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The math of shuffling cards almost brought down an online poker empire

(www.scientificamerican.com)
97 points indigodaddy | 2 comments | 05 Sep 25 22:50 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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sneak ◴[07 Sep 25 02:05 UTC] No.45154725[source]▶
> Card dealers create a unique deck with each shuffle, something computers cannot replicate

This is entirely, unequivocally false.

Shuffling as an algorithm to implement is easy to fuck up, but if you use a good one and a true RNG source, computers can shuffle better than humans - just as randomly, and many orders of magnitude faster.

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indigodaddy ◴[07 Sep 25 02:14 UTC] No.45154777[source]▶
Maybe they mean that computers can't replicate the imperfections/shortcomings that might define human/hand shuffling? That's kind of how I took it.
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1. evrydayhustling ◴[07 Sep 25 02:35 UTC] No.45154877[source]▶
Those human imperfections likely decrease randomness - for example leaving cards that started adjacent more likely to remain adjacent han by strict chance.
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2. harrall ◴[07 Sep 25 02:41 UTC] No.45154926[source]▶
They most definitely decrease randomness.

But I guess the article’s point is that human imperfections offset that with lower correlated failure modes.