Re: Randomness
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When a poker hand is dealt the event is supposedly random and not dependant on outside variables.
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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.
Even electronic shuffles/deals aren't really truly random in the grand scheme of things, they're just dependent on variables we don't have access to. Computer random number generators are predictable given knowledge of the starting conditions, in some cases, unless the random number generator is powered by a pretty reliable source of randomness (some are. I guess major poker sites, etc, probably employ devices to provide randomness, like from thermal noise or some such stuff)
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