A Random Shuffle

[gilly]

I was reading a string of posts on the internet board concerning the "randomnes" of a shuffle. Most people seemed to be of the mind that the "poor" shuffling techniques of poker dealers can lead to certain advantages/disadvantages for certain seats.

This intrigued me and I wanted to post a question but I decided that this was a better forum for my question. Given a deck of cards, washing them and shuffling it seems that it will be random. It seems to me the fact that each shuffle is seperate and in its own way random would forced the cards to randomize.

Also, they mention "clumping" if the played hands are placed on top of the deck before shuffling can give advantages to certain areas of the table, but would this not matter. If two Kings are stuck together the person is seat 4 will get one and so will the person in seat 5. The fact that you get card 4 and 14 not 4 and 5 would seem to all but eliminate this problem.

Any oppinions?

[brad]

casino arizona eliminated scramble (wash). now they just shuffle. (time games u can ask them to scramble)

should i always make sure they scramble?

[morgan]

If you want a fair shuffle, you need at least seven /forums/images/icons/smile.gif .

As far as clumping, I think the main fear is an observant opponent noticing where-abouts a couple of kings might fall. Or likely not fall. The fact that one player won't get them both doesn't take away from the lack of randomness. There is still information available that shouldn't be.

Morgan

[Jimbo]

Here a couple of links about shuffling:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuffling_playing_cards

http://www.nature.com/nsu/001005/001005-8.html

Shuffle up and deal!! /forums/images/icons/smile.gif