Entertainment & Sports: August 2005 Archives

I get so much poker spam on this site that I figured I may as well post something that's actually relevant to the game... so, here's the Wikipedia entry about shuffling. Since the whole point of shuffling is randomization, how many times do you have to shuffle to get it?

The mathematician and magician Persi Diaconis is an expert on the theory and practice of card shuffling, and an author of a famous paper on the number of shuffles needed to randomize a deck, concluding that it did not start to become random until five good riffle shuffles, and was truly random after seven. (You would need more shuffles if your shuffling technique is poor, of course.) Recently, the work of Trefethen et al. has questioned some of Diaconis' results, concluding that six shuffles is enough. The difference hinges on how each measured the randomness of the deck. Diaconis used a very sensitive test of randomness, and therefore needed to shuffle more. Even more sensitive measures exist and the question of what measure is best for specific card games is still open.

Here is an extremely sensitive test to experiment with. Take a standard deck without the jokers. Divide it into suits with two suits in ascending order from ace to king, and the other two suits in reverse. (Many decks already come ordered this way when new.) Shuffle to your satisfaction. Then go through the deck trying to pull out each suit in the order ace, two, three ... When you reach the top of the deck, start over. How many passes did it take to pull out each suit?

What you are seeing is how many rising sequences are left in each suit. It probably takes more shuffles than you think to both get rid of rising sequences in the suits which were assembled that way, and add them to the ones that were not!

In practice the number of shuffles that you need depends both on how good you are at shuffling, and how good the people playing are at noticing and using non-randomness. 2–4 shuffles is good enough for casual play. But in club play, good bridge players take advantage of non-randomness after 4 shuffles, and top blackjack players literally track aces through the deck.

So play it safe and shuffle seven times!

The Guardian has an interesting interview with crack dealer turned rapper 50 Cent. There's no doubt that many of the greatest rappers are intelligent and cunning, but I can't help but wish that more attention was paid to successful blacks with more moral integrity.

It's a tacit acknowledgement that for Jackson to progress any further, he is obliged to widen the gap between his real life experiences and that of his fictional alter-ego, smoothing off the rough edges. While 50 continues to pander to his audience by rapping about getting high, partying and hitting on 'bitches', Jackson doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs and (according to a source close to the rapper) doesn't even 'do' groupies. Instead, he is intensely focused on one thing and one thing alone: making money. In that sense, Curtis Jackson has redefined Kelvin Martin's maxim to 'Get Rich or Die Tryin'. But he also seems acutely aware that perceptions don't change easily. 'I am a villain,' he admits, albeit reluctantly, 'but that's because I'm aggressive ... But my head is not there. I don't look for trouble. And I don't want the trouble. My past is my shadow. Everywhere I go, it goes with me.'

I suppose it's valuable to cast oneself as a classical anti-hero, who wants to do good but just can't stop being bad.

I recently purchased Fate, a role-playing game by Wild Tangent that's designed with the "casual gamer" in mind. The brief description is that it's a Diablo 2 derivative with vastly better graphics, vastly more color, simpler gameplay, and a slightly more cartoony style. But there's more to the game than that.

By saying it's designed for casual gamers I mean that, unlike most modern RPGs, Fate isn't weighed down with a cumbersome storyline and endless subquests that require a detailed journal to keep track of -- in that sense, it's more of an adventure game than an RPG, but stylistically it fits more into the RPG genre. If you're looking for an involved plot full of intrigue and mystery, this isn't the game for you. However, considering that the stories in most RPGs are pretty weak and contrived, I find it quite refreshing to be free from remembering whose cousin in which town has asked me to avenge his wife's death at the hands of which bandits, who turn out to be ogres in disguise, polymorphed by some wizard trying to undermine the mayoral council of a town that's infested by giant spiders. Or whatever. In contrast, the plot of Fate is simple: you go into the dungeon, kill monsters, and harvest treasure. You watch your stats rise so you can kill bigger monsters, so you can get more treasure, so you can kill bigger monsters. You can play for a few minutes or a few hours without having to keep track of what you were doing, which makes the game ideal for people with real lives who can't sit in front of the computer all day. If that sounds like fun, Fate's your game.

Developer/producer/designer/programmer Travis Baldree, who's very active on the forums, added several twists to the Diablo formula, such as giving your character a pet that follows you around, helps you fight, and carries treasure. When your pet is loaded up you can send him back to town to sell the treasure he's carrying and bring back gold, eliminating the need to waste time returning to town yourself every time your inventory fills up. It'll take a minute or two for your pet to return, depending on your depth, but there's plenty to do if you're too scared to fight monsters on your own. For instance, you can upgrade your items with gems you find along the way, or you can go fishing for fish to feed your pet when he returns, each of which transforms him into a different type of monster that can assist you in your journey.

Once you've got the gold, the town of Grove has a myriad of ways to relieve you of it. You can buy mundane items, of course, along with spells and magic items from various merchants. You can gamble for unknown items. You can pay an enchanter to attempt to enhance one of your current items. You can even pay a bard to sing songs of your adventures to improve your reputation. Basically, the game has interfaces to do just about whatever you'd be tempted to do through cheating, but within the game system. It's not all well-balanced, but as you get more powerful you can always go deeper into the dungeon. The main game is designed to be played through around level 50, but the the dungeon goes to 255, and from reading the forums few people can get past 100.

