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Case's Ladder takes online card play seriously. That is why we have spent months of tweaking to make our card shuffles as accurate as possible. We record our shuffling data to make sure things are performing as they should.

Our card shuffling is computed using absolutely random numbers. See the very bottom of this page for details.

Here is some information showing how our shuffling compares to the statistically expected dealing of cards.

Results for 1216272 hands.
Calculated on September 9, 2002

Streaks and voids
The following table show the percentage of hands where a streak or void of a given size occurred. This is compared with theoretical values calculated by the laws of probability.

 Streak Case's Ladder Theory
 0 5.14% 5.10%
 1 30.88% 30.79%
 2 64.78% 64.90%
 3 74.06% 72.34%
 4 66.65% 66.66%
 5 45.90% 45.80%
 6 16.58% 16.55%
 7 3.56% 3.52%
 8 0.46% 0.46%
 9 0.04% 0.02%


Card distribution among players
The following table shows the percentage of hands for which each player received a given card.

 Card Player1 Player2 Player3 Player4
 Two of Clubs 24.98% 24.86% 25.05% 25.11%
 Three of Clubs 25.41% 24.73% 24.95% 24.91%
 Four of Clubs 25.18% 24.92% 25.23% 24.67%
 Five of Clubs 25.08% 25.14% 24.92% 24.87%
 Six of Clubs 24.99% 24.94% 24.89% 25.18%
 Seven of Clubs 24.84% 24.92% 24.85% 25.39%
 Eight of Clubs 25.14% 25.08% 25.03% 24.75%
 Nine of Clubs 25.11% 24.92% 24.99% 24.98%
 Ten of Clubs 24.90% 25.03% 25.27% 24.80%
 Jack of Clubs 25.02% 25.03% 24.98% 24.98%
 Queen of Clubs 25.11% 24.69% 25.26% 24.94%
 King of Clubs 25.01% 25.02% 24.93% 25.05%
 Ace of Clubs 25.27% 25.01% 24.94% 24.78%
 Two of Diamonds 25.03% 24.99% 25.20% 24.78%
 Three of Diamonds 25.32% 25.23% 24.61% 24.84%
 Four of Diamonds 25.43% 24.81% 24.76% 25.00%
 Five of Diamonds 25.01% 25.06% 24.90% 25.03%
 Six of Diamonds 24.74% 24.87% 25.12% 25.27%
 Seven of Diamonds 24.75% 24.84% 25.26% 25.15%
 Eight of Diamonds 24.87% 24.77% 24.80% 25.56%
 Nine of Diamonds 24.76% 25.25% 24.81% 25.17%
 Ten of Diamonds 25.07% 25.07% 24.88% 24.98%
 Jack of Diamonds 25.04% 24.81% 24.93% 25.21%
 Queen of Diamonds 24.73% 24.71% 25.35% 25.21%
 King of Diamonds 24.92% 24.81% 25.25% 25.02%
 Ace of Diamonds 24.95% 25.04% 24.78% 25.23%
 Two of Hearts 24.85% 25.35% 25.06% 24.73%
 Three of Hearts 24.78% 24.73% 25.25% 25.24%
 Four of Hearts 24.78% 25.02% 25.23% 24.97%
 Five of Hearts 24.77% 24.93% 25.05% 25.25%
 Six of Hearts 24.96% 25.11% 25.09% 24.84%
 Seven of Hearts 25.45% 24.93% 24.84% 24.78%
 Eight of Hearts 24.74% 25.10% 25.16% 25.00%
 Nine of Hearts 25.09% 24.86% 25.13% 24.92%
 Ten of Hearts 24.90% 25.21% 24.79% 25.10%
 Jack of Hearts 24.85% 25.27% 25.17% 24.71%
 Queen of Hearts 25.26% 25.11% 24.53% 25.11%
 King of Hearts 24.92% 25.04% 25.01% 25.02%
 Ace of Hearts 24.97% 24.87% 25.21% 24.95%
 Two of Spades 25.08% 25.15% 24.84% 24.93%
 Three of Spades 24.63% 24.93% 25.21% 25.23%
 Four of Spades 24.85% 25.06% 24.81% 25.29%
 Five of Spades 24.93% 24.98% 25.20% 24.90%
 Six of Spades 25.13% 25.01% 24.75% 25.12%
 Seven of Spades 25.17% 25.03% 25.11% 24.69%
 Eight of Spades 25.02% 25.44% 24.68% 24.86%
 Nine of Spades 25.03% 25.16% 24.89% 24.92%
 Ten of Spades 24.88% 25.09% 25.03% 25.00%
 Jack of Spades 25.06% 25.21% 25.02% 24.72%
 Queen of Spades 24.94% 25.10% 25.16% 24.80%
 King of Spades 25.23% 24.88% 24.91% 24.98%
 Ace of Spades 25.10% 24.88% 24.94% 25.08%

How We Shuffle Cards

We make sure we are using absolutely random numbers. Here's how we do it!

Random numbers for shuffling are obtained from random.org, thanks to the work of Mads Haahr. The following description from the random.org website describes how random numbers are produced:

"A radio is tuned into a frequency where nobody is broadcasting. The atmospheric noise picked up by the receiver is fed into a Sun SPARC workstation through the microphone port where it is sampled by a program as an eight bit mono signal at a frequency of 8KHz. The upper seven bits of each sample are discarded immediately and the remaining bits are gathered and turned into a stream of bits with a high content of entropy. Skew correction is performed on the bit stream, in order to insure that there is an approximately even distribution of 0s and 1s.

"The skew correction algorithm used is based on transition mapping. Bits are read two at a time, and if there is a transition between values (the bits are 01 or 10) one of them - say the first - \ is passed on as random. If there is no transition (the bits are 00 or 11), the bits are discarded and the next two are read. This simple algorithm was originally due to Von Neumann and completely eliminates any bias towards 0 or 1 in the data. It is only one of several ways of performing skew correction, though, and its drawback is that it takes an indeterminate number of input bits. RFC1750 discusses skew correction in general and lists this method as well as three others."

If you'd like to read more about Mads Haahr's work with random numbers, check out www.random.org