Upper Deck Entertainment Forums

I am curious to hear well thought-out opinions on the "no pre-ordering of your deck" rule that exists in our tournamen policy. We have a few options we're looking at on the PM 3 forum:

1. Keep the rule as is and enforce it.
2. Clarify the rule to allow some forms of presetting, but not others.
3. Remove the rule and make an insufficient randomization penalty.

 

Thanks,

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Alex Charsky
Judge Manager
Upper Deck

Identifying a deck is insufficiently randomized is extremely difficult to do. If we start allowing presetting in any form, players are going to abuse it. They are going to put cards that make a good combo together and then unless they completely shuffle the deck, those cards are likely to remain together.

My big concern is that a lot of the younger or newer players are not that good at shuffling. I had one girl at my local YGO tournament that was playing an exodia deck and was really bad at shuffling. We finally realized how bad she was when she managed to draw all 5 exodia pieces in her starting hand. She was not intentionally cheating, but she didn't shuffle good enough.

In addition it is possible to appear to shuffle without really changing the order of certain cards (ei the bottom or top cards always remain on the bottom or top). Right now because we don't allow presorting, that is hard to take advantage of without being obvious about cheating. Also it is easy to spot someone sorting their deck so we can put a stop to it. If we allow presorting, those players that want to will take advantage and claim it was coincidence that the cards were together because he shuffled. In addition catching these players would be quite a bit more difficult.

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WoW RK2
VS RK2
PM LV2
Specialist LV2 (formerly demo team)
TO LV1

In wow I dont mind them scoopping there quests and allies back in a mixed order back into there deck after a game. They are going to shuffle anyways and the opponent gets the option. If it makes them feel better they will have a more random mixed deck that ok. But like preseting like ally-quest-ability while looking thru the deck to get a perfect order should not be alloud.

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World of Warcraft TCG Rules Lvl 3
WoW Minis Lvl 1
Huntik Rules Lvl 1
Player Management Lvl 2
The force is with you!!

We certainly should clarify a few things, knowing that in most cases players are not trying to set their decks.

Common complaints:

"He must be cheating, because he always gets a killer opening hand." Usually this is in the context of a Demise or Perfect Circle Deck.

"She was doing a sangan search and broke-up two nimbles" or "...put Premature Burial with Disk Commander."

The solution, I feel, is to teach and encourage the principles that...

1) The opponent can shuffle the deck completely (not just cut). Encourage pile shuffling at the beginning of the match for those who might be paranoid.

2) A player can not rearrange the cards in his/her deck during a search, so a pile shuffle should not be necessary after the opening shuffle.

The penalty should probably stay within the Procedural Error category, no?

There's my two cent's worth.

Thanks for starting this thread Alex.

After reading many of the entries on the subject, I am won over by the intention of the rule.  It was designed and implemented as the best way to ensure a random deck during play.  However, in order to enforce this rule we would have to inspect each player’s deck at the start of each tournament, which could be done at the time they hand in their deck list, simply having them hand it over to be riffled through by the judge.

That is the easiest way I see to enforce the rule.

On the other hand, if that becomes too much of a pain in the back side to implement, we could simply request that the first hand of any match begin with each player shuffling their own decks and that of their opponent for ~30 seconds each.  I agree that pile shuffling at the beginning of a tournament is a great way to help the process, however, a very small number of players could presort so that pile shuffling puts their deck in the order they wanted to begin with.

Maybe having the players present their decks with their deck list will help to alleviate other issues and also bring a slightly higher level of consciousness to the player in regards to their deck.  It might even cause certain individuals to think twice about other forms of cheat.

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Sean Ryberg
WoW TCG RK 1
WoW PM 1

The penalty should probably stay within the Procedural Error category, no?

While it could be lumped into an existing infraction, that is not always a good thing. This is a very specific scenario that does not really fit into any of the existing infractions. While on the surface it may seem like a PE infraction,  it does not really fit. The PE minor and major deal mostly with improperly following the rules of the game.

The second reason to create its own infraction to is insure judges know how UDE wants them to handle this specific scenario. Since this does not fit very well, there may be many different interpretations of what infraction could apply which could then the player to be over punished, or insufficiently punished.

The third reason to create its own infraction would be to emphasise to the players the importance of this policy. I do feel that players insufficiently randomizing decks is a widespread problem mostly do to their misunderstanding of HOW to properly randomize a deck and the importance of doing so.

