if you were purposefully ordering your discards/pointing a loaded gun at me.  It would not make me feel better if you said you weren't trying to cheat/going to murder me.  And as you say, it would indeed be OK if your perfect shuffling erased any lingering order of the deck/removed the bullets from the gun.  But since you're the one doing the shuffling, it still remains suspicious.  You can say all you want that you've removed the bullets from your gun, but if you keep pointing it at me I'll still be suspicious.

This thread is getting nowhere.  Can we re-purpose it into a discussion of gun safety?

Pro tip: don't point guns at people, loaded or not.

[WanderingWinder]

I'm saying nothing whatsoever about proof.  Though, that being said, if you can prove that me plugging in my phone to charge it while hoping and intending that this results in the death of another human being, more power to you.  Proof implies that act A caused B, which, in this case, it did not and could not.  I've said nothing about murder not being murder because you can't prove it; I've said it's not murder if the action taken could not possibly result in the consequence desired, which is entirely different.

But that's absurd. Your ignorance doesn't change anything about your intent. If I take a pistol, point it at you, and start pulling the trigger, it doesn't matter whether you've removed the bullets or not, I'm attempting to kill you either way. Even though without bullets, there's no way that's going to kill you. Again, it goes back to the original point - attempted murder is as bad as murder.

[Taco Lobster]

But that's absurd. Your ignorance doesn't change anything about your intent. If I take a pistol, point it at you, and start pulling the trigger, it doesn't matter whether you've removed the bullets or not, I'm attempting to kill you either way. Even though without bullets, there's no way that's going to kill you. Again, it goes back to the original point - attempted murder is as bad as murder.

What if I point a rubber chicken at you?  Is that still attempted murder?

Also, the law and most morality teachings disagree with you that an attempted murder is as bad as a murder.

[greatexpectations]

This thread is getting nowhere.  Can we re-purpose it into a discussion of gun safety?

sounds good to me.  why don't you provide us with a couple bullet points to get us started?

[Kirian]

"I wonder if he's stacking the deck."



"I assure you, the cards are sufficiently randomized."

(Name the episode for a cookie!)

--------

OK, that bit of silliness taken care of, I wanted to make two notes:

Pile shuffling does not randomize the cards.  It introduces exactly zero randomness, and maintains a significant amount of information even from round to round.  I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that for N cards piled into M piles, as long as N mod M = 0, there is some number X of pile shuffles for which the original arrangement of cards will be reproduced, with that X related somehow to N/M.  Similarly, perfect riffle shuffling introduces no randomness.  In both cases, the processes are reversible as well.  Claiming either of these is random is equivalent to claiming you're happy if your password is stored in a database as a Caesar cipher.

On the gun analogies:  Y'all realize there are charges other than murder and attempted murder, right?

If I point an unloaded gun at you and say I'm going to shoot and kill you, that's aggravated assault, and a cop is going to take me down even though my statement is impossible.
If I tell you loudly that I'm going to go home, get my gun, return and kill you, then a cop would be within his rights to detain me for assault even if I have no gun at home.  A similar threat to kill, despite a lack of actual means, constitutes assault.

Attempting to influence the order of cards beyond what's explicitly allowed by the rules is cheating, whether successful or not.  Moving the cards around due to "superstitions" is stalling at best (assuming you shuffle as thoroughly as a computer) and cheating at worst.  Just... you know... don't do it.  Is it that hard?

[RisingJaguar]

This thread is getting nowhere.  Can we re-purpose it into a discussion of gun safety?

sounds good to me.  why don't you provide us with a couple bullet points to get us started?

1. When it comes to gun safety, always pull the trigger on a vest.

[Taco Lobster]

(Name the episode for a cookie!)

I know of the episode, but not the name.  It's the one where they keep crashing into Fraiser's ship.

Attempting to influence the order of cards beyond what's explicitly allowed by the rules is cheating, whether successful or not.

So now cheating isn't breaking the rules, it's following the rules with the intent to cheat? 

 

Moving the cards around due to "superstitions" is stalling at best (assuming you shuffle as thoroughly as a computer) and cheating at worst.  Just... you know... don't do it.  Is it that hard?

Yes!  It is that hard!  When I discard my cards, I notice the order they are in.  I can either (a) discard them in a way that I (incorrectly and superstitiously) believe harms me (clumps) or (b) discard them in a way that I (incorrectly and superstitiously) believe will harm me less.  And, on top of all of that, nothing I'm doing actually breaks any rule or results in an advantage because I shuffle.

