Something like “ownership” seems right, as well as the loss aversion issue. Somehow, this seemingly-irrational behavior seems perfectly natural to me (and I’m familiar with similar complaints about the order of cards coming out). If you look at it from the standpoint of causality and counterfactuals, I think it will snap into place...
Suppose that Tim was waiting for the king of hearts to complete his royal flush, and was about to be dealt that card. Then, you cut the deck, putting the king of hearts in the middle of the deck. Therefore, you caused him to not get the king of hearts; if your cutting of the deck were surgically removed, he would have had a straight flush.
Presumably, your rejoinder would be that this scenario is just as likely as the one where he would not have gotten the king of hearts but your cutting of the deck gave it to him. But note that in this situation the other players have just as much reason to complain that you caused Tim to win!
Of course, any of them is as likely to have been benefited or hurt by this cut, assuming a uniform distribution of cards, and shuffling is not more or less “random” than shuffling plus cutting.
A digression: But hopefully at this point, you’ll realize the difference between the frequentist and Bayesian instincts in this situation. The frequentist would charitably assume that the shuffle guarantees a uniform distribution, so that the cards each have the same probability of appearing on any particular draw. The Bayesian will symmetrically note that shuffling makes everyone involved assign the same probability to each card appearing on any particular draw, due to their ignorance of which ones are more likely. But this only works because everyone involved grants that shuffling has this property. You could imagine someone who payed attention to the shuffle and knew exactly which card was going to come up, and then was duly annoyed when you unexpectedly cut the deck. Given that such a person is possible in principle, there actually is a fact about which card each person ‘would have’ gotten under a standard method, and so you really did change something by cutting the deck.
A digression: But hopefully at this point, you’ll realize the difference between the frequentist and Bayesian instincts in this situation. [...]
Yep. This really is a digression which is why I hadn’t brought up another interesting example with the same group of friends:
One of my friends dealt hearts in a manner of giving each player a pack of three cards, the next player a pack of three cards and so on. The amount of cards being dealt were the same but we all complained that this actually affected the game because shuffling isn’t truly random and it was mucking with the odds.
We didn’t do any tests on the subject because we really just wanted the annoying kid to stop dealing weird. But, now that I think about it, it should be relatively easy to test...
Also related, I have learned a few magic tricks in my time. I understand that shuffling is a tricksy business. Plenty of more amusing stories are lurking about. This one is marginally related:
At a poker game with friends of friends there was one player who shuffled by cutting the cards. No riffles, no complicated cuts, just take a chunk from the top and put it on the bottom. Me and the mathematician friend from my first example told him to knock it off and shuffle the cards. He tried to convince us he was randomizing the deck. We told him to knock it off and shuffle the cards. He obliged while claiming that it really doesn’t matter.
This example is a counterpoint to the original. Here is someone claiming that it doesn’t matter when the math says it most certainly does. The aforementioned cheater-heuristic would have prevented this player from doing something Bad. I honestly have no idea if he was just lying to us or was completely clueless but I couldn’t help but be extremely suspicious when he ended up winning first place later that night.
On a tangent, myself and friends always pick the initial draw of cards using no particular method when playing Munchkin, to emphasize that we aren’t supposed to be taking this very seriously. I favor snatching a card off the deck just as someone else was reaching for it.
Something like “ownership” seems right, as well as the loss aversion issue. Somehow, this seemingly-irrational behavior seems perfectly natural to me (and I’m familiar with similar complaints about the order of cards coming out). If you look at it from the standpoint of causality and counterfactuals, I think it will snap into place...
Suppose that Tim was waiting for the king of hearts to complete his royal flush, and was about to be dealt that card. Then, you cut the deck, putting the king of hearts in the middle of the deck. Therefore, you caused him to not get the king of hearts; if your cutting of the deck were surgically removed, he would have had a straight flush.
Presumably, your rejoinder would be that this scenario is just as likely as the one where he would not have gotten the king of hearts but your cutting of the deck gave it to him. But note that in this situation the other players have just as much reason to complain that you caused Tim to win!
Of course, any of them is as likely to have been benefited or hurt by this cut, assuming a uniform distribution of cards, and shuffling is not more or less “random” than shuffling plus cutting.
A digression: But hopefully at this point, you’ll realize the difference between the frequentist and Bayesian instincts in this situation. The frequentist would charitably assume that the shuffle guarantees a uniform distribution, so that the cards each have the same probability of appearing on any particular draw. The Bayesian will symmetrically note that shuffling makes everyone involved assign the same probability to each card appearing on any particular draw, due to their ignorance of which ones are more likely. But this only works because everyone involved grants that shuffling has this property. You could imagine someone who payed attention to the shuffle and knew exactly which card was going to come up, and then was duly annoyed when you unexpectedly cut the deck. Given that such a person is possible in principle, there actually is a fact about which card each person ‘would have’ gotten under a standard method, and so you really did change something by cutting the deck.
Yep. This really is a digression which is why I hadn’t brought up another interesting example with the same group of friends:
We didn’t do any tests on the subject because we really just wanted the annoying kid to stop dealing weird. But, now that I think about it, it should be relatively easy to test...
Also related, I have learned a few magic tricks in my time. I understand that shuffling is a tricksy business. Plenty of more amusing stories are lurking about. This one is marginally related:
This example is a counterpoint to the original. Here is someone claiming that it doesn’t matter when the math says it most certainly does. The aforementioned cheater-heuristic would have prevented this player from doing something Bad. I honestly have no idea if he was just lying to us or was completely clueless but I couldn’t help but be extremely suspicious when he ended up winning first place later that night.
On a tangent, myself and friends always pick the initial draw of cards using no particular method when playing Munchkin, to emphasize that we aren’t supposed to be taking this very seriously. I favor snatching a card off the deck just as someone else was reaching for it.