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

(www.scientificamerican.com)
97 points indigodaddy | 1 comments | 05 Sep 25 22:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.256s | 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.

replies(3): >>45154759 #>>45154777 #>>45156509 #
1. mistercow ◴[07 Sep 25 08:44 UTC] No.45156509[source]▶
There’s an almost mystical belief among certain tech and science journalists that computers are bad at randomness, and it’s really bizarre, and in my opinion, pretty harmful.