All that, and a price tag of just $19.99. I downloaded the demo and got hooked enough to buy the game, and I don't think you'll be disappointed. From reading the forums I see that the game is easily modified, and many fans are already creating add-ons to expand the gameplay and variety. Finally, you can adjust the difficulty of the game down to a level where even children with basic computer skills could play and thrive without frustration; the level of violence is moderate and not directed at humans, so this would be an ideal game for any little gamers you might have.

Other Reviews:
- GameShark: A+.
- GameSpot: 7.9, but readers gave it an 8.5.

Reading the LA Times article about Snoop Dogg's youth football league gives me mixed feelings. On the one hand, the organizers of the long-standing league his new league is displacing are sad that the rapper's glitz and glamor are stealing their thunder, but on the other hand Snoop really is providing a more competitive league at a lower cost, so it's no surprise he's "stealing" players in droves.

Snoop rocked the youth football world two years ago when he volunteered as a Rowland Raiders "daddy coach," and then again last month when he broke from the franchise to start his own conference. The Raiders aren't the only team in the Orange County Junior All-American Football Conference to feel the screws; Long Beach and Compton teams, also in competition with Snoop's new league, report similar hemorrhaging. ...

The league fees also bothered Snoop; $175 per child for the Rowland Raiders program (other league chapters charge more) precludes poor families from participating, he says, and those families have trouble driving their children to distant fields for away games. ...

After the season, top players in the Orange County conference received phone calls asking them to join the Snoop Youth Football League, which has no pesky residence requirements and cheaper rates — $100 for the first child in a family, half price for any others, incidentals like cleats and pads included.

Many families and even some coaches hopped aboard, while chapter loyalists wondered aloud if last season's pageantry had been orchestrated to "steal our kids."

"I think what [Snoop] did is just so shallow," says Sandy Gonzales, a sales executive who has two boys on Rowland Raiders football squads and a girl in cheerleading. "He came here just so that he could take away from us what we'd taken many years to establish."

Youth sports leagues compete to provide their players and families the most fun experience possible at the most reasonable price. It's understandable that a longstanding organization dislikes facing competition, but it's clear that players should be free to join any league they want to. If Snoop is subsidizing his organization with his own vast fortune it may not be possible for the oldsters to keep up, in which case they'll lose. Is it "fair"? Well, yes, since the only alternative is to somehow regulate the amount of money Snoop Dogg is allowed to give away.

I just saw The Phantom of the Opera for the first time, not being previously particularly familiar with the story. Gosh, it's depressing.

Sure, the Phantom had serious issues, but every other character acknowledged that his bloodlust was due to a lifetime of persecution because of his appearance. I'm generally the last to excuse anyone's behavior just because they endured harsh treatment at the hands of others, but at least within the context of the story it's pretty clear that the Phantom wouldn't have become a killer if not for the evil carnie who enslaved him. Recognizing that fact doesn't absolve him of responsibility for his other crimes, yet I'm utterly sympathetic to his plight.

Am I the only one who thought Raoul was annoying and useless? Why did Christine fall for him? The Phantom invested years of his life into training and helping her, and she utterly rejected him when she discovered he was ugly (and he freaked out). Sure, she said she hated him because of his soul, not his looks, but somehow that hate never manifested during the years she knew him only by his voice and not face to face.

The Phantom wasn't a good man, and he wasn't worthy of Christine's love, no matter how much he longed for it. That's why the Phantom is so tragic: he represents the fear we all feel inside... that someday the people we love will realize that we really aren't worthy. Just like the Phantom raved when his face was revealed, we all dread the day when our masks are torn away and our souls are revealed for all the world to see.

I watched Current TV this morning while working out, and I must admit that I found it rather entertaining. I had time to watch three of what they call "pods" -- five- to seven-minute segments, each independently produced, self-contained, and focused on a specific topic.

The first pod I saw was about emerging hip-hop artists in Sierra Leon, which Current called "the world's worst country". The producer of the pod toured ramshackle music studios and night clubs in Freetown and introduced us to two of Sierra Leon's most popular performers, both of whom spoke reasonable English and explained that hip-hop in their country isn't about gangsters and bling, but about surviving in a country ravaged by war, disease, and almost total unemployment.

Next up was a pod about Parisian David Belle, pioneer of "parkour", an urban sport that consists mainly of climbing up, over, and around all sorts of city obstacles such as buildings, fences, and statues. Mr. Belle did backflips off rooftops onto cinderblock walls and climbed up sheer concrete, and it was pretty cool to watch. He ended with a cheesy bit about how parkour is a methaphor for overcoming obstacles in one's personal life, but whatever.

Finally I saw a pod about "spirituality" featuring Deepak Chopra and his perspective on making decisions. To paraphrase: just do whatever will make you and those around you happy. That's useful. Anyway, I wonder if they'd let a Christian present a pod about spirituality?

Meanwhile, what was Fox News showing? Thirty minutes of sub-speed-limit car chase. Yawn.