Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

"Declumping" a Deck

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vaporeon said:
The tournament is a test and the netdeck is the answer key. If I can take the time to make a deck to win with, so can everyone else. So because I don't it, I can call it cheating. That's not fair.

Stacking is cheating because you're doing it with the intent of cheating. Declumping is not cheating because all you're doing is just moving cards around so you can make the deck more random when you shuffle. There is nothing wrong with movie cards around the deck during a search.
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I am going to refrain from going COMPLETELY berserk because there is a chance you may just be a 11 or 12 year old and you don't quite understand.

First of all, the definition of cheating is not "things 'vaporeon' doesn't believe are cheating." Netdecking is an unfortunate reality of the internet, but there is not much you can do about it beyond withholding your own deck lists. It is also an unfortunate reality of business, thanks to SixPrizes (who understand there is money to be made off the demand for lists).

Stacking not cheating because you do it with the intent of cheating - it is cheating because it puts a player at an unfair advantage. If a player tells a judge, "Oh, I had no idea it was illegal!" the judge isn't going to say, "Oh well in THAT case there is nothing wrong with what you did!" Ignorance of the law is no excuse, etc.

Here is your syllogism:

Premise 1. There is nothing wrong with moving cards around the deck during a search.
Premise 2. Declumping is defined as moving your cards around the deck during a search.
Conclusion. There is nothing wrong with declumping.

Logical, but unfortunately not sound due to the fact one of your premises (Premise 1) is incorrect. There IS something wrong with moving cards around in your deck during a search because in no way does it make a deck MORE random when you shuffle. Do you understand what random means? I know when you draw a hand with 1 tepig, 3 fire, and 3 junk arm there is a natural inclination to think, "Well, that's just not random!" Guess what - it is! A random deck does not mean that everything is perfectly spread out at all times.

How is this difficult to understand?
How is this even a debate?
 
Randomness = every combination is possible. Even the bad combinations/sequences.

When you put cards in specific places, you are trying to eliminate some of those combinations/sequences (all of your Rare Candies together, for example).

Whether it is cheating or not is a debate worth having. But what is NOT in question is the fact that those who do this are attempting to eliminate bad combinations/sequences, resulting in an improved (for themselves) series of combinations/sequences.

As always, shuffle the heck out of your opponent's decks EVERY time.


When I see someone doing this, I know one thing to be true - they are trying to gain an advantage. I also know another thing to be true - they have proven themselves to me to be untrustworthy.
 
Declumping is Cheating

Listen guys, why do you declump? You do it because you feel if you separate the cards like that there is less of a chance at them being next to each other after a shuffle. You are doing an action to attempt to not draw your cards a certain way. Comon, you wouldn't move 4 rare candies TOGETHER would you? You doing an action to the deck other than shuffling is makeing your deck LESS random. It is not a waste of your time, it is CHEATING
 
BTW this is an interesting point to make: something can't be "more" or "less" random. It is a binary condition. Something is either "random" or it is "not random." It is not a continuum that you can move further down by selectively re-organizing cards. By de-clumping, you are taking a presumably randomized deck and making it unrandom.

The act of doing this is cheating. You are not allowed to cheat.

One could argue that you are shuffling afterward, but we both know the following realities exist:

1) The entire purpose of your declumping is to make it so your deck is not random, but rather to improve your draws (ie, stack your deck)
2) The idea that you are able to sufficiently randomize your deck with in-game shuffles is laughable at best, disingenuous at worst -- the deck is quite similar to its state before your shuffle and is clearly far less thorough than the pre-game shuffling. Any de-clumping is assuredly not undone

Its pretty clear that the only reason to de-clump one's deck is to improve draws. How anyone could argue that this isn't stacking ones deck, ie cheating, is beyond me.
 
mattalvis said:
I am going to refrain from going COMPLETELY berserk because there is a chance you may just be a 11 or 12 year old and you don't quite understand.

First of all, the definition of cheating is not "things 'vaporeon' doesn't believe are cheating." Netdecking is an unfortunate reality of the internet, but there is not much you can do about it beyond withholding your own deck lists. It is also an unfortunate reality of business, thanks to SixPrizes (who understand there is money to be made off the demand for lists).