[WanderingWinder]

"I wonder if he's stacking the deck."



"I assure you, the cards are sufficiently randomized."

(Name the episode for a cookie!)

3.



I hope you got that.
Your line is from my favourite episode, cause and effect.

[WanderingWinder]

But that's absurd. Your ignorance doesn't change anything about your intent. If I take a pistol, point it at you, and start pulling the trigger, it doesn't matter whether you've removed the bullets or not, I'm attempting to kill you either way. Even though without bullets, there's no way that's going to kill you. Again, it goes back to the original point - attempted murder is as bad as murder.

What if I point a rubber chicken at you?  Is that still attempted murder?

Also, the law and most morality teachings disagree with you that an attempted murder is as bad as a murder.

Yes of course, it's still attempted murder, so long as you're attempting to murder me. I don't understand why that's hard to understand. I mean, it's hard for me to believe your intelligence is lacking enough to think that you can kill me with a rubber chicken, but hey, it's possible I guess.

In any case, attempted murder is as bad as murder. There are all kinds of reasons it isn't treated so legally. Ethically, hey, there are lots of ethical systems that promote stuff like genocide. Doesn't make them right or relevant.

[jotheonah]

I wouldn't mind seeing Data & Co. take a night off of poker and play some Dominion.

[Taco Lobster]

Yes of course, it's still attempted murder, so long as you're attempting to murder me. I don't understand why that's hard to understand. I mean, it's hard for me to believe your intelligence is lacking enough to think that you can kill me with a rubber chicken, but hey, it's possible I guess.

And I can't believe you think threatening to shoot someone with a rubber chicken could ever constitute attempted murder, no matter how much the person believes it does.  Oddly enough, nearly every legal scholar ever agrees with my view. 

In any case, attempted murder is as bad as murder. There are all kinds of reasons it isn't treated so legally. Ethically, hey, there are lots of ethical systems that promote stuff like genocide. Doesn't make them right or relevant.

What's your point?  Are we moving the argument to whether or not you have knowledge of the one true and right ethical system?  There are also ethical arguments for why attempted murder isn't as bad as murder.  Sadly, I don't inhabit a world where all motives are known and understood, all actions easily fall into white and black categories, and morality is as simple as good and bad.  But, that debate has even less to do with gun control, it's apparent that you're not well versed in the fundamentals of such a debate, and I'm tired of even bothering to try.

[Kirian]

3.

I hope you got that.
Your line is from my favourite episode, cause and effect.

Excellent! Have a cookie:


MC1
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google.com/
1024
80563392034
328230
194634104
2989397634
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A
I&I=AxUFAAAAAAB2BWvX3rekGVgdIQ!!&CS=101a]@0

[WanderingWinder]

Yes of course, it's still attempted murder, so long as you're attempting to murder me. I don't understand why that's hard to understand. I mean, it's hard for me to believe your intelligence is lacking enough to think that you can kill me with a rubber chicken, but hey, it's possible I guess.

And I can't believe you think threatening to shoot someone with a rubber chicken could ever constitute attempted murder, no matter how much the person believes it does.  Oddly enough, nearly every legal scholar ever agrees with my view. 

I don't get what doesn't make sense about 'attempting to murder someone is committing attempted murder'. It's almost tautologically simple. Of course, legally you have other issues involved. I don't really care about that, that's not the discussion I'm having. I'm much more concerned with what people should do than what we should force people to do/not do.

In any case, attempted murder is as bad as murder. There are all kinds of reasons it isn't treated so legally. Ethically, hey, there are lots of ethical systems that promote stuff like genocide. Doesn't make them right or relevant.

What's your point?  Are we moving the argument to whether or not you have knowledge of the one true and right ethical system?  There are also ethical arguments for why attempted murder isn't as bad as murder.  Sadly, I don't inhabit a world where all motives are known and understood, all actions easily fall into white and black categories, and morality is as simple as good and bad.  But, that debate has even less to do with gun control, it's apparent that you're not well versed in the fundamentals of such a debate, and I'm tired of even bothering to try.

Who's arguing gun control? Who's arguing legality? I certainly am not. I'm not trying to argue that I know all of morality.  I'm sorry if you can't see that there is a single correct ethical system, even if that system is unknown.
I'm just saying that I'm right here. If I try to do action X, the morality of my actions is what it is regardless of how successful I am. And you're not even giving any reasons for your side.

