You need to be logged in to your Sky Poker account above to post discussions and comments.
You might need to refresh your page afterwards.
You need to be logged in to your Sky Poker account above to post discussions and comments.
You might need to refresh your page afterwards.
Comments
If I'm honest my knowledge base isnt as broad (in this aspect
Am quite prepared to be wrong on this aspect though
In the case of Sky, the Alderny gaming comission.
2. Just what are they certifying?
That the RNG used is sufficiently random. In practise this means putting it through a battery of tests. The most well known and widely used set of tests is called DIEHARD (hehhe) which you can read more about here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diehard_tests
Given the level of discussion we've had so far I fear this is a question for hardcore stats nerds more than poker players. It's mroe of a stats/compsci issue than anything to do with poker.
Personally I've no idea, though I suspect FT's post-flop is an exception rather than the norm. AFAIK no juristiction specifically demands post flop shuffling.
Will have to leave this for now anyway, I have a primo to attend to!
danny or yb will be able to correct or affirm this.
Take the lottery, an example from earlier- the odds are low of predicting 6/6 numbers, in any order. Now imagine that instead, you have to predict all 49 in the correct order.
I don't understand the programming side, at all, but danny's posts seem simple enough (apart from a little techy info that goes over my head), logical and clear. I don't really struggle to get what he's saying there, I don't see what's so difficult to grasp about it.
The computer doesn't store all the combinations, that's what the seed is used for (if I understand that part correctly). Obviously it'd be incapable of storing every single combination given the limitations of space. Besides, he threw out plenty of impressive sounding numbers, that's convincing enough for me.
In this post, I'm going to try to give a very simplified explanation of how cards are shuffled in online poker rooms. This is a topic that can get very complex.
The goal of a shuffle is card randomization. The player needs to know that any unused card has an equal probability of being dealt next as any other unused card. But in the case of playing cards, random does not mean there are infinite possibilities.
Since a deck of cards has 52 cards, there are a limited number of orderings possible. The number is extremely large, but it is not infinite. If you ever took a higher-level math or statistics class, you'll know about factorials. The number of possible deck orderings is 52-factorial -- noted as 52! This number is around 130,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 -- a very large number indeed.
At the beginning of a hand, a software algorithm picks one of those decks and deals out the hand. So far, that part seems pretty simple. If a software program can get a random number and pick a deck from that number of possibilities and do this honestly and accurately, we must admit that this meets our criteria for a fair game.
Shuffling a Virtual Deck of Cards
The first software flaw we'll focus on involves shuffling virtual cards. What does it mean to shuffle a deck of cards fairly? Essentially, every possible combination of cards should have an equal likelihood of appearing. We'll call each such ordering of the 52 cards a shuffle.
In a real deck of cards, there are 52! (approximately 2^226) possible unique shuffles. When a computer shuffles a virtual deck of cards, it selects one of these possible combinations. There are many algorithms that can be used to shuffle a deck of cards, some of which are better than others (and some of which are just plain wrong).
---------------------------------------------------
The Flawed ASF Shuffling Algorithm
The algorithm starts by initializing an array with values in order from 1 to 52, representing the 52 possible cards. Then, the program initializes a pseudo-random number generator using the system clock with a call to Randomize(). The actual shuffle is performed by swapping every position in the array, in turn, with a randomly chosen position. The position to swap with is chosen by calls to the pseudo-random number generator.
The full report is here http://www.cigital.com/papers/download/developer_gambling.php
Regarding the ASF case the flaw is nothing to do with the 52 card array system and EVERYTHING to do with the fact they were using the basic language random() function with a timestamp as the only seed. This is ludicrously bad practise for any system where security is a serious issue, and absoutely unforgivable in a system where money is at stake.
So let's put the ASF case to bed as part of this discussion...the fact someone created a really cr4ppy RNG 14 years ago has no relevance to today's online poker world. Someone could do the same thing today just as easily, it doesn't mean other poker sites are flawed.
Elsa: Your baseing your argument above on semantics. As the cards are virtual not physical, I would suggest that the use of the word 'chosen' is probably a better fit for how the RNG decides the deal as there are are no physical cards to 'form' a real deck.
Anyway, I've done my best to explain that, and with all due respect mate you just don't seem to be getting it. Everyone else in the thread seems to so probably best neither of us waste any more time on it. Hopefully I've been able to explain to others reading, even if my language skills obviously aren't up to the challenge of getting through to you
I'm not sure the bit size of the computer doing the calculations is entirely relevant.
A 128 bit computer may be able to address
2^128 = 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,770,000,000 or approx 3.40282367 × 1038 memory locations.
There are 52! card combinations or approx 8.06581752 × 1067
So you are saying it (the RNG computer) can't deal with 1067 card combinations as it can only addresses memory locations up to 1038.
This isn't true.
Most 8-bit computers can address 216 (65536) addresses and not 28 (256).
However even that is not relevant.
On an 8-bit computer I could write a program to take a number
12345678901234567890 and 12345678901234567891
and add them.
"Bittedness" is not a restriction on numbers a computer can deal with, but it may restrict the memory a computer can address.
Machka is completely correct.
Your quote is completely correct.
Talking about two different things!
After reading through all of this i just like to say ,
it is great to see a yet complex,
but detailed discussion,
carried out in a well mannered way by all who took part .
Ty mods for leaving this in general chat .
A SPECIAL TY TO ELSA & DANNY FOR THEIR TIME .
great thread though lol, thing is there is no reason to put all the possible outcomes as its random 1-52, its as simple as that
What does the certificate say? Well it tells us that at the time the RNG was tested it performed to expected levels, and that as far as it goes is good.
Unfortunately the way I see it, and to use an analogy, it's a bit like being asked by the Police to produce your documents and then turning up at the Police station with a big grin on your face and presenting them with just an MOT certificate issued in Costa Rica. Sure it tells them that the vehicle was mechanically sound on the day you had the MOT done, but without other documents it gives no clue as to your competance to drive the vehicle.
The certificate of conformity does not go beyond the RNG's ability to produce random cards or sequences of cards. No mention is made of what happens after the cards are generated. It doesn't allude at all to how those cards are distributed to the players or what, if any, software or sub-routines are used to do this.
The regulating bodies are all self appointed and based in the most obscure places. It's understandable that the USA doesn't have any home based regulators but I don't know of any restrictions in the UK to prevent on-line poker rooms being registered with the gaming authorities here. Perhaps someone could enlighten me as to why this is.