Stacking not cheating because you do it with the intent of cheating - it is cheating because it puts a player at an unfair advantage. If a player tells a judge, "Oh, I had no idea it was illegal!" the judge isn't going to say, "Oh well in THAT case there is nothing wrong with what you did!" Ignorance of the law is no excuse, etc.

Here is your syllogism:

Premise 1. There is nothing wrong with moving cards around the deck during a search.
Premise 2. Declumping is defined as moving your cards around the deck during a search.
Conclusion. There is nothing wrong with declumping.

Logical, but unfortunately not sound due to the fact one of your premises (Premise 1) is incorrect. There IS something wrong with moving cards around in your deck during a search because in no way does it make a deck MORE random when you shuffle. Do you understand what random means? I know when you draw a hand with 1 tepig, 3 fire, and 3 junk arm there is a natural inclination to think, "Well, that's just not random!" Guess what - it is! A random deck does not mean that everything is perfectly spread out at all times.

How is this difficult to understand?
How is this even a debate?
Click to expand...

Just so you know I'm not some random kid, I'm 23. I'm also a very skilled player. I'm good at what I do. If I'm searching my deck for cards and I happen to see my 3 catchers next to each other, I will move them. Same with any other cards. At the end of my search, I shuffle my deck well and offer it to my opponent to shuffle and or cut.

I know what random is. When I'm playing a game and I'm drawing bad, it's because the deck was not shuffled well, or it was but not in the order I wanted but when the chance comes for me to search, I'm going to fix the issue, move cards around if it's needed and make the attempt to shuffle it again.

It's should not be a debate. It's Ness saying, I don't like it when people declump and here is why. It's not about wasting time anymore but how he feels and he feels like people are cheating. Thats the issue.
 
There was one card in particular that gained tremendously from "declumping" your deck. Do you remember Neo: Revelations Entei? It had a Pokémon Power: Howl. When you played Entei from your hand, you could reveal the top 5 cards of your deck and attach all fire you found there to it. (Discard the rest, end your turn.)

Players would spread their fire energies out in their deck and then do a modest shuffle to try to maintain this distribution of energy. This made the natural probability of a 0 Energy Howl even more unlikely than it normally would be.

Who wants to tell me that this wasn't an unfair advantage and should have been allowed? C'mon. I dare ya.
 
Moss Factor said:
BTW this is an interesting point to make: something can't be "more" or "less" random. It is a binary condition. Something is either "random" or it is "not random." It is not a continuum that you can move further down by selectively re-organizing cards. By de-clumping, you are taking a presumably randomized deck and making it unrandom.

The act of doing this is cheating. You are not allowed to cheat.

One could argue that you are shuffling afterward, but we both know the following realities exist:

1) The entire purpose of your declumping is to make it so your deck is not random, but rather to improve your draws (ie, stack your deck)
2) The idea that you are able to sufficiently randomize your deck with in-game shuffles is laughable at best, disingenuous at worst -- the deck is quite similar to its state before your shuffle and is clearly far less thorough than the pre-game shuffling. Any de-clumping is assuredly not undone

Its pretty clear that the only reason to de-clump one's deck is to improve draws. How anyone could argue that this isn't stacking ones deck, ie cheating, is beyond me.
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Absolutely correct. My mistake, I remember this now. Something is either random or not random.
Declumping is not random.
 
vaporeon said:
I know what random is. When I'm playing a game and I'm drawing bad, it's because the deck was not shuffled well, or it was but not in the order I wanted but when the chance comes for me to search, I'm going to fix the issue, move cards around if it's needed and make the attempt to shuffle it again.
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My facial expression matches that of your avatar.
 
I would like to address the statement that "declumping only wastes 5 seconds so who cares".

I recently started attending Poker Dealer School in Florida. The schools teacher, Brian, isone of the most respected dealers in the state for his exstensive knowledge of everything poker related. When I was first learning how to take players bets in I would take them in one at a time. Brian explained to me that I should be taking multiple bets in at once, because its about 5 seconds faster. "5 seconds?" I said. "Who cares about 5 seconds?" Brian proceded to educate me.