[theory]

It's really funny how closely this mirrors the jurisprudential debate over factual impossibility v legal impossibility.

[Kirian]

Attempting to influence the order of cards beyond what's explicitly allowed by the rules is cheating, whether successful or not.

So now cheating isn't breaking the rules, it's following the rules with the intent to cheat?

No... doing something outside the rules is cheating.  Re-read what I said.

Moving the cards around due to "superstitions" is stalling at best (assuming you shuffle as thoroughly as a computer) and cheating at worst.  Just... you know... don't do it.  Is it that hard?

Yes!  It is that hard!  When I discard my cards, I notice the order they are in.  I can either (a) discard them in a way that I (incorrectly and superstitiously) believe harms me (clumps) or (b) discard them in a way that I (incorrectly and superstitiously) believe will harm me less.  And, on top of all of that, nothing I'm doing actually breaks any rule or results in an advantage because I shuffle.

Then do what Robz suggests above, and what I do:  scoop up the cards in play without respect for order or table position, dump on top of discard pile.  That's as random as physics allows in that situation.

[Taco Lobster]

It's really funny how closely this mirrors the jurisprudential debate over factual impossibility v legal impossibility.

Yes, I've been intentionally introducing that into the debate once people began to assert that the intent to cheat was cheating per se.

[ftl]

So now cheating isn't breaking the rules, it's following the rules with the intent to cheat? 

Well, yeah... if you intend to cheat, I wouldn't want to play with you even if you're bad at it, and I'd ask you to stop doing it, even if you're bad at it and don't succeed.

Especially since, without knowing what your fingers are doing when you shuffle, I have no way of knowing whether you actually succeed or not. Maybe your shuffling isn't as good as you think it is, you're just misguided in thinking so because you aid your shuffles with rearrangement.

Yes!  It is that hard!  When I discard my cards, I notice the order they are in.  I can either (a) discard them in a way that I (incorrectly and superstitiously) believe harms me (clumps) or (b) discard them in a way that I (incorrectly and superstitiously) believe will harm me less.

Do it in the way that does not take extra finger movement or card rearrangement. If it's physically easier to scoop them up in a pile, scoop them up in a pile; if it's physically easier to keep them clumped, then keep them clumped.

After all, you yourself are saying it SHOULDN'T matter for the result.

If you take extra effort to rearrange cards before shuffling, that implies that you think it DOES matter, and therefore that your shuffle isn't good.

And, on top of all of that, nothing I'm doing actually breaks any rule or results in an advantage because I shuffle.

An opponent of yours has no real way of knowing whether you shuffle well enough so that clumping/not clumping does not matter. Therefore, if you rearrange your discard in a way that looks like you're deliberately messing with the randomness, that looks EXACTLY the same as trying to cheat by a combination of discard manipulation and bad shuffling. Just don't do it.

[theory]

Then do what Robz suggests above, and what I do:  scoop up the cards in play without respect for order or table position, dump on top of discard pile.  That's as random as physics allows in that situation.

If you're aware of the order of your hand, then certainly in the early game this doesn't really help matters any.  If you reshuffle your hand to put your money separate from your Estates (as I'm sure everyone does) then are you then subtly contributing to a non-random distribution?

[ftl]

It's really funny how closely this mirrors the jurisprudential debate over factual impossibility v legal impossibility.

Yes, I've been intentionally introducing that into the debate once people began to assert that the intent to cheat was cheating per se.

I like the link. It fits quite perfectly. Thank you for introducing it.

Rearranging the cards and then shuffling well seems to me like the 'factual impossibility' option there. You're attempting to manipulate the shuffle by rearranging things, but as it turns out, it's possible that you don't actually end up affecting anything if you shuffle well afterwards. Doesn't make the rearrangement-with-intent-to-manipulate-post-shuffle-order okay.

[Taco Lobster]

If you take extra effort to rearrange cards before shuffling, that implies that you think it DOES matter, and therefore that your shuffle isn't good.

So, you don't take extra effort to rearrange cards before shuffling [through the act of playing them]?  You just flop down an action here, a treasure there, a victory point in the middle?  And, again, if a scoop would result in me getting a benefit under the ordered deck = cheating theorum, do I have an obligation to muck that up? 

