I don't know exactly how they model shuffling, but I know that some players dislike truly random hands, which is why it's considered improper and impolite to do more than 4 shuffles.
This may actually be somewhat of a myth. I haven't verified it myself. I do know that Bridge protocol is 4 riffle shuffles, and typical riffle shuffles don't have enough entropy for 4 of them to randomize the deck (52! ~ 2^225.6, so you'd need 56.4 bits for each, and riffle shuffles have about 30 bits) but I find it hard to envision why this (possibly slight) lack of randomness would manifest itself in higher frequencies of good hands.
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> Early online bridge games randomized hands fully and therefore delivered crappier (flatter) hands than people were typically used to.
Are you saying that all online bridge games today do not fully randomize the shuffle, but simulate riffle shuffles instead?
I don't know exactly how they model shuffling, but I know that some players dislike truly random hands, which is why it's considered improper and impolite to do more than 4 shuffles.
This may actually be somewhat of a myth. I haven't verified it myself. I do know that Bridge protocol is 4 riffle shuffles, and typical riffle shuffles don't have enough entropy for 4 of them to randomize the deck (52! ~ 2^225.6, so you'd need 56.4 bits for each, and riffle shuffles have about 30 bits) but I find it hard to envision why this (possibly slight) lack of randomness would manifest itself in higher frequencies of good hands.