If you waste 5 seconds on all 4 betting rounds, you waste 20 seconds a hand. 200 hands a day is 4000 seconds wasted a day. If you deal 300 days a year you waste 1.2 MILLION seconds a year. 1.2 million seconds translates to 333 hours a year wasted for NOTHING! 333 hours wasted is just THOUSANDS of dollars in tips down the drain for no reason whatsoever.

The same applies to pokemon. Declumping takes about 10 seconds.
Declump your deck 3 times a game and that's 30 seconds.
Me having to shuffle your deck after a declump is 20 seconds. 3x a game is 1 minute.

Pokemon rounds last 30 mins. 1.5 mins is 5% of a game.

Really? You're really going to waste 5% of every game you play in your LIFE PLUS your opponents lives on declumping?

And don't say "declumping isn't a waste of time because______________". Anything that goes in that line is cheating or stupid.
Posted with Mobile style...
 
vaporeon said:
Just so you know I'm not some random kid, I'm 23. I'm also a very skilled player. I'm good at what I do. If I'm searching my deck for cards and I happen to see my 3 catchers next to each other, I will move them. Same with any other cards. At the end of my search, I shuffle my deck well and offer it to my opponent to shuffle and or cut.

I know what random is. When I'm playing a game and I'm drawing bad, it's because the deck was not shuffled well, or it was but not in the order I wanted but when the chance comes for me to search, I'm going to fix the issue, move cards around if it's needed and make the attempt to shuffle it again.

It's should not be a debate. It's Ness saying, I don't like it when people declump and here is why. It's not about wasting time anymore but how he feels and he feels like people are cheating. Thats the issue.
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Wow 20+ posts deep and I finally caught the level.

All I can say is BRAVO! You earned it, my friend.
 
vaporeon said:
I know what random is. When I'm playing a game and I'm drawing bad, it's because the deck was not shuffled well, or it was but not in the order I wanted but when the chance comes for me to search, I'm going to fix the issue, move cards around if it's needed and make the attempt to shuffle it again.
Click to expand...

Alright vaporeon, you got me.

*taps table*
 
Ness said:
There was one card in particular that gained tremendously from "declumping" your deck. Do you remember Neo: Revelations Entei? It had a Pokémon Power: Howl. When you played Entei from your hand, you could reveal the top 5 cards of your deck and attach all fire you found there to it. (Discard the rest, end your turn.)

Players would spread their fire energies out in their deck and then do a modest shuffle to try to maintain this distribution of energy. This made the natural probability of a 0 Energy Howl even more unlikely than it normally would be.

Who wants to tell me that this wasn't an unfair advantage and should have been allowed? C'mon. I dare ya.
Click to expand...

You fail to see the difference in declumping and stacking. You shuffle well after declumping cards and offer it to your opponent but when you stack, it's to cheat. If you stacked 5 fire energy so you can get the effect, that cheating but during a search for a card and you notice 10 fire energy together, you're going to move them around.

Declumping is not bad and it should not be an issue.
 
vaporeon said:
Netdecking is not cheating to you because you do it. Do you see where I'm getting at.
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All you're doing is trying to make yourself feel better about what you do by putting everyone else down.

Pokemon is a children's card game. One that isn't even the most popular out of all card games. If I want to go on six prizes and take a deck I liked, build it, and play it at league, it's my prerogative. I'm having fun and so is everyone else I play against. And unlike in the 90's, where computer and internet use wasn't as widespread as it is today, most people all have access to the same information and it becomes an even more equal playing ground every year.

With your posts, sometimes I feel like you don't live in our society. Information is incredibly widespread today, with EVERYTHING, and privacy is becoming harder and harder. As a society, we gather and disseminate information quickly, and everyone around can benefit from it - but they have to keep up with it. In the company I work with we keep close tabs on our competitors, and if we find a good idea, you can bet that we copy it. And they copy us too. And in the end, we all become better companies providing better services and products to the whole world because of it.

