It was with sadness that I saw the notification that Fabrizio Anteri had been disqualified from Grand Prix Manchester this last weekend. Working at high level events I’ve seen Fabrizio around quite a lot, and the moment your national champion is getting disqualified is not a happy time. Whether his infractions were intentional or not, and regardless of what happens next for Fabrizio, this seems like a fine time to talk about shuffling, and how best to do so to know that you aren’t going to find yourself in a spot of bother while playing in a tournament.

The basics – What is shuffling?

One of the most important elements of Magic: The Gathering is that there is an element of chance in the game. I like the fact that it’s possible for me to beat Jon Finkel in a game of Magic, even if the way it happened was some combination of my getting lucky and his getting unlucky. Especially when new players are getting into the game, these stolen wins give an early taste of a feeling that helps keep them playing – the joy of victory.

Shuffling is the biggest area that randomness gets inserted into Magic. Before every game (and often quite frequently during a game) it’s important that each player’s decks be shuffled to a random order. The definition of random that I like here is that no player would have any knowledge to predict what their next draw would be, beyond knowing their complete decklist. Getting to this point is not especially hard. With the cards face down, they need to be mixed up enough to destroy any kind of order in the cards, or prior knowledge of where a card was in the deck. Options used a lot are riffle shuffles, where cards are sprung quickly from each hand, interweaving them, ‘side’ or ‘mash’ shuffles, where piles of cards are pushed together such that they interweave and series of cuts.

Where things get a little interesting is in what is not a shuffle, and the amount of shuffling that is required to actually reach a point of randomness.

What is Not shuffling?

There is a technique called ‘pile shuffling’ which is unfortunately named. Dealing your deck into a number of piles is not really shuffling at all. The problem with it is that it is breaking the order of your deck in a predictable way. If you knew the bottom card of your deck before you started pile shuffling, then at the end of your procedure, you’d know it was the last card you’d dealt. If you were craftier/had a better memory, you could potentially control swathes of cards in your deck by using this technique. There are even known shady practices whereby pile shuffling can be used to create a linear even distribution of lands in your deck. This might fit the definition of random in terms of not knowing the specific card you will draw each turn, but if you know that you will always draw a land at least one draw in three then clearly your deck isn’t shuffled.

While I mentioned cuts as being something that can be part of a shuffling routine, cuts on their own do not constitute much of a shuffle. In fact, it gets a little worse. Imagine your deck had the numbers 1-60 written on it. If you cut it once, you wouldn’t know what number was on top, but you would know that once you’d seen one card, you would know which cards were coming next for the rest of the game. Each additional cut wouldn’t change that. You could cut that pack 1,000 times and it still wouldn’t achieve anything more than the first cut did.

So how should I shuffle?

A lot of very clever people have spent a lot of time thinking about exactly that, so that I don’t have to. A mathematician/magician by the name of Persi Diaconis wrote the book (and then various sequels to it) on shuffling, and came to the conclusion that for a functionally random deck, seven riffle shuffles is sufficient. This is based on the idea that while one riffle shuffle doesn’t actually mix up cards enough that you couldn’t know some information about the order of the pack. As you add more riffles to the mix, any semblance of order is broken down further and further, until the deck becomes a complete mess.

From a technical standpoint, a mash shuffle is functionally the same thing as a riffle, so either of these works admirably if you are trying to get to a random deck. One point of note is about the top/bottom cards of the deck. It’s important to make sure that when you are shuffling, that these cards do get mixed in. If every time you riffle shuffle, the top card stays on top, your shuffle isn’t really a shuffle.

This is where cuts come in. If you cut the pack after every 2nd riffle shuffle, then you would be very hard pressed to keep track of any cards in the pack as you mix them around. While a cut on its own is not up to much in shuffling terms, it can help an already good shuffle become better.

It’s worth noting that some academics have challenged the seven riffles number within the context of particular games, as it certainly doesn’t get you to a perfectly random deck. What I would say is that the numbers do hold up with a 60 card pack. The diminishing returns on shuffles above seven mean that you aren’t getting much out of the additional time spent riffling, apart from more draws due to matches going to time.

What is the role of the ‘pile shuffle’ then?

Believe it or not, there are a few valid uses for the pile shuffle. The one that I hear most frequently is for counting the cards in your deck after sideboarding. Given the penalties for presenting an illegal deck, and the ease with which this can happen (if you sideboard badly, or have a card getting stuck in your deck box), a check seems worthwhile. The interesting thing for me is that pile shuffling isn’t an especially quick or efficient method of getting to an answer on this. Counting off piles of five or ten would likely be quicker, or indeed dealing a deck into one pile. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone pile shuffling to count, but if that were the only reason, I’d question if they really had the best plan.

The reason that I still pile shuffle is around the idea of clumping. For a long while I’d heard people talking about doing pile shuffles to avoid clumps of cards in their deck, and it made me a little angry. Random chance dictates that clumps can and will (and should) happen! I don’t want my opponent to avoid them when I have to live with them, meaning that I ought to still be against pile shuffling on principle. It turns out that there are two types of clumping though, and one of them is reasonable enough to want to avoid in the pursuit of a good shuffle.

