Tournament rule changes

[Julian23]

It's more like a myth that regular shuffles won't unclump a deck quickly. In fact just 7 riffle shuffles will almost perfectly randomize a deck of 52 cards. Hand-over-hand aka shotgun shuffles are pretty bad though. Something like 2500 of them to make almost every configuration of the deck equally likely.

Also, if you don't wanna riffle shuffle your deck because it bends the cards, you can just leave out the bending part and make the deck "fall" into itself. It's a bit trickier but I think you know what I mean. Just make sure to always have the top and bottom cards change.

I can understand that it causes physical issues for you and probably quite a few other people though. Like, I remember a friend of mine who would either spend aeons trying to overhand/shotgun shuffle a deck (let alone riffle shuffle) or just drop everything on the floor as soon as he attempted to speed it up. But I guess practice is the only answer. It's not like it's super difficult. But I'm speaking from a position of someone who had to make an actual effort to stop his addiciton to shuffling. For several years I would actually feel really uncomfortable when trying to concentrate without shuffling a deck. I would sometimes even bring a deck to work to just shuffle to relax myself and build focus...

[Cartesian]

It's more like a myth that regular shuffles won't unclump a deck quickly. In fact just 7 riffle shuffles will almost perfectly randomize a deck of 52 cards.

That 52 card poker deck doesn't use sleeves, though. If there is no such thing as "stickyness" between cards in deck, then all talk about chumps of lands/cards sticking together is a myth, and pile shuffling is a complete waste af time. That is probably the case. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that it is true that cards with sleeves can have a small tendency to "stick" together, even during extended normal shuffling. This tendency may or may not depend on the initial distribution of cards in the deck before shuffling, i.e. if certain cards are neighbors initially, they stay neighbors during shuffling. If that were true, then one could argue that a pile shuffle before shuffling to "unstick" those cards is not only a good idea, but a requirement before shuffling if a deck is to be properly randomized, and perhaps even that not pile shuffling in such a case would be cheating, since the player would have information about the likely distribution of some cards, which is exactly what you are not supposed to have when presenting a deck.

[Julian23]

I very much agree with your conclusion, but not the axiom of cards sticking together. I understand that it can be an issue but that's already beyond the point where you should have changed your sleeves anyways. Also, a proper riffle shuffle does a good job unsticking cards. Not that it matters though; sticky cards are a real indicator to change sleeves. If somehow it's still an issue, gets those with a little bit of texture on the back, they hardly ever stick together. Maybe if you pour water on them and try real hard.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Good luck telling a judge you're pile-sorting to increase the overall quality of your draws as opposed to doing just regular shuffles.

Please read the rest, including the part where I said I break down the deck prior to the first match. It isnt thouroughly randomized if there are still clumps of cards that I would have some information about in regards to their sequence.

As the event progresses, randomnization will happen more naturally: perhaps to the point where I wouldnt even need to pile shuffle every game in a match. However, in order to actually make an attempt to randomize the deck in the first match, an extra bit of shuffling is required.

... moot point, I just realized though: I could always shuffle partially after breaking down the deck but before the first match ... though this could easily be abused if extended to between matches as well.

[Julian23]

The point remains: just shuffle your deck properly, that's good enough; even from a completly sorted deck like you describe. And it takes less time than pile sorting.

[Lemnear]

In what kind of direction this thread is heading?

"I have to pile because my sleeves are sticky, my dexterity is too low to shuffle in a different way, I have to stack my deck aka ensure my lands do not stick together in the pile, etc.."

[HdH_Cthulhu]

It's more like a myth that regular shuffles won't unclump a deck quickly. In fact just 7 riffle shuffles will almost perfectly randomize a deck of 52 cards. Hand-over-hand aka shotgun shuffles are pretty bad though. Something like 2500 of them to make almost every configuration of the deck equally likely.

I also saw a YT video where a math prof also does the 7 riffle shuffle thing. Lots of science... but they all are idiots...(or I am and I am missing something!?)!
If your top card is Force of Will and you riffle shuffle chances are 50% that its still on top. After 7 riffles its still most likely in your opening hand.
Plus if you are a cheater you can riffle always the top half over the bottom half and have fully control of your top cards!

Riffle doesnt change the top(and bottom) of your deck well!!!

They never address this problem.

Imho best way to do it: 1 pile shuffle to count your cards. 3 riffle. 1-2 handsover. 1-2 riffle. The trick is a combination of different shuffle methods is just so much stronger. All have their pros an cons so I see no reason to not combine them AND dont forget to CUT. Its super eazy to control 1 card with every shuffle method!

Also technically the best shuffle and I dont know the English name: Mish-Mash memory style- just circle both hands and mash your cards on the table for perfect chaos!