Where would we be without copying each other anyway? Can you imagine what the world would have been like if the man who first made fire kept it a secret? We might still be in the stone age....
 
Can we also start a thread on the legality of pile shuffling a sorted deck before "regular" shuffling while setting up?

It's like the argument is, "well, if you intentionally changed the order of the cards at any point in time before shuffling, the order isn't random." Everyone sorts their deck at some point, even if it's an hour before the match. Is that interfering with randomization later on?

And I don't know if I understand the idea that degrees of randomness don't exist. For the purpose of, say, flipping a coin, that's obviously true. If I shuffle my sorted deck for 10 seconds, that's going to impose some degree of randomization. If I shuffle for 30 seconds, that will impose a greater degree of randomization. That's more physical mechanics than probability, though, so you might be right.
 
"Declumping" and stacking are essentially the same thing. It doesn't make it any more acceptable to place cards in one other desirable position in your deck than any other position. They are all cheating.
 
so 1 troll per day= 20 minutes waster per person X 10 people = 200 Minutes X300 days a year is 60,000 minutes a year= 42 Days of other people's lives wasted a year
 
Swordfish1989 said:
All you're doing is trying to make yourself feel better about what you do by putting everyone else down.

Pokemon is a children's card game. One that isn't even the most popular out of all card games. If I want to go on six prizes and take a deck I liked, build it, and play it at league, it's my prerogative. I'm having fun and so is everyone else I play against. And unlike in the 90's, where computer and internet use wasn't as widespread as it is today, most people all have access to the same information and it becomes an even more equal playing ground every year.

With your posts, sometimes I feel like you don't live in our society. Information is incredibly widespread today, with EVERYTHING, and privacy is becoming harder and harder. As a society, we gather and disseminate information quickly, and everyone around can benefit from it - but they have to keep up with it. In the company I work with we keep close tabs on our competitors, and if we find a good idea, you can bet that we copy it. And they copy us too. And in the end, we all become better companies providing better services and products to the whole world because of it.

Where would we be without copying each other anyway? Can you imagine what the world would have been like if the man who first made fire kept it a secret? We might still be in the stone age....
Click to expand...

I'm just not going to sit here and let him call other cheating because he feels like hes better then other because he played for 12 years in other stats and countries.
 
Politoed666 said:
Can we also start a thread on the legality of pile shuffling a sorted deck before "regular" shuffling while setting up?
Click to expand...

I'd like to acknowledge this as the only good point I've heard from the other side. Politoed is getting at "Well, isn't pile shuffling creating some sort of declumping effect?"

Well, when someone is pile shuffling, the deck is face-down and you are assuming they are not paying attention to the order they are placing their cards in. While pile-shuffling can maintain some pattern of cards, I believe it is used for 2 reasons:

1) It allows players to easily count their deck.

2) The better alternative, a wash (a method of shuffling I described in an earlier post) would result in upside-down cards and damaged sleeves.

Additionally, players should be shuffling thoroughly either before and/or after a pile shuffle (or do multiple varying pile shuffles). This would disrupt any of the issues that would be similar to declumping/stacking a deck. The difference with the shuffle, compared to declumping is that at no point was a player intentionally trying to create an artificial distribution of cards.

And if your pile shuffle does allow for some artificially-created order of cards, that doesn't mean declumping is okay. It means your pile-shuffling method isn't.
 
vaporeon said:
You fail to see the difference in declumping and stacking. You shuffle well after declumping cards and offer it to your opponent but when you stack, it's to cheat. If you stacked 5 fire energy so you can get the effect, that cheating but during a search for a card and you notice 10 fire energy together, you're going to move them around.

Declumping is not bad and it should not be an issue.
Click to expand...

THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. Just because you opine one as cheating and another as not doesn't actually MEAN they are any different. In any situation where you intentionally move cards around you are stacking your deck, that is not something that is debatable. That is the DEFINITION of stacking - "to prearrange the order of (a deck of cards) so as to increase the chance of winning."
 
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