The scoop is just as non-random as sorting the discard, it's just a different type of non-random.

An opponent of yours has no real way of knowing whether you shuffle well enough so that clumping/not clumping does not matter. Therefore, if you rearrange your discard in a way that looks like you're deliberately messing with the randomness, that looks EXACTLY the same as trying to cheat by a combination of discard manipulation and bad shuffling. Just don't do it.

An opponent of mine will never be aware of me intentionally putting my extra witch at one side of my hand.  In regards to the action chain, I would be surprised if anyone objected to my pile riffle shuffle, but it's so obvious that I'm not fixing the deck when I do that, I could not care less.

[WanderingWinder]

Again, I'm not trying to debate legality here. The legal distinctions are irrelevant in the discussion I'm trying to have. You guys have a blast on that. I'm arguing what should or should not be done.

[Taco Lobster]

Doesn't make the rearrangement-with-intent-to-manipulate-post-shuffle-order okay.

On what basis is it not okay?  If it doesn't affect the game state, who cares?  Can't a person have a superstition that doesn't harm someone else?  As above, if I play Mine correctly while believing I'm cheating, is that not okay?  On what basis? 

Edit: Setting aside the extreme situation in which the person looks like they are cheating/slows down the game. 

[ftl]

So, you don't take extra effort to rearrange cards before shuffling?

No, of course not. I take extra efforts to rearrange cards while playing them - but not after I'm done playing but before shuffling.

You just flop down an action here, a treasure there, a victory point in the middle? 

No, I put them down in whatever order facilitates *playing* them and keeping track of what's going on during my turn.

And, again, if a scoop would result in me getting a benefit under the ordered deck = cheating theorum, do I have an obligation to muck that up? 

No, you do not, at least not before you shuffle. You muck that up when shuffling, because that's the point of the shuffling process, that's what shuffling does.

On what basis is it not okay?  If it doesn't affect the game state, who cares?  Can't a person have a superstition that doesn't harm someone else? 

It's a superstition which in the best case, has zero effect; and in the worst case, has a negative affect. It's a superstition which MIGHT harm the game, in the case of bad shuffling. Why would you defend it? There's never any way in which it improves the game, and a potential way in which it might harm the game, and a likely case is no effect at all. What possible reason is there to keep doing it?

Possible positive effects, i.e. reasons to do it: zero.
Possible negative effects, i.e. reasons to discourage it: Potential for deck stacking if the shuffle is bad, potential for slowing down the game, potential for looking like you're stacking the deck even if you're not. None of those are guaranteed, but they're all possible.

That seems like it's clearly in favor of the "Don't do it" side.
 

[jotheonah]

Again, I'm not trying to debate legality here. The legal distinctions are irrelevant in the discussion I'm trying to have. You guys have a blast on that. I'm arguing what should or should not be done.

Arguing absolute morality in the context of a game is always a little weird though. There was a similar discussion going on in the Diplomacy board about whether the context of playing a game of Diplomacy made the requisite acts of backstabbing morally ok. My take was that in a game, rules sort of stand in for morality. Playing attack cards hurts and annoys the other person. In an absolute moral context you might consider that a bad. But in a game context, it's permissible and strategically advantageous and that's what's relevant. So, in a game context, does it make sense to talk about the morality of deck-stacking? Or does it only make sense to talk about the legality of it in the context of the rules?

I would say that there's a third option, which is evaluating whether the action is in the spirit if the game's rules, regardless of if it's directly addressed. A sort of appeal to game-contextualized morality.

[WanderingWinder]

Doesn't make the rearrangement-with-intent-to-manipulate-post-shuffle-order okay.

On what basis is it not okay?  If it doesn't affect the game state, who cares?  Can't a person have a superstition that doesn't harm someone else?  As above, if I play Mine correctly while believing I'm cheating, is that not okay?  On what basis? 

Edit: Setting aside the extreme situation in which the person looks like they are cheating/slows down the game. 

To clarify my position and hopefully ease a lot of the tension here, from a legal/rules perspective I agree that it's more or less okay. In the more egregious situations, as in where you have actual manipulation of the shuffles going on, you've got an issue, (though, hey, it's a game here, even outright cheating isn't so bad), but for the most part, it's not a big deal, there's nothing to do about it really. As in the mine case - there isn't anything to do there. The point isn't that we need to punish the guy, it's that he shouldn't be trying to cheat.

