How the Math of Shuffling Cards Almost Brought Down an Online Poker Empire
SMRTR summary
Online poker was nearly compromised in the late 1990s due to flawed card shuffling algorithms. While a properly shuffled 52-card deck creates one of 52! possible arrangements (a number with 67 zeros), ASF Software's algorithm used by Planet Poker only generated about 86 million possibilities. Security researchers discovered they could predict shuffles by syncing to the system clock, narrowing potential outcomes to just 200,000 arrangements that could be searched in real-time.
SMRTR provides this summary for quick context. The original article belongs to Scientific American.
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