The mana weaving thread (Banned Edition)

So Fabrizio Anteri got 18 month DCI suspension for his anthics. Which feels pretty much the minimum expected dose, based on the info from GP Manchester, and his comments afterwards which honestly didn't help his case one bit.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_shuffle
youtube.com/watch?v=AxJubaijQbI
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

>his comments afterwards which honestly didn't help his case one bit.
You mean "I understand I was in the wrong"?

He could have said "yes, I cheated" with far fewer words.

I think he means
>Sometimes I just forget to shuffle, it's nothing new

And so the cycle of autism and hypocrisy continues.

At the point where you've won five GPs and top 8'd five more, and are testing for PTs with a team of established pros, there's not much slack available to cut when it comes to lax play with such a basic element of the game as the proper deck randomization. Anteri's excuse sounded just that, and I feel just staying silent (publicly) until the DCI call would have really served him better.

What is mana weaving?

It's where you align the cards in your deck to meet some sort of nonland:land ratio.
It's basically a superstition because you still have to shuffle.

You add a land every 3-4 cards in your deck, then halfheartedly shuffle.
The effect of this is you have an excellent draw with lands right when you need them.

Pretty basic way to cheat and thus a dick move.

Stacking a deck such that the lands are evenly distributed throughout, often accomplished by splitting the deck into two piles - land and non - and then dealing (non/non/land/non/land - repeat) into a single pile. For whatever reason, a minority of players develop a habit of doing this ritualistically.

I think it's mathematically proven that shuffling a deck 7 times is approximately as random as needed for a fair card game. Meaning that if you asked a person to correctly guess cards one at a time from a deck with a known card list, they could have some small but nonzero probability to guess some of the cards off the top of the deck. If you take a perfectly ordered deck, and ask someone to shuffle it 7 times, the ability for someone to guess becomes about the same as if you had a algorithm create a truly random order.

So even if you had a pile of 15 sorted lands and 45 sorted spells and permanents, and just shuffled them into a deck, then just kept shuffling the deck 8 or 9 times, it would be essentially as random as if you had a computer generate a random order, and you or your opponent (who might know exactly what 60 cards you are using for your deck) would have an equally low chance of guessing some number of cards correctly as if a computer algorithm had generated a random card order.

So mana weaving should not be allowed as long as everyone was willing to shuffle their decks about 7 or 8 times.

>SO WHY DID YOU MANA WEAVE
why do you care

>I think it's mathematically proven that shuffling a deck 7 times is approximately as random as needed for a fair card game.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_shuffle
The faro shuffle is a controlled shuffle that does not fully randomize a deck. If one manages to perform eight perfect faro out-shuffles in a row, then the deck of 52 cards will be restored to its original order.

it's cheating.

Good vid on the subject and what are good ways of shuffling, from the perspective of card randomization.
youtube.com/watch?v=AxJubaijQbI

This is why you don't try to perfectly riffle and put a mash after every riffe, to break any accidental perfects.

1: is the player's shuffling insufficient?
2: is the player taking up too much time in pre-game shit?

Weaving isn't against the rules. Weaving without sufficient randomization afterwards is against the rules. Wasting game time by weaving for every shuffle is against the rules.

And here we go.

Nah, I'm not in for this bait rodeo again after so little time. Wizard's stance is quite clear, and I'll leave it at that.

This. The rules are quite clear.

People wouldn't even NEED to mana weave if your shitty idiot card game wasn't badly designed.

Yeah that's exactly the video I was thinking of but I couldn't remember the name.
That's interesting. But if one of your players is a competent stage illusionist/card cheat and can perfectly faro shuffle 8 times, then you have bigger problems. Or just hand his deck to someone else to shuffle it sloppily and cut it haphazardly for a while.

One funny aspect:

Fabrizio Anteri getting suspended and thus out of the GP leaderboard race for the Worlds slot, which he was leading.

New leader? Apparently, Tomoharu Saito. Yeah, the twice suspended fella, probably permanently out of Hall of Fame running due to that, however well he manages to play.

>Weaving isn't against the rules
>Consequences of weaving are against the rules :^)

Good jawb, you're technically correct. It's a meaningless distinction, though.

You don't need to mana weave at all. You wouldn't think you needed to if you understood deck building or probability.

Not a mtg player but why not just load up your deck with a shitload of lands so they just come up a lot naturally without pre-planing your deck

You don't want them to come up "a lot" anymore than you want to not have enough, either situation can lose you the game

There's a happy medium of lands you want to draw, starting about 1 out of 2 in the early turns then dropping off as the game goes on

Because then you're drawing lands instead of cards that do things.

>Not a mtg player but why not just load up your deck with a shitload of lands so they just come up a lot naturally without pre-planing your deck

Because then you'd draw too many lands and not enough stuff to cast. There needs to be a balance of land:nonland to play efficiently, which is why manaweaving is such a big deal because it tries to control this ratio instead of randomizing it.