[Taco Lobster]

:shrug:  As mentioned, I don't see anyway to not do it.  Even if I scoop, I know the general layout of the cards as I do so.  In the early game, I know the order of my hand when I discard.  No opponent has ever noticed it, no one is ever harmed by it, and it provides me with the same warm fuzzies as blowing on dice.

Edit: And, as mentioned, my intent is not to cheat.  Or, if you prefer, I don't see this as cheating, and if I did, I wouldn't do it.  There aren't any rules about discarding order, all discarding is non-random to a certain extent, and, other than the extreme examples of slowing down the game or looking like you're cheating, it doesn't cause any harm to any player or the game state.  Plus, one of the great virtues of Dominion is the symmetry - I also don't care if my opponent does it.  To the extent discard-ordering has an effect, it is an effect that all are free to experience.

[WanderingWinder]

Again, I'm not trying to debate legality here. The legal distinctions are irrelevant in the discussion I'm trying to have. You guys have a blast on that. I'm arguing what should or should not be done.

Arguing absolute morality in the context of a game is always a little weird though. There was a similar discussion going on in the Diplomacy board about whether the context of playing a game of Diplomacy made the requisite acts of backstabbing morally ok. My take was that in a game, rules sort of stand in for morality. Playing attack cards hurts and annoys the other person. In an absolute moral context you might consider that a bad. But in a game context, it's permissible and strategically advantageous and that's what's relevant. So, in a game context, does it make sense to talk about the morality of deck-stacking? Or does it only make sense to talk about the legality of it in the context of the rules?

I would say that there's a third option, which is evaluating whether the action is in the spirit if the game's rules, regardless of if it's directly addressed. A sort of appeal to game-contextualized morality.

Absolute morality knows that you're playing a game. Obviously, that's relevant. And the rules and spirit of the game are extremely relevant. I agree.

[WanderingWinder]

:shrug:  As mentioned, I don't see anyway to not do it.  Even if I scoop, I know the general layout of the cards as I do so.  In the early game, I know the order of my hand when I discard.  No opponent has ever noticed it, no one is ever harmed by it, and it provides me with the same warm fuzzies as blowing on dice.

My point is that you shouldn't manipulate the order for purpose of gaining an advantage. Being aware is something you probably can't avoid. That's fine. Just shuffle really well, and you shouldn't have any issues. And it's not like I'd have someone else try to do something to you for it. At most, they insist on shuffling your deck. Which seems reasonable in a tournament setting. Otherwise, I really don't see people actually having an issue.

[Ozle]

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.

Yes, Shuffle manipulation is rediculously easy.

I could teach you to put any card you like on top of your deck within 15 minutes practice (and a decent set of cards)


Also, this discussion hasnt changed this I left it this morning, time to call it a day surely?

[eHalcyon]

Doesn't make the rearrangement-with-intent-to-manipulate-post-shuffle-order okay.

On what basis is it not okay?  If it doesn't affect the game state, who cares?  Can't a person have a superstition that doesn't harm someone else?  As above, if I play Mine correctly while believing I'm cheating, is that not okay?  On what basis? 

Edit: Setting aside the extreme situation in which the person looks like they are cheating/slows down the game.

I suppose you didn't actually look at the link, even though you said you were trying to introduce those ideas earlier?

According to the law, factual impossibility is still wrong.  To quote from the site:

Factual Impossibility: Factual impossibility has not to my knowledge ever been recognized as a defense to an attempt charge by any American court. The common law did not consider factual impossibility as a defense to attempt. Thus, one would be liable for attempted theft when, with intent to steal another's wallet, he places his hand in the other's pocket only to find it empty. The MPC does not recognize factual impossibility as a defense to attempt, nor does Texas.

In the context of Dominion, this is parallel to reordering your discard to try to give yourself an advantage.  In the end, shuffling means that you really don't get an advantage, but your attempt at getting an edge is still wrong.

