[suokko]

helene_t, on 2014-December-23, 08:33, said:

I don't understand this - are you saying that the dealing program simulates a permutation and applies that permutation to the previous shuffle? Seems odd to me. I would expect it to apply the permuation to an ordered deck, i.o.w. the shuffle depends on the seed and not (explicitly) on the previous deal.

Of course this doesn't matter, it is just a question of what is simpler to implement.

The implementation stars with a ordered pack.
Next it reorders it with single shuffle iterating all cards.
From that pack order it generates the hand presentation for analyse step.
For next deal it takes the shuffled pack from previous deal and does same suhffling step the first board.

This makes the pack order weakly part of rng state. That may make rng plus pack state period a lot longer than what rng period would be alone. Of course there is chance that period start to repeat with some low multiplier to rng period but it is fairly unlikely.

[barmar]

ArtK78, on 2014-December-23, 16:10, said:

And yet, on a low club lead or A and another the contract is down one on any line of play.

More tricks are given away on the opening lead...

I have some sympathy for him. Holding most of the defensive strength (how could he know that both of us were minimum for our bids?) and sitting behind the NT opener, he doesn't want to lead away from honors. Passive defense seems reasonable, he's probably expecting me to take losing finesses into him. But the Great Dealer pulled a fast one on him.

[steve2005]

ArtK78, on 2014-December-23, 16:10, said:

And yet, on a low club lead or A and another the contract is down one on any line of play.

Yes, i'd rather have kind opponents who lead our suit in NT instead of their long suit, rather than having all my finesses work, lol.