[aerobatic]

this is almost hilarious to read. you guys somehow think that user generated mouse movements are at all truly random? dont you think that most people use their mouse in a very similar way. and most people are playing poker with their mouse, and they are aiming their mouse at particular areas of the screen to click on Fold, Call, Raise etc. And you think mousemovements are truly random? i'd say they are extremely predictable, especially when playing poker.

What about thermal noise? did they prove it was truly random? where is their so called thermal noise coming from? is it the ceo's office, set at a very comfortable 72 degrees? is it the cpu temperature (which, if busy, is going to be hot, or very hot? is it solar sunspots? where is this thermal noise, and prove to me that its entropy is truly random?

and what of the sha-1 hashing. thats very suspicious. the sha-1 algorithm is a very good hashing agorithm. but its pretty similar, or, practically the same as the prng algorithm that most of the other poker sites use. try googling sha1 and rng in the same term, and you'll see a lot of people using sha1 as an rng. this is effectively what pokerstars are doing. theirs is a prng thats reseeded from realworld data once per deck.

there's a danger in reseeding the prng too often. reseeding once per deck, like pokerstars does, is far more dangerous than reseeding once per hour or once per day, and then continuously cycling the prng when its not in operation.

you guys apepar to have been blinded by "black box" semantics and pseudo science if you think that pokerstars method of generating pseudo random numbers (by combining two realworld seeds then performing a hash on them) is any more random than the method that the other poker sites use.

the point about poker sites using a particular prng, is that the crypoanalysts and mathematicians will have proved how random it is using statistics and tests, whereas when a company claims to be picking up 'true random' data and performing a hash on it, and has NOT been subject to any cyptoanalysis or mathematical proofs, you should be FAR MORE suspicious, rather than LESS. fact is, i'd rather put my trust in a good prng that has a very long cycle time (like the Mersenne Twister that passes the DIEHARD test and doesnt cycle again for a trillion years) than some hairbrained scheme that some poker company claims is based on hashing of "assumed" random data.. when clearly that random data has not been proved to be random at all, and may in fact by extremely non-random - especially if its based on user's mouse movements or any other user generated input).

now as for the arguments that continuous shuffling (or continuous recycling of the prng) is bad or good, as far as im aware, no poker site does continuous shuffling, after the deal has started. when people say that they do continuous shuffling, i think you'll find that they are constantly shuffling the deck then reshuffling it, before the hand, and that at the time the hand is dealt, the deck is frozen and dealt just like in a casino. i do not know anyone who continues to shuffle the remaining cards, even after the deal has started. that doesnt make much sense, except in casino blackjack to stop card counters having an edge in the same deck, through knowledge of ALL the other cards that are dealt.

you guys have been completel;y hoodwinked by this talk of prng's and true rng's from the marketing departments of the poker sites. dont believe what youre told. go consult a cryptoanalyst if you want proof of whats more random and whats less random. dont believe what anyone tells you, and above all, if someone says theyre using trng's, dont believe its more random than a good prng, unless its proven. mathematically, not verbally.