I’m writing a number of articles meant to teach beginning programming concepts through the use of poker-related topics. Currently, I’m working on the subject of shuffling.
As Jeff Atwood points out on CodingHorror.com, one simple shuffling method (iterating through an array and swapping each card with a random card elsewhere in the array) creates an uneven distribution of permutations. In an actual application, I would just use the Knuth Fisher-Yates shuffle for more uniform randomness. But, I don’t want to bog down an explanation of programming concepts with the much less coder-friendly algorithm.
This leads to the question: Just how much of an advantage would a black-hat have if they knew you were using a naive shuffle of a 52-card deck? It seems like it would be infinitesimally small.
It’s not like you’re writing a poker program that will be used for an actual online gambling site. An ability for someone to cheat at the program isn’t a big deal when you’re teaching people how to program.
Leave a note saying that this is a poor model of the real world (with a reference to it as a possible security flaw), and just keep going with the teaching.