More on the topic of "declumping"

[vaporeon]

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.

 

[psychup2034]

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.

 

[evil psyduck]

It takes 20-30 seconds to undo the stack caused by declumping through riffle shuffling.

Then you sure must shuffle slow.

 

[psychup2034]

Then you sure must shuffle slow.

20 seconds for 7 riffles is pretty standard.

 

[BlisseyRocks]

20 seconds for 7 riffles is pretty standard.

Agree 100%. I don't understand this whole "if you're afraid of them stacking, shuffle their deck but don't make such a big deal about it!" argument.

It really will not take any significant time toll on tournaments, and will only help when it actually hits a stacker. Its not like 10 people are going to come up at nationals to say this, id say MAYBE 3 will. The 5 minutes it will take to resolve these issues will not only help your community believe more in your ability but make them feel more comfortable.

 

[Kayle]

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.

 

[BlisseyRocks]

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.

Think about that though, if you're more than likely preventing the mewtwo's from touching then you manipulated your deck.

 

[psychup2034]

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.

You can tell me anything you want. You can tell me that the sun revolves around the Earth. It doesn't mean that you're right.

One or two strong riffles do not defeat stacking. That's just factually incorrect.

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.

(Source)

 

[Phazon Elite]

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.

Well said. now I can respect and agree with your on-topic argument, so I'm done.

 

[TheRolesWePlay]

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.

 

[Kayle]

I just can't help but feel that this entire discussion boils down to a distrust of other people. There is a line to be drawn between what is allowable and convenient (declumping as I define it, reordering between matches, drawing out your search options to the fore of a deck, etc) and what isn't (stacking, clumping as described in Jason's thread about worlds, etc).

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. Suppose you find a clump of three Junipers early game and you decide to declump them - you might insert one near a Catcher, thus giving you an unfavorable situation and not actually helping your game any. It should still be random in the end, even if you feel like you're manipulated what sorts of results you get, you aren't looking for a specific one and you aren't guaranteeing a more favorable one.

It's not an argument I can win with logic and I don't like that. It's just an argument about trusting people and trusting the rules the way they are.

 

[Otaku]

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.

 

[TheRolesWePlay]

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).

Reasonable to accomplish a card or not, the point I wanted to get across is simply that the apparently oh so precious deck order is disrupted by the process is deemed allowable by the rules, and that the problems caused are within error. Moving say one Mewtwo EX from the top of the deck to the front of the deck, regardless of another Mewtwo EX's presence there, the deck order has been altered.

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 personally don't see the problem. Weather it's amateurish or not it still happens, and I feel that a part of the goal of floor rules, is to compromise between effective procedures and unintrusive ones. The rules have to have some compatibility with amateurish tendencies, or new players (and in worse cases all players) will become aggravated and lose interest, or judges will be unable to keep up and they'll happen anyway.

 

[psychup2034]

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.)

 

[losjackal]

The point of shuffling the opponent's deck is not to fully randomize it with 7+ shuffles, it's just to change up where the opponent thinks their cards are.

You only need to do 7 when starting from a fully ordered state, like after a deck check (if you don't six-pile first). There, the cards were initially divided into 20 clumps or so. (How many lines did you fill out on your deck list? That's how many clumps there are.) At the beginning of a game or mid-game after minor declumping, there isn't nearly this amount of order in the deck. As Kayle said, two strong shuffles ought to take care of mixing it up on them.

 

[psychup2034]

In Round 1 of a Battle Roads, the point of shuffling my opponent's deck is not to fully randomize.

In top cut at Regionals, the point of shuffling my opponent's deck is to fully randomize, especially if they've stacked the deck through declumping.

 

[ogremarauder]

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. That is where you seem to differ with many.(including me) I play local non sanctioned tournament rounds the same way I'd play at like states or something. And I teach my children to do the same.

 

[Kayle]

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.)

You inserted your own definition of a random location. One that is incredibly vague and has no sound, logical basis. What is "sufficient" shuffling? You're basing the entire definition on "where the card ends up"... what if I shuffle PERFECTLY 4 times? I might be able to predict the order of my deck after that (since a perfect shuffle is predictable)? You're talking to a computer science student here. He wants more sound, concrete definitions.

If I don't know which position a card is in in my deck, nor what cards it is next to, it's in a random location. If I see a clump of cards (3 Juniper), DON'T declump, shuffle, and then see another Juniper on my draw, I might now begin to wonder if I'm about to draw into another Juniper.

Declumping, in this case, would have actually made my deck more random, and would have lessened my ability to predict my draws.

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.

 

[psychup2034]

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.

The difference is in the stakes, obviously.

---------- Post added 09/28/2012 at 03:06 PM ----------

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.

So you agree that declumping doesn't fall under your own definition of "fair deck manipulation"?

 

[Kayle]

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"?

No, of course I disagree, that's kind of obnoxious to ask.

Declumping is fair deck manipulation because you are moving a card from a predictable location to an unpredictable location.

If, when you declump, you check where you're PUTTING the card, rather than just reinserting it into a new part of your deck, you are stacking.