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Wonky Deck Randomness

ProfanityProfanity Banned
edited April 2013 in Poker Night at the Inventory / Poker Night 2
Is it just me or does the randomness of the deck shuffling seems a bit off? Way more often than not I get straights and two pairs and quite oftenly of the same kind even. In very intense moments AI tends to get just the card it needs to win. Same winning card combinations appearing in the same matches noticeably enough to... notice.

And you might say - that's poker, that's how it goes, but the number of these occurrences for me is very noticeable and the gaps inbetween are few and filled with horrible hands. And you might also say - that's randomness, that's how random works, it's random, shit can happen in all kinds of ways. But once again, the same argument, which I do realize isn't very strong.

Point is, do people feel that there's something wrong with the randomness of the cards in both AI hands, the players hands on on the table or am I just completely alone on this one?

And yes, I do play poker in real life with my mates, and I still gotta say, something smells fishy here.

TL;DR groundless gibberish based on feelings. Is something wrong with the shuffling of the cards?

Comments

  • KyroneaKyronea
    edited April 2013
    I have definitely noticed a tendency for the game to stick to certain sets of hole cards--5/6, 6/9, 2/7, etc etc. I've also certainly noticed that sometimes the game APPEARS to punish you if you're on hard difficulty and you start randomly going all-in--it'll happily gift your opponent a three of a kind or something like that while you get nothing.

    But I don't know how much of this is an actual pattern in the game itself, and how much of it is me seeing false patterns that aren't actually there.
  • puzzleboxpuzzlebox Telltale Alumni
    edited April 2013
    Kyronea wrote: »
    But I don't know how much of this is an actual pattern in the game itself, and how much of it is me seeing false patterns that aren't actually there.

    I'll quote one of our programmers, HoboStew, from this thread:
    HoboStew wrote: »
    Yeah, there is definitely no cheating, even of the subtle "the computer knows what cards you are holding" variety. Definitely no card rigging after the fact.

    Because this is only play money and the focus is on the characters and unlockables, I don't think the game has a vested interest in making you lose. I'd certainly prefer for players to get the unlocks and generally see all the cool stuff both inside and outside of the game!
  • ProfanityProfanity Banned
    edited April 2013
    I'm more concerned about this being a flaw in the programming, rather than a way to cheat me out of a win for whatever reason, like longer playtime to unlock something.
  • KyroneaKyronea
    edited April 2013
    puzzlebox wrote: »
    I'll quote one of our programmers, HoboStew, from this thread:



    Because this is only play money and the focus is on the characters and unlockables, I don't think the game has a vested interest in making you lose. I'd certainly prefer for players to get the unlocks and generally see all the cool stuff both inside and outside of the game!
    Ah, gotcha. I didn't really think it would make sense to program the game in a way to try to force you to lose anyway. There's no good reason for that--hence why I said what I did about potentially seeing patterns that aren't there. I was only speaking from the perspective of having played far too much of the game recently.
  • puzzleboxpuzzlebox Telltale Alumni
    edited April 2013
    Kyronea wrote: »
    having played far too much of the game recently.

    Surely there is no such thing! :p
  • ProfanityProfanity Banned
    edited April 2013
    Anyway, to the point then, nothing has been changed at all for Poker Night 2 concerning the way cards are shuffled?
  • HoboStewHoboStew Telltale Alumni
    edited April 2013
    To the best of my knowledge, the randomness is as random as any deck shuffling. I have heard people mention this since back in the PN1 dev days, and my theory about why people think there's less randomness is simply a matter of volume. You play way more hands per minute in this game than IRL. From my experience, the card distribution is not substantively different than any other computerized poker game I have played.

    Having said that, not all randomness is created equal in the land of computer science. Very early on in PN1 development, I spotted a flaw in our random number generator that caused the seed to be the same if you initialized it repeatedly within the same minute (which should not happen, and would cause the same hand to be dealt over again). We fixed that, and since then I haven't seen anything fishy. However, if some enterprising individual wants to keep track of cards dealt, and can demonstrate over a statistically significant number of trials that certain cards are weighted more heavily than others, I will be happy to read the data!
  • BrianBoykoBrianBoyko
    edited April 2013
    HoboStew wrote: »
    To the best of my knowledge, the randomness is as random as any deck shuffling. I have heard people mention this since back in the PN1 dev days, and my theory about why people think there's less randomness is simply a matter of volume. You play way more hands per minute in this game than IRL. From my experience, the card distribution is not substantively different than any other computerized poker game I have played.

    Having said that, not all randomness is created equal in the land of computer science. Very early on in PN1 development, I spotted a flaw in our random number generator that caused the seed to be the same if you initialized it repeatedly within the same minute (which should not happen, and would cause the same hand to be dealt over again). We fixed that, and since then I haven't seen anything fishy. However, if some enterprising individual wants to keep track of cards dealt, and can demonstrate over a statistically significant number of trials that certain cards are weighted more heavily than others, I will be happy to read the data!