I am someone who, especially in my younger days, suffered from sweaty hands. This is something that has cleared up over time, but I can sympathise with those who (especially in pressured situations like playing for top eight) end up with hands and cards that are not perfectly dry. Sweat can literally cause cards in your deck to stick together. This kind of ‘clumping’ is something that can ruin the integrity of a shuffle. When two card combos can be achieved by the physics of sweat rather than the beauty of chance, we have a problem. This problem can be easily solved by a quick pile shuffle, which naturally separates out cards before other shuffling actually makes sure that they get properly mixed.

One pile shuffle, regardless of the justification, ought to be all that is needed within the context of a shuffling routine. The second I can only see being relevant if the first had left you concerned of not having a 60 (or better yet, 40) card deck.

Watch the eyes!

Now that we know what a basic shuffle should be, lets move on to Magic and where problems can occur. The biggest problem that can happen within a shuffle comes from moments where someone can see a card. From a purist standpoint, once you know the position of one card in a deck, it is no longer a shuffled deck. That means you should be very careful not to shuffle in such a way that you get any kind of peek!

Going back to Fabrizio Anteri, this is where he found himself in hot water. According to his statement he would, on occasion, look through his deck after games and sort it to some extent, before forgetting to shuffle. Once Fabrizio knew the placement of any cards in his deck, he absolutely had to shuffle it, and was not doing so. Not shuffling is the worst shuffling you can do, and reordering your deck before doing so is clearly a red flag. Having a routine for shuffling can help here, and it may be that Fabrizio found himself in a bad routine, spending time looking through his deck when he should have been shuffling, and then not shuffling when that’s all he should have been doing.

There are cases that seem more minor than this though which are worth bringing up.

Have you ever seen someone riffle shuffle their deck face up? I have. I believe that the justification that gets used is that doing so evens out the wear on cards which are being bent during the riffle shuffle process. I’ve also heard tell of people riffling face up to get a feel for how ‘random’ their deck looks before continuing to shuffle face down. Here, the reasons for doing so simply don’t matter. If you’ve looked at your ‘shuffled’ deck, then you have rendered your deck un-shuffled, and need to do a whole lot more shuffling to get it back to a random order.

To eliminate this problem, I recommend two things. First, learn to shuffle in a way where you aren’t worried about damaging your cards. In my experience, a careful mash shuffle will not put much, if any, bend into cards, making it an attractive option. This is especially pertinent for the maniacs running vintage decks. Just because your cards are expensive doesn’t mean that you should be playing without randomised decks. Having a shuffle that doesn’t worry your opponent is important, as it means that when you shuffle their deck, they don’t have to be concerned with their cards getting damaged either.

Personally, when I draft, I don’t tend to play with sleeves. People have suggested that it’s especially hard to riffle shuffle without sleeves without damaging cards. Maybe it’s the years of practice, but I’ve never had too much trouble with that. If anything I’d say my biggest concern is damaging cards through dirty tables and sweaty hands, or having old lands that might be marked. I wouldn’t recommend playing more than three rounds unsleeved ever, as cards do get worn from doing so, but shuffling is not my biggest worry in that regard.

The second important thing to learn in your shuffling regimen is to be able to shuffle a deck without having to look right at it. Sadly, there are talented card cheats out there who can control cards during shuffles to a haunting degree. I’m a magician, and know many great magicians who can shuffle a deck for 10 minutes, keeping it in the exact same order. Even as a fairly mediocre performer, I can do that. Most card cheats, in order to do something naughty, need to be able to see what they are doing, getting periodic peeks of cards. By learning to shuffle without looking at your deck, you both demonstrate to your opponent that you aren’t doing anything naughty, and have your eyes free to watch how they shuffle, potentially catching anything they may be up to.

Wrapping up

I could (and have, and likely will again) talk about shuffling for hours upon hours. As a magician, it is key to creating some lovely effects. In Magic: The Gathering, it is integral to the integrity of the game. I’ve intentionally avoided talking about how to cheat at Magic here, as I don’t want to provide a guidebook for shady characters. Conveniently, the way of getting past most problematic shuffling issues involves always shuffling your opponent’s deck when given the option. In some respects, shuffling your deck is a show of good faith, while shuffling your opponent’s is a necessity for the integrity of the game.

Brian Kibler has long advocated listening to music at the start of every round, partly as a way of creating a sense of routine to every match. Personally I do something a little similar these days. I will pick a (short) song to listen to while I do my pre-match shuffling. That way I know that I haven’t gotten so excited with the prospect of playing a good game to avoid the necessary time to shuffle that will make sure the game actually remains good. Different strokes work for different folks, but if you are concerned that you may not be shuffling enough, this may help.

Hopefully this will help you all, in making sure that you don’t fall down on the wrong side of the rules at a tournament any time soon, at least not before you’ve had a chance to at least start making plays.