[pclayton]

In an important match you pick up ♠AKQ3 ♥752 ♦763 ♣A83. Not a remarkable hand, but it was perfectly sorted in the board.

What would you do?

[helene_t]

I think this is authorized information, unless of course if a friend of yours in a pairs match sorted his hand before passing it to you to convey information to you.

Anyway, I would just ignore it, you never know why it is sorted. Some players always sort their cards after playing them.

[skjaeran]

This happen from time to time. There's no way to know why the hand is sorted - thus no information can be anticipated. Just ignore it.

[helene_t]

Jlall, on Feb 2 2008, 06:59 PM, said:

helene_t, on Feb 2 2008, 11:53 AM, said:

I think this is authorized information

Would this view change if it was a pair game?

probably yes. have not seen it discussed anywhere, though.

[EricK]

What is meant to be the conclusion one can draw from finding one's hand sorted? I always assume the previous people were discussing the hand afterwards and one person had sorted their hand the better to show it to another.

[pclayton]

Jlall, on Feb 2 2008, 09:27 AM, said:

helene_t, on Feb 2 2008, 12:14 PM, said:

Jlall, on Feb 2 2008, 06:59 PM, said:

helene_t, on Feb 2 2008, 11:53 AM, said:

I think this is authorized information

Would this view change if it was a pair game?

probably yes. have not seen it discussed anywhere, though.

Me neither, I actually like the thought of "it's AI in a knockout" though, your opponents shouldn't be stupid enough to not shuffle their cards up.

They were stupid enough not to shuffle.

My partner held this hand. I won't say what he did in public.

Personally, I think this is akin to picking up a strong hand in a pairs game after earlier hearing "wow, 7N" at another table 30 minutes earlier.

[JanM]

The important thing to do, which wasn't listed in the alternatives, is not to let anyone else at your table know that your hand arrived arranged. Move the cards around as if you had to arrange it. Why? Some time ago (AFAIR it was in the Albuquerque World Championships), there was some discussion of a team that had developed a new way to send information to their teammates (I've forgotten why the boards were being passed from one table to the other instead of pre-duped). If a hand came up where their teammates should do something unusual (stay out of a normal slam, push to a game, that sort of thing), one of the players would carefully sort their hand before returning it to the board. Then when it arrived at the other table, the teammate could observe that the player who held that hand didn't have to sort it and conclude that they should do something unusual.
On the theory that there's nothing new under the sun, it can't hurt to take out insurance against this sort of thing by not letting your opponents know your hand arrived arranged. And I suppose if it happened several times, it would be proper to inform the director, although this is the sort of thing that's very hard for the director do do anything about. Am I getting cynical in my old age? Maybe.

[JanM]

pclayton, on Feb 2 2008, 12:46 PM, said:

Personally, I think this is akin to picking up a strong hand in a pairs game after earlier hearing "wow, 7N" at another table 30 minutes earlier.

I can't resist repeating one of the funniest ethical problem jokes I can remember. Pair game, 2 board rounds. On the first board, EW bid something like 1♠-3♠-6♠ on a ridiculous hand and go down. On the second board, NS bid something like 1♠-3♠ and the 1♠ opener calls the director: "Can I bid a slam on my opponent's wire?"

[jdonn]

I don't do anything. I think the only reliable inference is there was a passout at the other table if your hand looks like a passout, but in the actual case that clearly didn't happen so I have no idea what the UI is. Sorry if I'm naive Justin but I think it's foolish to assume this means something unusual is happening in the hand. There are so many innocuous reasons this could happen.

A player wanted to show his hand to his partner afterwards either to give a lesson, to show that it was just like a hand he held last week, as part of some stupid comment made at the table (look, 4333 again!) etc etc etc

This was board 11, and on board 12 the player accidentally took out this hand again, sorted it, then realized it was the same one he just played and quickly put it back.

His partner wanted to look at it to see what the opponents could make, or his side could make in something else.

The opponents wanted to look at it to see what their side or the other side could make.

How about this one...it's a coincidence! I know the odds are astronomically low, but it's as likely an order for your cards to randomly be as any other order.

I think if you try to read anything into it at the table then you are wasting brain cells.

[helene_t]

Jlall, on Feb 2 2008, 08:08 PM, said:

jdonn, on Feb 2 2008, 01:00 PM, said:

How about this one...it's a coincidence! I know the odds are astronomically low, but it's as likely an order for your cards to randomly be as any other order.

lol, are u serious?

OK, question to a math person, how many hands would you have to play for this to have a 5 % chance of occurring?

A hand without a singleton can be "sorted" in 384 ways (assuming each suit may be ascending or descending), while the total number of permutations is 6227020800. So the answer to your question is approximately one million.

[finally17]

If you're really concerned about UI, or AI that you don't want because it's not in the spirit of the game, there is a simple solution: train yourself to shuffle before you look. That's kind of a pain in the rear though.

Seems to me that regardless of UI or AI, a comment to a director is in order.

[Cascade]

helene_t, on Feb 3 2008, 07:15 AM, said:

Jlall, on Feb 2 2008, 08:08 PM, said:

jdonn, on Feb 2 2008, 01:00 PM, said:

How about this one...it's a coincidence! I know the odds are astronomically low, but it's as likely an order for your cards to randomly be as any other order.

lol, are u serious?

OK, question to a math person, how many hands would you have to play for this to have a 5 % chance of occurring?

A hand without a singleton can be "sorted" in 384 ways (assuming each suit may be ascending or descending), while the total number of permutations is 6227020800. So the answer to your question is approximately one million.

Interesting assumption.

I virtually never sort the cards in each suit into rank order. So a sorted hand that came from me might look like:

♠ 2 K 5 7 ♥ Q 6 8 ♦ 5 9 A ♣ 10 8 2

[jdonn]

Jlall, on Feb 2 2008, 01:08 PM, said:

jdonn, on Feb 2 2008, 01:00 PM, said:

How about this one...it's a coincidence! I know the odds are astronomically low, but it's as likely an order for your cards to randomly be as any other order.

lol, are u serious?

OK, question to a math person, how many hands would you have to play for this to have a 5 % chance of occurring?

Before you bring it to a math person, get the question right! There are literally hundreds or even thousands of orders the cards in your hand can be where it looks like the hand is sorted, and probably tens of thousands more where the order looks somehow coincidental. It's not 1 out of whatever that you will think something is up when it was really random, it's probably like 25,000 out of whatever or something like that. Probably even more than that, I mean if 12 cards were sorted and one was just in a random spot, wouldn't that be the same thing to you?

Does any of this even matter? It could be any of the other reasons I suggested, or more. There is no way a sorted hand means you are getting a 7-0 break or should overbid by three tricks.

[helene_t]

OK, if the hand was just suited and not sorted, the answer to Justin's question becomes something like 1000 rather than a million. A 7600 shape has a chance of 1 in 900 of being suited and a 4333 a chance of 1 in 50050. For the unbalanced hands I think this chance is small but considerable compared to the chance that a hand was suited for some "reason". I might be wrong, of course the latter chance depends on the sort of event.