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The math of shuffling cards almost brought down an online poker empire
Card dealers create a unique deck with each shuffle, something computers cannot replicate
Although this claim sounds incredible, it’s a great illustration of how quickly large numbers can creep into everyday situations—with occasionally challenging consequences, as the developers of an online poker game painfully discovered in the late 1990s. The programmers then realized that because the system is tied to a clock to randomize its shuffles, the arrangement of cards could be further constrained by taking that timekeeper into account. Simply syncing up their own program to the system clock reduced the possibilities to a mere 200,000 potential decks that the algorithm could generate.
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