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Nov 14, 2011 -- 3:56PM, jeff-heikkinen wrote:

You have admitted in so many words that the purpose and (at least percieved) effect of the shuffling method you're defending is to make their decks (not yours, sorry) come up in a more "balanced" (i.e. advantageous) way. How is that supposed to square with the claim that they aren't cheating? Shouting it repeatedly doesn't make it true.

It squares in the sense that, the local judge is unable to a) substantiate the claim of cheating, and and therefore b) cannot punish them for it.

Therefore, they aren't cheating.
If they were cheating, they would have to be penalised for it (or able to be penalised). Unfortunately the "they are cheating, but they are getting away with it" line doesn't work. Either they are, or they aren't; I don't think there can be any grey area - and I'm sure any lawyers reading this would agree. I believe that under the rules as they currently stand, they aren't - but that the rules themselves are actually insufficient in this regard. Put it this way: given the definition of "randomisation" in the rules (which is different to genuine randomisation) what evidence would you put forward to say that the manaweaving player who then shuffles has breached the "insufficient shuffling" standard?

A player unintentionally fails to sufficiently shuffle his or her deck or portion of his or her deck before presenting it to his or her opponent. A deck is not shuffled if the judge believes a player could know the position or distribution of one or more cards in his or her deck.

and

Randomization is defined as bringing the deck to a state where no player can have any information regarding the order or position of cards in any portion of the deck. Pile shuffling alone is not sufficiently random.

A player migth be reasonably confident that their deck doesn't have any long continuous all-land or no-land clumps after three riffles and a few cuts, but "knowing" the actual distribution? pffft.



Even if the decks have been consistently shuffled in such a way as to make the draws more consistent with regards to the amount of land drawn from game to game, the manipulation is so subtle as to be almost indistinguishable from a genuinely randomised deck based on a single inspection of the deck. This is my problem with the rules and manaweaving, and why I believe manaweaving should be explicitly banned.

Imagine if (at the other extreme) the rules specified that "players Must arrange their cards in alphabetical order before beginning to shuffle at the start of each game".  How much "insufficient shuffling" would we see then? I can guarantee you that if such a (ridiculous) rule were introduced, we would see players shuffling far more than they currently do, because noone would want to be colour screwed or manaflooded, and the best way to avoid that in this hypothetical scenario would be to get your deck as random as possible via shuffling before you start drawing.


One complaint often levelled at the MTG Online software is that manascrew/manaflood plays too large a role in determining the outcome of games. However, I suspect that this complaint is actually symptomatic of a systematic level of insufficient shuffling in paper magic, rather than a problem with the MTGO shuffler, which is (as far as I can tell, in my experience) genuinely random.

Nov 14, 2011 -- 4:38PM, dlthe wrote:

One complaint often levelled at the MTG Online software is that manascrew/manaflood plays too large a role in determining the outcome of games. However, I suspect that this complaint is actually symptomatic of a systematic level of insufficient shuffling in paper magic, rather than a problem with the MTGO shuffler, which is (as far as I can tell, in my experience) genuinely random.

I'm convinced this is the core of the problem:
paper Magic is plagued by those (numerous!) undershuffling ( «non-cheater» ) manaweavers.

But MTGO use true random draws: people playing MTGO face mana problems more often,
because they cannot «stack» their decks.


 
I'm not a crook!
          Richard Nixon  

Nov 14, 2011 -- 6:27PM, jeff-heikkinen wrote:

Nov 14, 2011 -- 5:46PM, Jaychop wrote:

look, nobody in my group cheats, i mana weave,

First of all, you just said you didn't do this, you just have friends who do. Which is it?

Secondly, you openly admit you manipulate your deck to result in more advantageous results. Until you can explain how this is not cheating - I don't mean saying "It's not cheating, it's not cheating, it's not cheating" over and over, I mean GIVING A **REASON** why it's not cheating - this makes you a cheater. I'm sorry if you don't like hearing that, but plugging your ears and going nyah, nyah doesn't change it.

It's not cheating, because the wording in the rules and the impacticality of policing against it mean that it can never be punished as cheating. This has been my entire point throughout this thread.

To draw an analogy, it's like hiring a devious accountant to lower your tax. While they won't make anything up, a sharp accountant will allow you to claim things which you never would have thought of, e.g the fact that you trade shares over the internet might mean that part of your internet ISP charges are associated with you generating that income and therefore be a deductible expense. That's how it works in Australia, anyway).
Minimising your tax isn't about doing something illegal, it's about working out what is most advantageous to you under the laws of the land.
The IRS knows about the loopholes, you better believe it! - but they don't close them because of a) the flow-on problems that sort of action would cause for other areas of the economy, especialyl businessses, and b) closing one loophole will not stamp out tax minimisation (or tax evasion, for that matter) anyway - people just find other ways to arrange things to their advantage.

Players manaweave beacuse, even though they are probably gaining an unfair advantage from it over time, it's not illegal (the rules explicitly allow it) and the rules against cheating are unenforceable in the case of manaweaving.
Is it cheating? Well, it sure looks like cheating... and it sure smells like cheating... but it's NOT cheating and can't actually be called that unless the MTG rules are changed.

Nov 13, 2011 -- 6:21PM, Jaychop wrote:

........but i split my lands in one pile then if there is anything but one type of basic lands i shuffle that. Shuffle my non-land pile, mana weave, shuffle 6-7 more times then set the deck infront of my opponent so that way they can cut the deck or as im starting to see a couple people do, shuffle it themself, if they so choose to......

this is where i state that i mana weave, no i didn't come out and say that i mana weave but this is where i did admit to mana weaving

A player should shuffle his or her deck using multiple methods. Patterned pile-shuffling alone is not sufficient. Any manipulation, weaving, or stacking prior to randomization is acceptable, as long as the deck is thoroughly shuffled afterwards.

And as this was posted back on page 4 that any manipulation, weaving, or stacking prior to randomization is acceptable as long as the deck is thoroughly shuffled afterwards 

as you can see, my procedure is not against the rules

i even offer my opponent to shuffle or cut my deck after I am done shuffling so they can do the 6 piles of at least 10 cards each.