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[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.