In another topic, it was brought to my attention that shuffling your hand and letting your opponent point at one of the cards is not really random:

Originally posted by Philip Körte:

People tend to sort their Hand into Lands and Nonlands and all other ways, even subconciously. Its incredibly easy to read this from almost all players who sort their Hand. I'm pretty sure that, a little into the game, in most cases I could tell you how many Lands/nonlands my opponent has in his 5-card hand, and where these are. And I'm also pretty confident that I'd be able to track 2 of whichever set I'd like to track when my opponent shuffles his hand for the random discard.

If this is true, why do we allow this method of random selection in the first place?

Methods of random selection are not defined so that the players can decide for themselves what would be suitable for a particular situation. A player knowing the psychological/subconscious bias you mention can simply request that dice be used to determine the card, so removing any disadvantage to himself. Such a player gets an advantage for having a good knowledge of the game, much the same way as a player who casts spells in his second main phase does.

Players with decent shuffling ability should be able to conceal the
identity of the drawn card for any hand size 3 or larger within a few
seconds. Players with lots of experience shuffling will even be able to do
it with 2 cards. There is just not a problem here.

Don't we want to remove all dexterity-based advantages from the game wherever possible?

It appears unfair to the old, young, physically disabled, etc to allow players to utilize a “random” method that we know may not actually be random. Many of these players probably wouldn't choose this method if they were aware that it could be used against them by a savvy player.

Seems that we should try to encourage people away from using them in this case to help protect those that are unaware and incapable of truly shuffling their hands into a random order.

Originally posted by Toby Hazes:

In another topic, it was brought to my attention that shuffling your hand and letting your opponent point at one of the cards is not really random:

Philip Körte
People tend to sort their Hand into Lands and Nonlands and all other ways, even subconciously. Its incredibly easy to read this from almost all players who sort their Hand. I'm pretty sure that, a little into the game, in most cases I could tell you how many Lands/nonlands my opponent has in his 5-card hand, and where these are. And I'm also pretty confident that I'd be able to track 2 of whichever set I'd like to track when my opponent shuffles his hand for the random discard.

If this is true, why do we allow this method of random selection in the first place?

I would tend to challenge this Toby - While most players do sort there hand most players also tend to be shuffling their hand constantly afterwards. The initial sort IMO seems to provide the player with a layout of what their hand contains but they dont leave their hand in that configuration as most of them will be shuffling their hands constantly.

In fact id challenge any player to follow even one card in the following: Your text to link here…

If this is an issue, have them roll a die to determine which card it is. Assign each card a number, then roll. If you rolled a number that wasn't assigned to a card: keep rolling until you do get a card.

This is simple, easy, and fixes the problem.