Card Shuffling and Random Number Generator

To produce an unpredictable and well-distributed deck, the deck must be shuffled thoroughly. In computers this work is handled by a shuffling algorithm. The efficiency of this shuffling algorithm entirely depends on the type of random number generator we use.

Any computer scientist will say a good random number generator alone is not nearly sufficient without a good seed. A good seed should be completely random and be as large as possible to create a completely unpredictable and truly well-shuffled deck. Moreover, there are three features which are imperative for producing a well-shuffled deck.

They are:

1) Size of the seed
There are some 52 factorial (i.e. approx. 2225) different ways of shuffling a deck. So theoretically, the absolute minimum size of the seed should be 225 bits to completely generate all the possible combinations of decks before ever repeating a particular deck. But when referring to practical applications this is not sufficient, we need a much bigger seed. At IPC Poker, we are using one of the largest seeds possible for our random number generator. We are sure that no other online poker sites use a seed much bigger than 2144 bit which is the size of our seed. One other important factor relating to the size of the seed is the security issue. The larger the seed, the more difficult it becomes for a hacker to break it.

2) Randomness of the seed
No matter how big the seed, it is useless unless it is completely random and unpredictable. The truly random phenomena in this universe are the physical phenomena. We are proud to say that we use one of these physical phenomena to generate a part of the total seed used in generating a single deck of cards. The remaining part of the seed is made up of information like mouse movements, time of click, etc. gathered from all the players currently playing on the site. Thus, it becomes practically impossible for any person or organization (including IPC Poker itself) regardless of resources to predict the cards beforehand.

3) Shuffling count
The third important feature is the number of times a deck is shuffled. The more you shuffle, the better deck you produce. We shuffle the deck at least 11 times without any apparent time delay because of the quality of software and hardware we use. This shuffling count is also one of the largest you will find in the online poker business.