How do you know if a player thoroughly randomizes their deck? Well, there is no hard and fast rule as to when a deck is thoroughly randomized, but I can tell you some surefire ways to know that it is not.

For example, you can prove mathematically that it takes at least six to seven good riffle shuffles to thoroughly randomize a deck. (Please note it can not be a perfect riffle shuffle as a perfect riffle shuffle actually KEEPS the order of the cards and will eventually return the cards to their original order!)

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20001014/mathtrek.asp

This was written for a 52 card deck, which is close to 60 so we can draw parallels. An excerpt from the article:

"Using computer simulations of riffle shuffles, the Trefethens found that, according to their measure of the information left about the card distribution, the amount of information (degree of order) decreases steadily with each shuffle, reaching virtually zero information with the sixth shuffle and staying there with each subsequent shuffle."

Here is another article which says it takes seven.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/shuffle.html

So, in short a good rule of thumb may be if your are riffle shuffling LESS than seven times, you are  not thoroughly randomizing your deck. After 7 good riffle shuffles the order of the deck bears no resemblances to the original order of the deck.

Also if someone is intending to cheat via stacking their deck and doing a fake shuffle, then the presence of any given policy is not going to change what they are doing. We just need to focus on educating players on what is and is not good shuffling and encourage them to make sure their opponents apply those techniques.

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Chad Daniel
PM 3
WoW 3
Vs 3

1466854:

However, in order to enforce this rule we would have to inspect each player’s deck at the start of each tournament, which could be done at the time they hand in their deck list, simply having them hand it over to be riffled through by the judge.

At larger events such as nationals this would not be feasible. However we already have a method of enforcing this. In most regionals and higher, there are random deck checks at the beginning of each round. Part of the checks that the deck check team does is scan through the deck for patterns.

Admittedly we will never catch ALL the players that might be presorting their decks because we are not checking all the decks. But the threat of being caught at it (and I have caught people) is usually enough to keep most players from doing it if they know it is wrong.

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WoW RK2
VS RK2
PM LV2
Specialist LV2 (formerly demo team)
TO LV1

863356:

Also if someone is intending to cheat via stacking their deck and doing a fake shuffle, then the presence of any given policy is not going to change what they are doing. We just need to focus on educating players on what is and is not good shuffling and encourage them to make sure their opponents apply those techniques.

I agree with that 100%, however, I also feel that we don't need to make it any easier for them. Right now they have to leave or go somewhere that no one will notice that they are sorting their deck.

In addition, if we make it legal for some forms of sorting but not others, then I think it will lead to more confusion for new players are what is allowed. How many times has a new player made a move that was illegal and said, "but I asked a judge and they said I could" Or that they saw a friend doing it in from of a judge. When in fact they just misunderstood the situation or what the judge was saying.

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WoW RK2
VS RK2
PM LV2
Specialist LV2 (formerly demo team)
TO LV1

I agree with that 100%, however, I also feel that we don't need to make it any easier for them. Right now they have to leave or go somewhere that no one will notice that they are sorting their deck.

If someone were to sort their deck in front of their opponant, it should be obvious to the opponant that they need to make sure the deck is propperly shuffled. Even if they are not sure if they are cheating or not, they can thoroughly shuffle the decks as well.

Also, there is not even time to sort a deck during a match so the only time it could be done is inbetween matches. Additionally there are very legitimate reasons to sort your deck inbetween matches that have nothing to do with trying to cheat.

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Chad Daniel
PM 3
WoW 3
Vs 3

863356:

Also, there is not even time to sort a deck during a match so the only time it could be done is inbetween matches. Additionally there are very legitimate reasons to sort your deck inbetween matches that have nothing to do with trying to cheat.

I have to admit you got my curious on that one.  Are you referring to something subjective or are there specific reasons you can give, so I may better understand your reference.

The suggestion of better educating the players I believe is the best answer.  As Chad mentioned, a new rule/punishment may be necessary to clarify the importance and understanding of the issue to players.  This I think should be resolved before we take steps to further educate the players in order to minimize any confusion.

I have thought about this issue over the weekend and talked with a local tournament organizer.  My strongest answer is to require at the start of every tournament (possibly every match) each player shuffles their own deck and then shuffles their opponent's deck.  We could say each shuffling seven times, in reference to Chad's post.

I think this would not only educate the players on proper shuffling, but solve the issue at hand.  Only draw back I see is that we are putting more and more rules into a game that is just suppose to be fun.

