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5 months ago ::
Feb 03, 2013 - 2:44AM
#1
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I started playing magic roughly a year ago, and been playing about 3 drafts a month IRL and 4 to 5 per day online (on either Magic Online or Cockatrice).
After all this time, I came to the following numbers: I get land screwed roughly twice more often in real life than I do online on either platform.
I'm defining land screw here as missing my third land drop at least two turns in a row (aka having 2 lands turn 4).
I have also seen that the number of 1 land and 0 land hands I draw IRL is about twice as high as the number of 0 land and 1 land hands I draw online. Mulliganing to 5 also happens much more frequently.
Since I NEVER, EVER played a 16 land limited deck (I always play 17-19, and 18 land decks are more frequent for me than 17 land decks), I concluded that I am probably bad at shuffling.
So, can you give me advice on how to improve my shuffling, guys?
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5 months ago ::
Feb 03, 2013 - 8:15AM
#2
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Date Joined:
Mar 31, 2002
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I follow a combination of side-shuffling and riffle shuffle, followed by the stack method, then rince an repeat.
The thing is you have a shuffle, a lot, to really get the distribution right, and even then it kind of doesn't work all the the time. I've seen many people give only a few riffles or side shuffles in between games. This is not properly randomizing your deck at all, and if you just put the lands from the previous game in a clump there stands a good chance it will remain largely clumped together. A bad cut and shuffle could put it anywhere in the deck.
So really, every chance you get IRL just shuffle the deck. After a match is over, I'll usually shuffle it somewhere between 10-15 times. And then the same before a match begins. Basically the more you shuffle, the more randomized the deck becomes, *and* the more likely to move towards the average it becomes.
Of course this isn't fool proof, as it does happen on occassion to get land screwed/flooded. But that's variance for you. But I've found that I get far less land screwed/flooded the more I shuffle a deck, and I've noticed that those who only give a few quick riffles/shuffles tend to get this problem more often than not.
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5 months ago ::
Feb 03, 2013 - 9:43AM
#3
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Date Joined:
Jun 15, 2009
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Wow, a person who gets more screwed offline that on, that's a first! The first thing you are going to want to do is make certain that the lands and spells are not put back into the deck in a large clump. Doing this will ensure that if there is a defect in your shuffling that you will end up with the lands and spells more intertwined than would be expected by chance. Some people take this as far as mana weaving before each shuffle, but I feel this is excessive. When you scoop the cards just be sure to put them one by one back into your deck and not in a pile.
As for the shuffle itself, I like to pile shuffle followed by riffle shuffle. I think that's what most people do.
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5 months ago ::
Feb 03, 2013 - 9:54AM
#4
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I always use sleeves when I draft IRL so depending on the kind you use that can change the shuffling technique. Before each match I do one pile shuffle, this doesn't actually randomize the deck at all and I do it primarily as an easy way to count the cards in my deck. I then do at least 15 side/riffle shuffles before each game, and if my opponent is still shuffling I will continue to do more. After a game I will shuffle all of the cards I used in that game, in play, graveyard, lands, and hand, and shuffle those about 5 times before shuffling the whole deck together, just to distribute the lands a bit. In between matches I am usually shuffling my deck pretty much the entire time while waiting for the next round. I generally have pretty good luck with mana screw/flood doing this so I guess it works for me.
Like I-rock said, the more you shuffle the more randomized the deck gets, which leads to draws closer to the expected average.
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