Cactus Game Design Message Boards

How about this way to fix it? the opponent decides the amount of piles that you shuffle your deck into. you could pick anywhere from 3 to 8.

The best way to counter cheating is to be aware of how people might cheat. If you suspect your opponent is cheating, you have every right via game rule to shuffle their deck yourself. Likewise, I would argue that a player has the right to insist that their opponent not use certain methods (e.g. bridging) when shuffling their deck. I plan on going into Nats this year with the intention of shuffling my opponent's deck before each and every game. An extra 2 minutes is a small price to pay.

As I don't think Westy/Olijar have provided a video yet, here is a try-it-yourself Redemption equivalent of the no-frills-small-hassle stacked shuffle[1,2] for a 56-card deck with notes...

At the end of the game previous[3]

• Pull out all seven lost souls[4]
• Do an 8-pile Cactus shuffle with the non-LS cards
• Place one LS on seven of the eight piles.
• Gather the cards into a deck and place them on the table for the next game.

At the beginning of the game

• Do a 7-pile Cactus shuffle
• Gather the deck picking the first pile shuffled into to go on top[5]
• Hope your opponent cuts your deck[6]

Result: A deck where all your lost souls are clumped together. If your opponent did cut the deck this clump will be somewhere away from the top.

Notes:

• No, really...take a 56 card deck and try this for yourself.
• By no-frills-small hassle I mean all we are going to do is clump the lost souls together in a known location. This will win most games.
• Shuffling a deck immediately following a game is a very common practice (maybe even the norm) for most tournaments I have been at.
• Either all the LS will come out in a game or your opponent will help by asking you to prove that you do indeed have the requisite number of LS in you deck (since you will have drawn none).
• You can verify for yourself that all seven of the lost souls are now clumped in the top eight cards.
• If they don't cut all of your LS are coming out on the initial draw--too bad for you, cheater-baby.

I will leave detection and host counter-measures as a topic for further discussion.