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Question about card shuffling.

*chuckle*

Yes, a sixty card deck. Magic:The Gathering plays with a sixty card deck, with approximately 20 of it being land.

I play in tournaments in my area. You are allowed to shuffle your opponents deck. Recognizing a land card at a quick glance would be about as difficult as picking a black card out of a deck of red cards, thus the example I used. (If you were peeking! Which, of course, you would have to.)

A person who plays the same circuit as I do wins. Every time. Every time, the person who loses does not get enough land to run the deck(this goes into rules that are relatively unimportant to the scenario). His opponents stop at three land. Consistently. TOO consistently, say about 9 times out of ten or higher. I am suspecting foul play, and so are quite a few others.

I am asking for informational purposes. Is it possible to stack the deck this way? I do not wish to do so, I am interested in deckbuilding as a skill and the competitiveness of the game. But I am also not happy about someone playing shenanigans when there is a prize on the line.

If this is possible, then I must move on with looking at how to spot card tricks so I can call him on it. This research I will do elsewhere, as not to break the rules on revealing of secrets. But I need a solid start point to move from.

Sorry I asked in a roundabout way, but all I have at the moment is suspicions. I was hoping a more abstract example might be useful to the discussion.

The decks are generally sleeved, if that makes a difference. (I wouldn't think so, but then again every card trick I have ever attempted, I've screwed up!!)
 
OK, I am familiar with Magic: The Gathering (I played about 10 years ago). Anybody want my four Force of Wills?

So, sixty cards, eh? Well, the deck is already shuffled, so it would be pretty difficult to landhose someone. Also, sleeves make it much more difficult to handle cards adeptly, and I'm assuming they don't allow for easy faros (because that would split the sleeves). Can you confirm he does not faro (weave) shuffle?

An image of how this is basically done can be found here: http://www.21ace.com/images/faro-card-shuffle-3.jpg

He's also not allowed to look through the cards, right? And the sleeves have a black back (not that it would matter if the cards are marked because he's using someone else's deck). It just sounds like a coincidence to me. Separations are usually done by looking through the cards faceup.

Now of course there are overhand culling techniques. Jimmy Molinari is supposed to be one of the best: http://www.jimmycards.com/

Click on movies and watch his overhand cull. Now with this queens are 1 to 13, whereas land, as you said, is 1/3.
 
clarsct said:
Not a magician, and not looking for 'secrets' as it were.

If I had a deck of 40 red cards and 20 black cards that you had never seen before, would it be possible for you to shuffle the deck in front of me so that the 20 black cards were in the bottom half of the deck?
(Without being caught.;) )
I'm just asking if there was a way to do this, if anyone knows a method by which it could be done.
Click to expand...
Almost certainly - as long as I know ahead of time that you are going to ask me to do it. ;)

(and I'm not even a magician, and my sleight of hand skills are rudimentary)

-Squish
 
It's almost impossible to achieve the effect you want to achieve (i.e. getting your opponent "land screwed" in a tournament game) without looking at the cards. Not impossible, but almost impossible. There are ways to riffle shuffle a deck so that it's possible to peek under the cards as they fall down, but even then it would take many riffle shuffles--you couldn't just do it with one shuffle.

I've considered ways that sleight of hand could be used to cheat in Magic the Gathering. One possibility is that all of your land cards are marked on the back, and you work on a hot "second deal" so that if you want a land, and it's not on top, you do a second deal to yourself to help enhance the odds. Or if you have plenty of land and you see a land coming up, you second deal. The problem is that the nature of the game doesn't require you to pick the deck off the table and "deal" to yourself like it was a game of Blackjack or Poker, you are only taking one card at a time, that's not so easy. Probably the best cheat would be some method for holdouts, essentially you have extra cards on your person that you could swap in/out for cards in your hand.
 
Happy Birthday!

I was more concerned with peeking while doing a regular shuffle(folding the cards into each other? You hold the deck in one hand and shuffle with another, I dunno the technical term) If you hold the cards right, you can see what's there.
 
clarsct said:
I was more concerned with peeking while doing a regular shuffle(folding the cards into each other? You hold the deck in one hand and shuffle with another, I dunno the technical term)
Click to expand...

Sounds like you mean "overhand shuffle".
 
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