Your example about trying to cheat with Mine but ending up playing it correctly is an example of True Legal Impossibility, which is distinct from Factual Impossibility scenarios.  Again, from the linked site:

True Legal Impossibility: The common law, the Model Penal Code and Texas, indeed every jurisdiction, will certainly recognize so-called true legal impossibility (Dressler calls it "pure") in attempt cases when it is simply not a crime to do what the defendant intended to do. In other words, an intent to commit an act which is not characterized as a crime by the laws of the subject jurisdiction can not be the basis of a criminal charge and conviction even though the actor believes or misapprehends the intended act to be criminalized by the penal laws. For example, if a fisherman believes he is committing an offense by possessing over five perch when in fact there is no limit on the number of perch one may catch, it is legally impossible to convict the fisherman of possessing more than five perch. The fisherman's conduct would be perfectly legal despite the fact that he believes and intends to possess more perch that he is entitled to possess. Since the conduct would be perfectly legal, the fisherman could not be held accountable for attempting to violate a law that did not exist. Again, I believe Professor Dressler in his UCL book calls this "pure legal impossibility."

So even though you play Mine with the intent to cheat, your play is still perfectly legal and is fine (despite being, perhaps, morally questionable).

Now in the context of your particular discard habits, you say you have no intent to cheat, so you are also in the clear.  The only question then is, why care about your discard order at all?  As others have stated numerous times, at best it has no effect and at worst it is stalling, or cheating, or appearing to cheat.

[Taco Lobster]

For whatever it's worth, the Magic rules track what I've been saying all along (that the way to deal with the problem is offer the opponent and opportunity to shuffle, require additional shuffling, and/or cut).  That said, it does indicate that the appearance of non-randomization is cause to call a judge, which is consistent with what others have said.

"Once the deck is randomized, it must be presented to an opponent. By this action, players state that their decks are legal and randomized. The opponent may then shuffle it additionally. Cards and sleeves must not be in danger of being damaged during this process. If the opponent does not believe the player made a reasonable effort to randomize his or her deck, the opponent must notify a judge. Players may request to have a judge shuffle their cards rather than the opponent; this request will be honored only at a judge’s discretion."

Edit:  Here's some additional language from the guidebook for issuing infractions in Magic.

"A player should shuffle his or her deck using multiple methods. Patterned pile-shuffling alone is not sufficient. Any manipulation, weaving, or stacking prior to randomization is acceptable, as long as the deck is thoroughly shuffled afterwards."

[WanderingWinder]

Seems totally reasonable. I don't actually think there's a major disagreement over the preferred behaviour at the game table here. But I am the kind of person who, without anything more pressing, will gladly argue semantics all day long.

[Taco Lobster]

Seems totally reasonable. I don't actually think there's a major disagreement over the preferred behaviour at the game table here. But I am the kind of person who, without anything more pressing, will gladly argue semantics all day long.

Yeah, and I'd like to think that a large part of the debate is the difference between "I meant to cheat and tried ordering my deck to do it" and "I'm superstitious about my terminals colliding and so I discard them as far apart as possible." 

[theory]

[Deleted two unhelpful posts.]

The reason I brought up factual v legal impossibility -- though I can't for the life of me see why it's relevant here -- is because the line between factual and legal impossibility is a very thin one indeed, and one that is often meaningless in the very instances we need to apply it. 

[Donald X.]

[Deleted two unhelpful posts.]

[left awful thread open]

[Taco Lobster]

[Deleted two unhelpful posts.]

Thank you.  I wasn't sure on the moderation policy, and will simply flag and move on in the future.

The reason I brought up factual v legal impossibility -- though I can't for the life of me see why it's relevant here -- is because the line between factual and legal impossibility is a very thin one indeed, and one that is often meaningless in the very instances we need to apply it.

It came up in the context of whether taking an action with the intent to cheat (discarding cards in a certain order) is cheating if it's impossible for that action to break the rules of the game (because no such rules exist and/or the shuffle undoes the act).

[WanderingWinder]

[Deleted two unhelpful posts.]

Thank you.  I wasn't sure on the moderation policy, and will simply flag and move on in the future.

The reason I brought up factual v legal impossibility -- though I can't for the life of me see why it's relevant here -- is because the line between factual and legal impossibility is a very thin one indeed, and one that is often meaningless in the very instances we need to apply it.

It came up in the context of whether taking an action with the intent to cheat (discarding cards in a certain order) is cheating if it's impossible for that action to break the rules of the game (because no such rules exist and/or the shuffle undoes the act).

This goes to the heart of the issue - I never tried to argue this. I argued that you shouldn't do that action, not that it's cheating per se. Is it cheating? I don't really care all that much if we can all agree you shouldn't do it.