[Hopo]

So you see problems with riffle shuffle but not with pile durdle? Luckily we have this new rule.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

The rule is just bullshit. Outside of bending your buy-in to play Magic itself in 7 riffle shuffles, no one form of shuffling will be both quick and random.

[rufus]

I also saw a YT video where a math prof also does the 7 riffle shuffle thing. Lots of science... but they all are idiots...(or I am and I am missing something!?)! ...

The "7 riffle shuffle" does make some possibly unrealistic assumptions that people who like to quote it like to skip over. As people become more consistent and smoother in the way they riffle shuffle it naturally becomes less random and the number of riffles goes up.

"Washing the cards" is a strong shuffling method, but suffers from the same sorts of issues that other shuffling methods do. In addition, it takes up a lot of space.

[thefringthing]

@Dice_Box You have a minor disability that requires you to have a judge shuffle for you. That's fine. That's always been available.

I think a lot of players don't really understand what randomness is, and this contributes to their belief that pile "shuffling" is a good use of their time and their opponents' time.

In Magic, your deck is randomized if no one has any extra information about the relative positions of any cards. For example, "mana weaving" results in an unrandomized deck because you know that certain cards (lands) are now more likely to be between other cards (non-lands). If you see that the bottom card of the deck is Brainstorm, then riffle the deck twice, you still know that that Brainstorm is likely to be near the bottom of the deck. The purpose of randomization is to destroy information like this. Pile shuffling doesn't do that.

[MaximumC]

@Dice_Box You have a minor disability that requires you to have a judge shuffle for you. That's fine. That's always been available.

Yeah, this. When originally talking to Dice-Dude, I didn't realize he had a legit medical reason for why riffle shuffling doesn't work for him. Reasonable accommodations for that make sense.

AS FOR THE REST OF YOU, I don't know how often people can say this, but it's like this:

If you are pile-shuffle with the intention of trying to make the distribution of cards in your deck different from what it would be without pile shuffling, you are cheating. Period, full stop. No, no, stop whining about how you randomize it afterwards. If that were really true, you wouldn't defend pile shuffling at all because you'd accept that it makes no difference. If you think it makes a difference in the result, then it's cheating.

And, really, all you guys need to do is claim you're pile-shuffling as a way to count your deck and make sure your sideboard is not in there. Just say that and do your silly thing.

[Hopo]

And, really, all you guys need to do is claim you're pile-shuffling as a way to count your deck and make sure your sideboard is not in there. Just say that and do your silly thing.

According to local judges you can do this once per game or face penalty for slow play. It is not reasonable to count cards all the time. If you really need to do that more than once, you have more severe issues bubbling under.

Of course you can count the cards if situation actually asks for it but also do realize that a typical homo sapiens normally can count things without separating them in several piles.

[MaximumC]

According to local judges you can do this once per game or face penalty for slow play. It is not reasonable to count cards all the time. If you really need to do that more than once, you have more severe issues bubbling under.

Of course you can count the cards if situation actually asks for it but also do realize that a typical homo sapiens normally can count things without separating them in several piles.

Yes but what if I have a disability that prevents me from counting higher than 12 as a result of a motorcycle accident

[Ace/Homebrew]

Then you should take Grapeshot out of your deck.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

You know, you're right: it doesn't make a difference in terms of randomnization if I shuffle sufficiently after piling. I'll still have to mulligan, and I'll still get flooded or screwed.

My apologies.

[Dice_Box]

Yes but what if I have a disability that prevents me from counting higher than 12 as a result of a motorcycle accident

Play a deck where you don't have to play too many spells a turn. I suggest Lands. I only have to count to 3 normally.

[JermStudDog]

I have spent the past year thinking too much about how to shuffle and properly randomize an mtg deck in a time-efficient manner. The best method I've come up with is:

Hold the deck in one hand, drop roughly the top 1/10th the deck into your other hand, allowing the cards to rest with the top card still resting on top of the pile. Repeat this 5-7 times until you have roughly half the deck in either hand.

Shotgun shuffle, making sure that the original deck has several cards resting above the top card in your newly semi-reversed pile. Repeat as many times as you feel necessary.

This causes the top cards of the deck to all come from the middle, the middle of the deck is a collection of cards 1/3rd of the way through the deck on either side, the bottom of the deck comes from the top and bottom, and roughly half of those remain in the original order while the other half are poorly shuffled.

The randomness becomes better as the number of shuffles goes up, and shotgun shuffling just works well with sleeved cards. And an important facet for me as an MTG player is that I can very often intermix the two decks on a card-by-card basis. This helps to break up clumps after sorting and achieve fairly random ordering in the deck with only a handful of shuffles.