It takes no longer then a second or 2 to move the card(s) during the search. If the average search time is 10 seconds then they can do what they want within that time. There are WAY move actions that take longer that are not needed at all in the game.
It takes 20-30 seconds to undo the stack caused by declumping through riffle shuffling.
Then you sure must shuffle slow.
20 seconds for 7 riffles is pretty standard.
20 seconds for 7 riffles is pretty standard.
I just told you. 7 shuffles is simply excessive. One or two strong riffles should defeat "stacking". It won't fully randomize the deck, but it will destroy intentional clumps.
I really just don't like the attitude of distrust though. Seeing two consecutive Mewtwo EXs and moving one to the other side of the deck in a random place is not stacking. It's a reordering of the deck that is then randomized by shuffling, and it is supposed to prevent those two cards from coming into contact again. Are you such a stickler for odds that you insist on shuffling 7 times to make sure that he DOES have a chance for those two cards to come back together? Hint: More than once I've moved two cards apart, shuffled, and drawn those two cards consecutively without 7 riffles.
Ugh. I can't really argue against you but the atmosphere in this thread makes me sick.
I just told you. 7 shuffles is simply excessive. One or two strong riffles should defeat "stacking". It won't fully randomize the deck, but it will destroy intentional clumps.
Wikipedia said:A famous paper by mathematician and magician Persi Diaconis and mathematician Dave Bayer on the number of shuffles needed to randomize a deck concluded that the deck did not start to become random until five good riffle shuffles, and was truly random after seven, in the precise sense of variation distance described in Markov chain mixing time; of course, you would need more shuffles if your shuffling technique is poor. Recently, the work of Trefethen et al. has questioned some of Diaconis' results, concluding that six shuffles are enough. The difference hinges on how each measured the randomness of the deck.
Declumping doesn't affect the order of the deck? What? :nonono:
Declumping affects the order of the deck. Declumping changes the order of the deck.
*sigh*
---------- Post added 09/27/2012 at 05:03 PM ----------
And what percent of corporations split their profits in half? Pretty much 0-1%.
Simplified explanation:
Walmart employees don't make $55K a year on average because there will be people willing to do the job for $54K a year. They don't make $54K a year on average because there will be people willing to do the job for $53K a year. They don't make $53K a year on average because there will be people willing to do the job for $52K a year. So on and so forth.
It's a fact of a capitalist system that people typically achieve a salary based on supply and demand, where incentive compensation does not come into play. Unfortunately, menial labor is not worth very much in the labor market because of the amount of supply.
To put this in Pokemon terms, people won't buy a playset of a card for $55 each when they could get the same card for $25 each. Very few (if any) Pokemon players are willing to pay more than they have to for a card; likewise, very few (if any) corporations are willing to pay more than they have to for labor.
Think about that though, if you're more than likely preventing the mewtwo's from touching then you manipulated your deck.
Do you know what else 'manipulates' the order of the deck? Pulling all of your choices for a search to the front of the deck. Something that I may remind you is done frequently by some players and isn't often viewed as a bad thing.
Is this really the same thing?
You "manipulate" the order of your deck when you do this, but you are doing it to aid in carrying out an in game action actually required by playing a card. That is to say, if you play Ultra Ball and move your top few choices all together to help you decide, that is a step in trying to finish the effect of Ultra Ball.
De-clumping is not part of that, unless you make the claim (which needs to be backed up by significant data) that de-clumping is merely helping you attain the same randomized state that you are ultimately striving for but with fewer shuffles.
Someone who fervently opposes de-clumping is likely to just start demanding people order their deck while searching. The argument would likely go along the lines of "If you can't search your deck without a special ritual to aide you that is going to require you shuffle extra thoroughly to achieve sufficient randomization, you probably shouldn't be playing at this level."
That seems really harsh, but I am just warning of how this could escalate, not stating my own point. I would actually encourage players not only to avoid de-clumping mid-game, and whenever you do it, follow it up with six to seven riffle shuffles (or another method of thoroughly shuffling).
I must confess that after pondering this, it does seem rather... amateurish to "need" to move all your search choices to the top of your deck, and I personally am thinking of trying to break myself of this habit, especially after confessing I am not good at riffle shuffling.
I feel like there's a very noteworthy difference between what is fair and what is not: unfair deck manipulation centers around moving cards to specific locations, whereas fair deck manipulation centers around moving cards that are inconveniently placed into random locations.
A random location is where the card ends up after you shuffle sufficiently. A card at a random location can be next to the exact same card. After you declump, you ensure that two of the same/similar card are no longer touching each other, thus causing the location to be different than what it was originally after randomization.
In other words, declumping does not fall under your own definition of "fair deck manipulation." :nonono: (Shuffling over and over again, however, does fall under this definition.)
And what difference is there between round 1 BR and top cut Regs? You should be playing both at the utmost ability and with the same concern for process.
Seriously. This argument is running around and around in circles talking about differing, logical definitions of "shuffle" and "random", and those concepts are already so vague and difficult to understand.
The difference is in the stakes, obviously.
---------- Post added 09/28/2012 at 03:06 PM ----------
So you agree that declumping doesn't fall under your own definition of "fair deck manipulation"?