Upgraded shuffling of the deck

[Jonas]

Today we upgraded our Random Number generator for the shuffling of the decks in online games.

In theory you shouldn't notice any difference, but who knows

[Sailing_Away]

With the nature of random number generators, 49% of the people will say the cards are much better in being randomly distributed, 49% will say it's worse, and 2% won't have an opinion. Perfect results of a number random generator!

[pro_zak]

Well its been way over a month since this upgrade. I see no difference except its worse. YOU get good cards or bad cards for a period of time so the times you get the bad ones you just use a lower nic and play to work on your skills. When I get two bids and hands with one spade or two spades and a lone queen of another suit consistently there is no way to win so I just practice on my skill for when the cards change. And yes have beat the other team with all the cards because of skill . When you get a game with cards distributed so either side can win its much more fun but its never gonna change so will just keep on keeping on. Have quit playing pass or suicide pass tournaments because of the spade distribution its just to frustrating. There are positives about the site such as the guides cleaning up the lobby . I cant get used to the new version have tried it three times. If I go into lobby in smoots in new version I cant see what games are open or who is playing in them so its frustrating to me unless I am not hitting some button right. Yes I got offtrack. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh it would be nice if the old version could send coffee to pard I would be willing to pay for it .

[pro_zak]

Well into another month with the crap dealers still at it. Tonite two games in a row the other team had four nils with the one game last hand 8 bid. It did no good to set them or bag them they just were gifted back nils . What the heck is going on that these cards are distributed so uneven. How can it be fun or competitive to play with this kind of cards? Something is very wrong here. ugh ugh ugh ugh

[Spadesomniac]

Random distribution by its nature involves massive unfairness at times.

I haven't programmed anything since Fortran was a hot new language. So just out of curiosity can someone please explain how a computer is programmed to randomly pick one card from a deck of 52, then the next etc.?

It sounded trivial to me until I actually thought about how I would do it and then I realized I had no idea how to do this.

[Sailing_Away]

I'm a database administrator with a background in programming. Back in college, I not only took classes in programming but also stats and discrete math.

A complete pre-requisite is a randomizing function where you provide the number of possible choices (n), and this function has been thoroughly tested so you know over a very large sample, every possible result has a 1:n chance of being selected.

For the game's deck (could be 52 cards for hearts or spades or a smaller for euchre as appropriate), I would build an array representing every card (order unimportant - just you need to define one). I'll assume this is a 52 card deck for this explanation, and say I define hearts A, 2, 3..., J, Q, K, then diamonds, then clubs, then spades all the same order.

For the shuffling, I would pass n=52 into the function and it gives me a random number 1-52 (all with equal chance of being selected). The card that represents is card #1 in the shuffled deck, and I pop that one out of the array and move the higher array values down 1. Now I have 1 card in my shuffled deck and 51 cards in my array.

Now I repeat, passing n=51 into the function, and it gives me a random number from 1-51 where every possible response has a 1 in 51 chance of being selected. I pop that card out into the 2nd position of my shuffled deck, move the higher array occurrences down, and repeat until n=1 when I move the last card into the last position of my shuffled deck.

I agree with the comment that sometimes you will have the condition where you cannot believe the randomness was very random, but if you allow true randomization, you allow for all possible combinations and permutations including those that blow your socks off.

[Spadesomniac]

Thank you Brian!

Yes, I remember the array part but it was the randomizing function part I wouldn't know how to do.

But in any case, presuming you do have an accurate randomizer, this method sounds completely foolproof. I'm unclear as to why people are continually saying the deals aren't fair. I'm presuming HW did something like you post above, so it should be completely random and if you were to play a very large number of games you should get an average distribution of cards.

[Jamesap]

Hey Jonas! It's James (Justice) from way back. We had lots of shuffling discussions back in the day. The issue most people don't consider is that shuffling a deck of cards isn't purely random, and an algorithm doesn't take into account the limitations of what happens when you shuffle an actual deck. So, it will not simulate actual deck shuffles. A computer shuffle can be programed to be more "random" than an actual shuffling of cards, and that's the problem with "appearance." People who play a lot of cards with real decks come to see patterns in shuffles from hand to hand, and they expect to see the same on line or it appears manipulated. An obvious example is that in an algorithm the top card can become the bottom card after a "random" sequencing. In an actual deck shuffle it is impossible. So, a real shuffle is less random than a RNG. This was the logic that caused you to seed real shuffles into your game's RNG years ago.

In any case, I'd sure like to have my old account back, but I don't know how to go about getting it back, or if it's even possible. Any way that can happen?

[sandbar]

Hi James, welcome back, you could go to this link which gives you info on how to get accounts back etc.

https://support.hardwoodgames.com/portal/home

[SybiL]

JUSTICE!!!!
Finally someone I remember
I wonder what forum are hw peeps using now
Super nice to see you here anyway

[SybiL]

Hiya JONAS
Do you still read this thing?
Howdy if you do