[Taco Lobster]

This goes to the heart of the issue - I never tried to argue this. I argued that you shouldn't do that action, not that it's cheating per se. Is it cheating? I don't really care all that much if we can all agree you shouldn't do it.

And my response is that I can't do "it" for certain definitions of it.  I am aware of the order and manner in which I discard.  I can't not be aware, or make myself forget.  But, on the bright side, my awareness is largely invisible to the other player, who is also free to act in the same irrational way.  This is the conflicting Witch scenario, albeit, within the context of the discarded hand and not the discard pile.

Now, if the "it" is sorting the discard pile prior to shuffling, I'm okay not doing that (and I don't do that, unless you count the next example).  This is the Witch scenario where the player moves one to the bottom of the discard pile or otherwise sorts the deck.  I agree that this is the most problematic from a "looks like cheating" perspective, and not something I really endorse (though, again, I still wouldn't define it as cheating in the context of the shuffle).

Finally, if the "it" is not riffle shuffling my treasures into my actions at the end of a City stack, I'd say that is in line with the spirit of the random discard (it's easier to track the Cities in a deck if I dump them in clump into the discard pile), and am unlikely to clean-up my action chains differently without a rule requiring me to do so.

[Octo]

Jeepers. This got blown all outta whack.

I've seen far too many people who don't do anything like this keep getting the same great cards in the same predictable order time after time to think maybe they should do this. They're not trying to cheat, they're just shit at shuffling. Shuffling takes time to do properly, and damages [my] cards more quickly. Dominion has a lot of shuffling. I frankly cannot be arsed to sit and watch people split it all into piles every time, riffle it 5 times (as I cringe while they almost fold the cards in half pre-riffle, then mash the cards together like apes) and then cut twice, but neither do I want to see them get the same 5/6 card chain over and over again either.

Sometimes stuff like this is just to speed things up, especially if a player does it indiscriminately (eg with non-clashing actions/VPs too).

Still, I suppose on reflection, anything other than a consistent approach applied every turn would be selective and thus cheating, but if performed indiscriminately and every turn it would likely be more time consuming than shuffling properly. Oh well. *shrugs*

[LastFootnote]

Jeepers. This got blown all outta whack.

I've seen far too many people who don't do anything like this keep getting the same great cards in the same predictable order time after time to think maybe they should do this. They're not trying to cheat, they're just shit at shuffling. Shuffling takes time to do properly, and damages [my] cards more quickly. Dominion has a lot of shuffling. I frankly cannot be arsed to sit and watch people split it all into piles every time, riffle it 5 times (as I cringe while they almost fold the cards in half pre-riffle, then mash the cards together like apes) and then cut twice, but neither do I want to see them get the same 5/6 card chain over and over again either.

In my experience, sleeves are really the answer here. You can't really riffle shuffle, but you get a similar effect by sliding the two halves of your deck together from the sides.

[yuma]

[Deleted two unhelpful posts.]

[left awful thread open]

As the creator of this thread and the unintended bickering I also vote to please close the thread.

[Forge!!!]

8 pages on a not particularly fascinating topic? Must be an argument.

[DStu]

Perhaps Donald should just add a shuffling machine to the Base set...?

[Piemaster]

Why on earth would you close this thread?  It's an important topic to discuss in the context of any game and putting your fingers in your ears and saying "la la la" really loudly does not make the issue go away.  If you're not interested in the subject and/or don't play Dominion seriously enough to really care then feel free to not read the thread.

[DStu]

Pile shuffling does not randomize the cards.  It introduces exactly zero randomness, and maintains a significant amount of information even from round to round.  I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that for N cards piled into M piles, as long as N mod M = 0, there is some number X of pile shuffles for which the original arrangement of cards will be reproduced, with that X related somehow to N/M.

That there is a X is quite clear, you even don't need N mod M = 0.

There are only finite many permutations, so there must be a cycle. As pile shuffling is invertible (even if N mod M != 0), the cycle must return to the starting point, otherwise you would have one permutations which is the image of at least two pile shufflings, which contradicts the invertablilty.

That something like N/M plays a role I can believe, but I don't know how to show it atm...

[Davio]

I wonder how many pages it takes before Godwin's law is proved.

I was amazed at seeing this topic go beyond 3 pages. I mean, how many can there be said about shuffling?

If you're that frustrated about opponents either shuffling not good enough or too rigorously then go play another game without cards. It keeps suprising me that people take a game and almost make a religion out of it. I'm not against competitive play, but come on people, it's still a game.

