High Low

So I've played this game A LOT over the years. *****A LOT***** (irl)

Here's what I've noticed trying to get the 25 in a row merit in this game

Why do I see cards that shouldn't exist in the unshuffled deck come into play before it shuffles? Why does the game appear artificially harder after 10 in a row? (suddenly cards will be within 2 of the original card on most of my turns instead of random as this game plays irl). The last Ace will show after choosing low on a King more often than I've seen in my life. A 2 or 3 makes a lot more appearances on 4's and 5's than I've ever seen before. The probability on 7's and 8's given the expended cards goes out the damn window past 10 turns in a row. I've gotten more cards matching my own past 20 turns than any other subset of numbers between 1 and 25, and never so many in a row as happens past 20 turns.

I'm not here saying it's rigged, per se, because I can't prove that. What I AM saying, between real life experience, game experience, and other player's posts, is why does there seem to be so much artificial difficulty on this game? I expect to lose before 25 turns in a row every time I start, it's just how the game is. The ways that I lose though are questionable at best, and not how it usually will go when playing irl.

Someone in another thread said that it seems the game determines with RNG whether you win or lose before dealing your card, and assigns a card value based on that decision after turning. To be perfectly honest, this feels more correct in terms of High Low in Torn than anything else I've seen. Whereas I expect to lose irl in completely random situations at any time (but where deck probability matters), I can almost always count on the loss in Torn to defy that logic and just be 'the necessary loss' that we all eventually encounter.

Not mad. Not salty. Not really complaining overtly because the $ losses are negligible. All it does it take some of my time away and make me wait til tomorrow. Some of you got the merit in 3 games and that's perfectly awesome. Some have been trying forever to no avail. All I'm saying is this is what I see, this is what bugs me, and this is what I believe I'm seeing. Feel free to disagree. Happy gambling :D

I tracked my 75 attempts with excel in first day grinding the merit,
and under assumption "deck reshuffles after every lost game"
I didnt see deplicated cards from the deck.

Duplicated cards I've seen rarely happen, but has happened nonetheless. I've found a few others in forums having said that they've popped some before. Can't figure out why for the life of me. I just want my merit :'( xD

LOL I got it on my 7th try.
Keep trying buddy, it'll come when you're least expecting it

We regularly play a version of this after the pub quiz, and we were trying to work out the probability. It does get very difficult because it involves modals and some other kind of recursion. In ours, you only have to turn eight cards, but they go in order - the card you pull becomes the card you go higher/lower than.

Then I realised this version is much simpler. Not only do you draw a new card to play against each time, it's from a new pack, so each game has exactly the same odds. Then it was even easier again after finally noticing that draws mean you just play again.

So that means all you need to do is find the average chance of winning with each card, take an average of that and multiply it to the power of 25.

So (where 1 is whatever the lowest card is) that's:

1	1
2	0.916667
3	0.833333
4	0.75
5	0.666667
6	0.583333
7	0.5
8	0.583333
9	0.666667
10	0.75
11	0.833333
12	0.916667
13	1
Ave.	0.769231

To the power of 25 is 0.14% or an average of 711 goes.

I don't believe it's that simple for this version of the game. I say this because when playing, it will have explicit deck shuffle notifications.

This leaves 2 possibilities- It actually does shuffle only when it says deck shuffled, or they need to explicitly say that it shuffles EVERY go, or the equivalent of a new deck.

This is particularly important because the end value at the 25th iteration would significantly change depending on one's ability to track the cards laid already and reevaluate the best decision at that time (for example, there are times when choosing low on a 7 or high on an 8 would be the most statistically sound choice depending on what cards have popped). This could affect my choice on 6's and 9's as well depending on the previous run of turns.
This is also the reason that the script may fall short of the best it could be. Being limited to making one of two options when it may not be best could actually increase the avg amount of games to reach the merit.

I agree,although if they were playing by 'normal' rules the chances would be even lower as you could explicitly rule out cards. The version I normally play, the average would drop to 70.9% and it's a little more complicated than just 'to the power of' - tho that's close enough. By those rules - and if a draw means you lose - it's a 1/5418 chance.

I have been dull and have paid attention tonight, for a change. I tallied all the cards I drew being notified of deck shuffles. I got a new shuffle after 60 cards, with many omissions and duplicates - tallied below:

	c	d	h	s
a	xx	x		x
2	xx	xx	x	xxx
3	x	xx	xx
4	x	x	xxxx
5
6	xxx	x	xx	xx
7	x
8	x	x	x
9	xx			x
10	x	x	xx	xx
j	x	x		x
q	x	x	x	x
k	x	xxx	x	xx

I missed marking one turn but it looks like the kind of spread I would expect from new packs each deal

Hmmm. I can see what you mean by normal rules, as the draws working as basically a neutral turn is actually in our favor overall
I didn't actually think to count the cards between the reshuffle notification though. 60 cards between shuffles is actually a really interesting thing though, as now it gives a lot more to the theory that there's a 'new' deck used every turn.

I put in the following message to Bogie, hopefully we get a reply to clear this up. (I do believe that, although seemingly small, the information being clarified would make a large difference in overall play for high low)

1stFist says:
There seems to be uncertainty on this particular topic among players I've talked to. Does High Low use a 'new' deck every turn of a game? 'Turn' meaning each individual choice within 1 Casino Token's worth of High Low (i.e, on a streak of 10 in a row, you've taken 10 turns).


bogie says:
I have no idea.


1stFist says:
I'd like to ask you to make an inquiry, or point me in a direction to a better person to ask.
As it stands, once every several turns will it say the deck is shuffled. If that is NOT the case and it shuffles every turn, this should be made EXTREMELY clear somewhere, and the pop up dialogue should be corrected.
If it does function as it appears to, then all things seem great, barring... complications... that can arise during a game (like a card that should be out of play finding it's way back onto the table). Those complications being the reason this question exists at all.
Either way, it's an important question, as it completely affects the playstyle myself and others would use. Additionally, it can either have the potential to open a bug report (pending rare evidence) or put it to rest.


Time will tell, but we may be on to something here hehehe. Make our most marginal mark on this game yet!

I know this is a more productive thread but, can I share so hate here?
[image: i.imgur.com]

Edit: I hate this
[image: i.imgur.com]