Quantum RNG question: all at once, or one card at a time?

In live cards, once the cards are in the air, the entire hand is set. In online poker, does anybody know, is the order of the deck set in the same way, or is each card selected randomly?

In other words, in live cards, the river card is already determined when the first card is dealt. Online, is the river card not determined until it is about to be dealt?

This may seem like a meaningless distinction, and it may well be. However, from a quantum standpoint, if the answer is the latter, it raises some interesting quantum issues. Since the scale of the RNG is taking place at the electron level, it seems that, in theory; the actions of the players could effect the card turned.

Almost any site I know of does NOT have a set card deck at the start of a hand, as would occur in live play. They do a "continuous shuffle" untill stopping to put out the next card.

Full Tilt uses a continuous shuffle. Some card rooms don't. I believe PS uses a complicated system and they have an independent company certify it is secure.

What room specifically does NOT, Lons?

I believe poker stars does not. There was actually a case in the early days of online poker where the shuffling algorithm was cracked at Planet Poker. After a certain number of cards were exposed, say the flop in Hold'em, the hackers were able to anticipate the Turn and the River cards. Fortunately the hackers were more interested in the challenge of cracking the system then cheating and immediately (so they say) exposed the vulnerability.

Four Dogs said:

I believe Poker Stars does not.

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^ this.

As long as the system can't be hacked so that people know what card is coming next though then quantum side effects or otherwise it 100% doesn't matter which method is used.

In live poker, everyone's hand and the board cards are decided at the completion of the shuffle. The cards are randomised though, and nobody knows what anyone else has or what the board is going to be until it's dealt*.

In online poker where the deck is set it's the same...

...and in online poker where the deck is continuously shuffled it's still the same. Absolutely the river card might be different if you press call after three seconds as opposed to five seconds. But that has absolutely zero effect on the game, because the river card was always (and still is) random and unknown anyway.

Seriously, I learned to play live. I deal live poker. And this concept doesn't offend me in the slightest - I'm not sure why people are worried about it?


* unless the deck is marked or someone turns over a card or something else like that, obv.

OzExorcist said:

^ this.

As long as the system can't be hacked so that people know what card is coming next though then quantum side effects or otherwise it 100% doesn't matter which method is used.

In live poker, everyone's hand and the board cards are decided at the completion of the shuffle. The cards are randomised though, and nobody knows what anyone else has or what the board is going to be until it's dealt*.

In online poker where the deck is set it's the same...

...and in online poker where the deck is continuously shuffled it's still the same. Absolutely the river card might be different if you press call after three seconds as opposed to five seconds. But that has absolutely zero effect on the game, because the river card was always (and still is) random and unknown anyway.

Seriously, I learned to play live. I deal live poker. And this concept doesn't offend me in the slightest - I'm not sure why people are worried about it?


* unless the deck is marked or someone turns over a card or something else like that, obv.

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good reply.
it realy doesnt matter how they do it as it's total random.

You deal, Oz, so is that why you burn cards, just so that if the top card would be marked, it would not get in play?

ean said:

You deal, Oz, so is that why you burn cards, just so that if the top card would be marked, it would not get in play?

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Yep, that's exactly why. We also use cutting cards on the bottom of the deck to (among other things) prevent the bottom card in the deck accidentally being revealed.

Burning isn't a complete solution to the problem though because even when the card is burned, if it's marked players will still have information about what cards aren't in the hand and therefore won't be coming on the board or can't be in their opponent's hands.

ukaliks said:

good reply.
it realy doesnt matter how they do it as it's total random.

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The very slight difference it makes, is just for fun in the "rabbiting" of the cards, which I know is not part of the actual competition. But still, with a "set" deck, you then know for SURE that a rabbit card would have indeed come out. With the "continuous shuffle", any rabbiting is not informative as to what would have happened for sure.

Personally, I'd rather have a "set deck" like in live play, as long as it's secure of course.

Either way it doesn't matter, just so it's safe to play and people can't use technology to enhance there own game.

I agree that it doesn't matter as far as the "randomness" of the cards, but I can understand players feeling a bit uncomfortable that the next card would've been different if they would've taken more time to make their decision.

True, Mike, and that is EXACTLY what happens.

Lonsdaleite said:

Full Tilt uses a continuous shuffle. Some card rooms don't. I believe PS uses a complicated system and they have an independent company certify it is secure.

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It's true that PS uses a set deck while most, if not all, others use a continuous shuffle. But being set vs. continuous has nothing to do with security -- random is random, you never knew what was coming anyway, so there's no reason to care whether the rest of the deck is still shuffling or not. If anything, I suppose one could argue that the constant shuffle is MORE secure than a set deck, simply because the deck is undergoing constant chaos. And non-computer people may not realize it, but when we say the deck is being constantly reshuffled and can be affected by delays in player action, we don't mean by just a second or two. It's import to understand that the reshuffle happens multiple times per second, perhaps hundreds or thousands of times per second, so even a millisecond delay will likely cause hundreds or thousands of cards to change position. Just to give you an idea how fast computers can generate random numbers, I just wrote a quick little C program using the built in standard C library RNG on my little netbook with its 1.6Ghz CPU. It generated 1 million random numbers in about 0.06 seconds. The backend servers that drive the RNG on any of these sites are orders of magnitude more powerful than my netbook.

They're all pretty "complicated" and AFAIK all the major sites' RNGs are independently audited and certified by outside experts. Which is one more reason why I laugh at the conspiracy theorists and technically-ignorant folks who nevertheless insist that these state-of-the-art RNGs are rigged and/or exploitable and/or predictable. As a software developer for many years who has worked with RNGs, and knowing/inferring some things about the sophisticated methods poker sites use to ensure proper entropy, I am unequivocally confident in the randomness and security of the respectable sites, particularly Stars and FT. Some of the smaller, fly-by-night sites, who knows, but you can be certain the bigger players invest huge amounts of dollars and energy into security, otherwise they stand to implode in the face of an exploit scandal, as almost happened to UB/AP (which by the way had nothing to do with their RNG).