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Sean Ryberg
WoW TCG RK 1
WoW PM 1

1466854:

I have thought about this issue over the weekend and talked with a local tournament organizer.  My strongest answer is to require at the start of every tournament (possibly every match) each player shuffles their own deck and then shuffles their opponent's deck.  We could say each shuffling seven times, in reference to Chad's post.

I think this would not only educate the players on proper shuffling, but solve the issue at hand.  Only draw back I see is that we are putting more and more rules into a game that is just suppose to be fun.

From a player perspective, I don't want my opponent getting the final say on how my deck is shuffled.  So I would say opponent shuffles, then the player shuffles, then opponent cuts. 

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William C. Zobac
Lubbock, TX
WoW TCG RK 1
WoW Minis RK 2
PM LV 1

The updated Policy documents already covers how shuffling/cutting is to be handled.

Player Shuffles
Opponent either shuffles or cuts.
If Opponent cuts, then that's it. The Deck is considered randomized.
If Opponent shuffles, then the player makes a cut, then the opponent makes the final cut.  That's it, the Deck is now considered randomized.

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Simon Key

Player Management Level 4
WoW TCG Rules Knowledge Level 2
WoW Minis Rules Knowledge Level 2
Huntik TCG Rules Knowledge Level 1
Tournament Organizer Level 1
UDE Forums Moderator

I have to admit you got my curious on that one.  Are you referring to something subjective or are there specific reasons you can give, so I may better understand your reference.

A player counts his deck and comes up with a wrong total, so he sorts his deck to make sure he has all his cards.

A player wants to rethink his side deck strategy, so he sorts his deck so he can look at all the cards and figure the best way to side deck.

A friend of the player is interested in his deck and wants to see how it was built, so they break it down.

These are just a few things that I can recall off  the top of my head that I either did myself, or seeing others do. I am sure there are others.

We could say each shuffling seven times, in reference to Chad's post.

As long as everyone realizes that seven riffle shuffles does not guarantee it will be thoroughly randomized, but it is not possible to be thoroughly randomized with less than seven.

My strongest answer is to require at the start of every tournament (possibly every match) each player shuffles their own deck and then shuffles their opponent's deck.

Incidentally, that had actually been the rule for several years. The rules still require the player to shuffle the deck, but it was only recently changed to allow the opponent to cut instead of shuffle.

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Chad Daniel
PM 3
WoW 3
Vs 3

More arbitrary ruliings that will take a long time to get disseminated to the vast majority of players will only allow the cheaters and rulesharks to take further advantage of their opponents whether through actual cheating or in the case of a ruleshark intimidating the player into accepting what they say without calling a judge.

I think proper education on shuffling is definitely the way to go. Also it should be noted that alot of players might not truly understand randomness. To go with an example mentioned earlier if a player sees two "Nimble Momongas" next toi each other they might instinctively separate them under the false pretense that they can't be together if the are to be thouroughly randomized. Most people assume when things are random that there are no clusters or patterns. when in fact the opposite is true.

Anyways I think the most feasible solution would be to require a shuffle and cut by both players of each others decks. This way a player can't just tap the deck. I've seen plenty of times when a player complains after a duel that their opponent was cheating in some form or another but when asked about it they freely admit they didn't shuffle or cut the opponent's deck at the start of the duel nor did they anytime their was shuffling during the duel such as for search effects.

Therefore I think education as well as preventative measures will be better and alot easier to enforce in the long run.


Just my 2 cents :D
The 'Biggg' One
Michael B.

Interesting that you brought that thought pattern up, I just posted the same suggestion in the PM3 forum, that being, a required amount of shuffling time by both players.

Spotsknight brought up what I think is a very important point, not all players are physically able to perform a "good shuffle" young players in particular have difficulty shuffling well.

With the information Chad supplied about how many shuffles it takes to ensure a randomized deck, if the deck owner were required to shuffle their own deck for say, 20 seconds min. and then the opponent was required to shuffled the deck for an additonal 20 seconds, then proceed to owner may cut and opponent may cut..... then the odds of even a stacked or pre-ordered deck are minimalized and randomization is virtually ensured. In this way no pre-ordering policy is required and we're emphasising the importance of proper randomization and the responsability is on both players to do so. This also helps out the young player who is able to properly shuffle their deck to ensure randomization.

In my mind this proceedure covers all the bases.