Shuffling

steveiam

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I Have heard somewhere that some online sites are reshuffling the deck during hands is this correct ?
 
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Caesura

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What happens on some sites is that they only have about 20,000 variations of shuffling. Once you have played enough hands you will see the same hole cards and flops coming round again. Depending on the number of players you can work out who has what or what the flop, turn etc will be.
 
RiverMeTimbers

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What happens on some sites is that they only have about 20,000 variations of shuffling. Once you have played enough hands you will see the same hole cards and flops coming round again. Depending on the number of players you can work out who has what or what the flop, turn etc will be.

Can this be proven?? I thought the decks used a random complex logarithm
 
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Blue_Fossil

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Can this be proven?? I thought the decks used a random complex logarithm

I'd also be interested in seeing some documentation supporting this. Random number generators are exactly complicated.
 
OzExorcist

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I Have heard somewhere that some online sites are reshuffling the deck during hands is this correct ?

Depends on the site you're playing on. Haven't looked into it for a while (because I honestly don't care) but Stars and Tilt were the classic examples of the two approaches.

Stars used a "set deck", where the cards were shuffled before the start of the hand and that was it - everything got dealt in that order, just like a live game.

Tilt, on the other hand, used a "continuous shuffle" method, whereby any time another card was needed the software just pulled one at random from the cards that hadn't already been dealt.

In theory Tilt's system was more secure.
 
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Blue_Fossil

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I'd also be interested in seeing some documentation supporting this. Random number generators are exactly complicated.

To clarify - I meant NOT exactly complicated.
 
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Caesura

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What happens on some sites is that they only have about 20,000 variations of shuffling. Once you have played enough hands you will see the same hole cards and flops coming round again. Depending on the number of players you can work out who has what or what the flop, turn etc will be.

Sorry, I was just being a dick and made that up when I was bored. I would have deleted it if I could.
 
IntenseHeat

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What happens on some sites is that they only have about 20,000 variations of shuffling. Once you have played enough hands you will see the same hole cards and flops coming round again. Depending on the number of players you can work out who has what or what the flop, turn etc will be.

Sorry, I was just being a dick and made that up when I was bored. I would have deleted it if I could.

That's pretty funny. This isn't exactly my area of expertise, but I knew that just didn't sound right. I was reading my way down this thread, looking for one of the more knowledgeable members to call bs on this one.
 
danprince10

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What happens on some sites is that they only have about 20,000 variations of shuffling. Once you have played enough hands you will see the same hole cards and flops coming round again. Depending on the number of players you can work out who has what or what the flop, turn etc will be.

Yea I don't think that's true and if it ever was it would have been like 10 years ago on an extremely minor site or something.
 
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Blown01Cobra

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I really don't care which way a site uses to shuffle, so long as it the next card to appear is in no way able to be known. I mean, whether or not the computer shuffles them before or during doesn't change the fact that you're betting on unknown cards.

The computer could shuffle the cards 1000 times each hand and even continue shuffling as I'm betting and it wouldn't change the way I would bet my hand. All I can do is bet based upon what I am holding, what has happened in the game, and the implied odds of what could possibly be laid down. While random number generators aren't necessarily a complex concept, I think we've come far enough in their design that it doesn't necessarily matter how it works so long as it is seemingly random to the best of our technological abilities.
 
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Blue_Fossil

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I really don't care which way a site uses to shuffle, so long as it the next card to appear is in no way able to be known. I mean, whether or not the computer shuffles them before or during doesn't change the fact that you're betting on unknown cards.

The computer could shuffle the cards 1000 times each hand and even continue shuffling as I'm betting and it wouldn't change the way I would bet my hand. All I can do is bet based upon what I am holding, what has happened in the game, and the implied odds of what could possibly be laid down. While random number generators aren't necessarily a complex concept, I think we've come far enough in their design that it doesn't necessarily matter how it works so long as it is seemingly random to the best of our technological abilities.

Well put. While there are a finite number of sequences in which the cards can be dealt, it should not be too difficult for a site to make sure the next card is always random. The costs of not doing so are too great.
 
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What happens on some sites is that they only have about 20,000 variations of shuffling. Once you have played enough hands you will see the same hole cards and flops coming round again. Depending on the number of players you can work out who has what or what the flop, turn etc will be.

Yea I don't think that's true and if it ever was it would have been like 10 years ago on an extremely minor site or something.

Actually Caesura it wasn't completely made up BS.
And yes it was many years ago, but not a minor site at the time, as it was the very first real money online poker site in the world.
Some players did actually get wize to the cycles and cash in on it before the loophole was closed. Just look up the history of online poker if you're interested.
 
Panamajoe

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I asked one of the sites technical support once for an explenation of their random deal process and got an incredibly technical response. Bottom line was that their process' randomness depended ultimately on entropy in the universe and they would take a sample of the background radiation (an inherently physical random decay), and use that to create a true random deal.

I wish I remembered the site, but you can ask the techies at any of them and they'll let you know what they do.
 
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Blown01Cobra

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I asked one of the sites technical support once for an explenation of their random deal process and got an incredibly technical response. Bottom line was that their process' randomness depended ultimately on entropy in the universe and they would take a sample of the background radiation (an inherently physical random decay), and use that to create a true random deal.

I wish I remembered the site, but you can ask the techies at any of them and they'll let you know what they do.

That sounds like an extremely awesome way to get a random output. I've heard of another method, I think it was mentioned further up, about random number generators using the current moment in time measured from a fixed point in time to generate a random number - but then it would seem to me like if you have a fixed basis for which you're calculating off of, you also would have a fixed number that could be used to solve what the "random" number would be.

I have no doubt that random number generators used by sites are legit and unsolvable, at least to a point that any human would be able to benefit from them, but my personality being curious as it is has really peaked my interest to learn more about it. I'm not going to question the sites, but if for no other reason than becoming a more intelligent person, I'm going to have to look into exactly how these RNGs work for different poker sites.
 
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I don't really try to understand the RNG too much,but some people at the table say that the rabbit changes the outcome of hand.I see them say, well if you did not rabbit, then the hand would have probably ended different.I think this is sort of ridiculous though.
 
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/* rand example: select a card */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>

int main ()
{
int iCard;

/* initialize random seed: */
srand ( time(NULL) );

/* generate card number: */
iCard = rand() % 52;

There you go a randomish card from 52 in C++

Want it more random?
Run it 52 times, decreasing the choice by one each time, to pre-randomize the order.
Then run it again to select a card from that randomized set of cards.

More Random?? And Unique to the table? Use the ascii codes of the players names, combined with the time and radioactivity count to 'seed' the generator.


I don't really try to understand the RNG too much,but some people at the table say that the rabbit changes the outcome of hand.I see them say, well if you did not rabbit, then the hand would have probably ended different.I think this is sort of ridiculous though.


Any site that uses the continuous shuffling method (eg Fulltilt) you do effect the outcome by taking longer to decide or even choosing to play the hand or not.
Of course it doesn't help as you still don't know what the effect of your interference will be.

But it does mean that people who say they would have won that hand are wrong, because if they had played, then the flop turn and river cards would have been different.


Rabbiting only makes sense if the preshuffle method is used, so the current hand wont change. (But it will change the next hand in some random way).
Because the offset from the RNG seed will have moved on.
 
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