[DStu]

I wonder how many pages it takes before Godwin's law is proved.

I always thought Godwin's law was not valid on this site.

If I remember it correctly, we even discussed point counters without triggering it.

[Ozle]

Why would it not be valid?
And it came close with the shooting people!

[WanderingWinder]

I wonder how many pages it takes before Godwin's law is proved.

I was amazed at seeing this topic go beyond 3 pages. I mean, how many can there be said about shuffling?

If you're that frustrated about opponents either shuffling not good enough or too rigorously then go play another game without cards. It keeps suprising me that people take a game and almost make a religion out of it. I'm not against competitive play, but come on people, it's still a game.

You can never prove anything by example. Having said that...
What are you, a Godwin's Law Nazi?

[DStu]

Why would it not be valid?
And it came close with the shooting people!

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=de&source=hp&q=site:forum.dominionstrategy.com+hitler&psj=1&oq=site:forum.dominionstrategy.com+hitler&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=23562l24288l2l24452l6l6l0l0l0l0l55l243l5l5l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=5afa2de0a5b9e1ab&biw=1369&bih=954

[Ozle]

Why would it not be valid?
And it came close with the shooting people!

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=de&source=hp&q=site:forum.dominionstrategy.com+hitler&psj=1&oq=site:forum.dominionstrategy.com+hitler&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=23562l24288l2l24452l6l6l0l0l0l0l55l243l5l5l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=5afa2de0a5b9e1ab&biw=1369&bih=954

Just takes me to google homepage

[DStu]

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=de&source=hp&q=site:forum.dominionstrategy.com+hitler&psj=1&oq=site:forum.dominionstrategy.com+hitler&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=23562l24288l2l24452l6l6l0l0l0l0l55l243l5l5l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=5afa2de0a5b9e1ab&biw=1369&bih=954

Just takes me to google homepage

If you google site:forum.dominionstrategy.com for "hitler" you will find 0 results (or this post...), and if you google it for "nazi" you will only find results that don't qualify for Godwin's law...

[Davio]

Why would it not be valid?
And it came close with the shooting people!

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=de&source=hp&q=site:forum.dominionstrategy.com+hitler&psj=1&oq=site:forum.dominionstrategy.com+hitler&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=23562l24288l2l24452l6l6l0l0l0l0l55l243l5l5l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=5afa2de0a5b9e1ab&biw=1369&bih=954

Making the result in German was a nice touch, thanks for making my day guys. 
And apologies I opened the snake pit. Snaaaaaakeees!!!

[theory]

I'd be pretty upset if this meta-Godwin counts for Godwin and snaps our no-Godwin streak

[jonts26]

There should be a law stating that any argument which goes on long enough without invoking Godwin's Law will point out that Godwin's Law has not yet been invoked.

[WanderingWinder]

There should be a law stating that any argument which goes on long enough without invoking Godwin's Law will point out that Godwin's Law has not yet been invoked.

Done. jonts26's law.

[Kirian]

I'd be pretty upset if this meta-Godwin counts for Godwin and snaps our no-Godwin streak

Nope.  Quirk's Exception applies here, at least in part.  Also, a discussion about Godwin's Law isn't a discussion about Nazis per se, and therefore not a direct invocation of Godwin's Law.

[Taco Lobster]

You know who else used to rely on Quirk's Exception to avoid Godwin's Law?

[GendoIkari]

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

Though it's not competitive, my friends that I play with (and sometimes I as well) will separate all the lands out and place them throughout the deck before shuffling to try and "help" the shuffle to not keep lands clumped together. After reading this thread, I now think that's cheating.

[Kirian]

You know who else used to rely on Quirk's Exception to avoid Godwin's Law?

You know, I came so close to going with a "You know who else..." in my post...

[Taco Lobster]

You know who else used to rely on Quirk's Exception to avoid Godwin's Law?

You know, I came so close to going with a "You know who else..." in my post...

You know who else came so close to going with a "You know who else" in their post...

[Sorry, couldn't help myself]

[Taco Lobster]

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

Though it's not competitive, my friends that I play with (and sometimes I as well) will separate all the lands out and place them throughout the deck before shuffling to try and "help" the shuffle to not keep lands clumped together. After reading this thread, I now think that's cheating.

And with this, my failure on the topic of shuffling is complete.