Before the start of a game, it is very important to properly and sufficiently randomize (shuffle) your deck. To “randomize” means to shuffle the deck so that no player could have any knowledge about the approximate position of any particular card or the relative position of any group of cards.

Usually, several mash shuffles is enough to randomize your library, assuming it wasn’t sorted beforehand. Pile shuffling alone is not sufficient randomization, because it is very easy to maintain the position of known cards. It’s fine to pile shuffle as part of your randomization, as long as you combine it with another method such as riffle or mash shuffling. Another thing some players do is “mana weave,” or sort the library into a sequence of land – spell – spell – land. This is not technically illegal, as long as the library is sufficiently randomized afterwards (which will take a fair amount of shuffling). This defeats the purpose of “weaving” in the first place, so it’s recommended to simply avoid doing this, since it just adds time to the pre-game procedure and it may look suspicious to your opponent.

At Competitive Rules Enforcement Level (GPT, PTQ, GP), the penalty for Insufficient Randomization is a Warning, as long as it’s unintentional. If you are purposely failing to randomize your deck to make sure you draw certain cards, that’s Cheating – Manipulation of Game Materials, and Cheating is always grounds for Disqualification.

Today’s Tournament Tip written by
Peter Golightly, Level 1 Judge from Austin, TX