    Is there a way to do this other than by manually writing down all of the cards dealt as you play? I mean - there's gotta be some sort of testing tool for this, right?
  • HoboStewHoboStew Telltale Alumni
    edited April 2013
    BrianBoyko wrote: »
    Is there a way to do this other than by manually writing down all of the cards dealt as you play? I mean - there's gotta be some sort of testing tool for this, right?

    None currently exists - it would have to be written specifically for this program. We have, however, played countless hands internally here (our beleaguered QA team can attest to it) and nobody has seen anything untoward, so it will fall to the community if it really wants to get demonstrated.
  • furrykeffurrykef
    edited April 2013
    I was a semi-pro poker player in 2005-2006 and so I used to hang out on poker forums. You'll see accusations of the deck being rigged or insufficiently random in some way everywhere you go. Sometimes this is because they play many hands per hour, so things that are improbable are still frequent. I've actually held a royal flush two or three times in that time period (granted, it was hold'em, so it's not exceedingly rare). Sometimes it's just because Lady Luck feels like giving you the finger over and over. Poker is a crazy game.
  • The 100th ManThe 100th Man
    edited April 2013
    I noticed that I managed to lose a hand where three of us had the same hand... and all three had the ten AND Queen of diamonds. How many decks is Glados dealing with?!
  • infelix13infelix13
    edited April 2013
    On the XBOX version, I just lost a hand to a straight even though I had a full house. The game didn't recognize the full house and I lost a bounty for it. I had 8 over 7's and Ash had a straight, not a straight flush, just a straight. The game only acknowledged my pair of 8's and ace kicker. I don't understand.
  • infelix13infelix13
    edited April 2013
    On the XBOX version, I just lost a hand to a straight even though I had a full house. The game didn't recognize the full house and I lost a bounty for it. I had 8 over 7's and Ash had a straight, not a straight flush, just a straight. The game only acknowledged my pair of 8's and ace kicker. I don't understand.

    This is the only times it's happened, but I'm going to keep and eye out for it.
  • ProfanityProfanity Banned
    edited April 2013
    Xbox better be PC's labrats. Sounds buggy as fuck.
  • furrykeffurrykef
    edited April 2013
    The 100th Man wrote: »
    I noticed that I managed to lose a hand where three of us had the same hand... and all three had the ten AND Queen of diamonds. How many decks is Glados dealing with?!
    Were those cards on the board or were they in the players' hands? (Sorry if this strikes you as a stupid question, but I was surprised when Poker Night 1 came out just how many people didn't get that everyone shares the cards on the board.)
    infelix13 wrote: »
    On the XBOX version, I just lost a hand to a straight even though I had a full house. The game didn't recognize the full house and I lost a bounty for it. I had 8 over 7's and Ash had a straight, not a straight flush, just a straight. The game only acknowledged my pair of 8's and ace kicker. I don't understand.
    Did this happen in Texas hold'em or in Omaha? In Omaha, you're only allowed to use exactly two cards from your hand. If you're dealt four aces before the flop in Omaha, you should muck your hand; it's worthless.
  • The 100th ManThe 100th Man
    edited April 2013
    furrykef wrote: »
    Were those cards on the board or were they in the players' hands? (Sorry if this strikes you as a stupid question, but I was surprised when Poker Night 1 came out just how many people didn't get that everyone shares the cards on the board.)

    Texas Hold'Em, my original post should have said 10 and Q of diamonds as hole cards. The weird thing was that the game had us use different suits (from the pair in the flop) in the final hand, but the values of the hands were the same... and it did not split the pot at all. I forget who won, but it wasn't me! :)

    I sort of expected some weirdness, tho; the things Brock's cigarette does are impressive.
  • DedlokDedlok
    edited April 2013
    furrykef wrote: »
    Were those cards on the board or were they in the players' hands? (Sorry if this strikes you as a stupid question, but I was surprised when Poker Night 1 came out just how many people didn't get that everyone shares the cards on the board.)

    I will admit it took me a while to figure that out in poker night 1. Never really looked at the hands being presented in the reveals enough to realize it for quite a while.
  • infelix13infelix13
    edited April 2013
    It was Omaha, but I know how to play Omaha. Instead of using my second pocket 8, it used my Ace instead.

    Also, I just lost with 3,4,5,6,7 to Brock who had A, 2, 3, 4, 5 which is the lower straight.

    I'm still confused. This doesn't happen often but weird hands like this keep happening ever few tournaments.
  • ClordClord
    edited April 2013
    infelix13 wrote: »
    It was Omaha, but I know how to play Omaha. Instead of using my second pocket 8, it used my Ace instead.

    Also, I just lost with 3,4,5,6,7 to Brock who had A, 2, 3, 4, 5 which is the lower straight.

    I'm still confused. This doesn't happen often but weird hands like this keep happening ever few tournaments.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poker_hands

    His high card in that situation is A, which is counted as a low card. The real rules state that you should have won with that hand.
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