[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
When a poker hand is dealt the event is supposedly random and not dependant on outside variables.
[/ QUOTE ]
Really? It's not dependent on the starting conditions of the deck? We're assuming that everyone will do everything in the exact same way as before, and that, I assume all starting conditions are precisely the same, so, you'll get the same shuffles, etc.
Deals are random because we don't know the initial conditions, nor do we know what events will be applied to the deck - how many shuffles, how thorough, etc.
[/ QUOTE ]
Is this actually true though? There was a paper that showed that seven riffle shuffles would make a deck pretty close to random. It actually will go from ordered to random at the seventh shuffle.
Looking for a reference, I found
this. Seems there's some dispute whether you need seven, but no dispute at all that a well-shuffled deck is random.