That's very impressive. Looking it with a modern stand point, I think how fast hw almost do a flower as a 1st move to his shuffle and how fast and neatly he can divide 5 stacks of cards- it's very very amazing. Never seen someone do it like that and that fast
“We disqualified this player for Stalling, after it was observed that his play speed seemed to change based on his observation of the clock. It was observed by a high-level judge that twice in the round he appeared to change his play speed based on considerations that were outside the game. " Saito is a pro magic player. he's in consideration for the HOF. Rereading cards again and again seems out of character for a guy who should know what Jace the Mindsculptor does.
Agreed, If you're a professional and you're looking at MTG cards for 8+ hours a day for a living, You better understand how the synergy in your deck works like the back of your hand.
i do that too, some people are just so damn strange when they shuffle their deck, i shuffle it longer then i shuffle mine. That guy who looks at every card in his deck, places each one in a specific order, awkwardly shuffles haphazardly for 8 seconds...;yeah that guy.
xjustinjx there's a guy at my local fnm who used to blatantly look at all your cards as he was shuffling and then stop when he saw a couple of your good cards on the bottom. People never called him out on it because they were either looking somewhere else or were too shy. He has finally stopped doing it because he played me for the first time and i forced him to reshuffle my deck 3 times when he kept looking at my cards
I do some voodoo magic superstitious shit on their deck when cutting, take the top 8 cards if they're on the draw and put em on the bottom and take the bottom 8 catds and put em on the top, I came in 4th with a less-than-decent deck using this method
@Chikokishi Go in from the sides not from bottom to of sleeves to top of sleeve, it looks like hes going in from the top with the shuffle here buts hes actually going in on a angle into the side at the very top with the corner. If you do this shuffle from bottom going into top you will break a ton of sleeves.
Put all your cards you want one of in your openting hand (sideboard cards, often) on top of the deck. Do Saito's shuffle. The top cards do not change despite 1000 shuffles. Then at the end, do the pile sorting he does. This distributes the sideboard cards evenly throughout your deck so you get one in your opening hand or draw in the first two draw steps. It's a total cheat.
@@lucanale4836 13 year old video, 3month old comment, but for anyone reading this is the context. Apparently Saito would shuffle his deck with no reason to and then ask his opponent to cut. Most players would be confused and cut out of reflex, then he'd call a judge and tell them the opponent cut his deck with no motive, which in competitive REL could range from a warning to a game loss depending on intent. He used to do this a lot in his gameshop and the judge would just punish the other player. He then tried this in a Pro Tour or something out of his shop, to which the judge there just stared in confusion and told him that not only he couldn't shuffle without reason but that baiting for an illegal action was a much worse offense than a miss-shufle or miss-cut, and if I recall correctly, disqualified him from the event.
Never heard this about Saito. He is a meticulous shuffler at all parts of the game. His only violations are in slowplay (shuffling too long) and he owns a card shop in Japan. If he had that reputation I'm sure it wouldn't do as well it does.
Except that first shuffle only shuffles the middle of the deck. Also after the 7th shuffle, your shuffles stop doing anything. 7-8 shuffles already create statistic perfection.
Notice that at the start of the video the opponent already presented his deck and was leaning on his arm. So it probably took allot longer than just the length of the video.
So this is him shuffling his opponents deck? Absurd. At this point I'd probably just request a judge to shuffle the deck any time I'd normally pass it to him for a shuffle.
Dragging out the game isn't his only offense. He's also been caught and banned for bribery as well. When it comes to cheating at the Pro Tours, Saito's name comes up all the time. He's got quite a reputation from over the years.
@KrankesHirn If you shuffle the heck out of it, sure. However, the point of appearing to be taking waaaaaay too long to shuffle on Saito's part means that only the suspicious will shuffle the heck out of the deck. Most players will cut to get the whole thing over with since it has already taken so long (and, wow, he has sure been shuffling a lot, so it must be randomized, the opp thinks).
Saito was discovered to be cheating during this tournament for waiting out the clock to the effect of altering gaming strategy for he and his opponent. He was also caught shuffling his deck in this same manner without any effect in play to stipulate the action of shuffling, which analysts have pointed out could be an indicator that Saito knew his draws before they came up. Those sleeves that he's is using are usually suspect to this kind of tampering, as well as any sleeves that come in 2 packs.
he's looking up because there's a glass ceiling up above and he can see up a few girls skirts on the second floor ....you can hear the other guy say "there's a muff" ...
@mrploch because he would intentionally stall. anything from taking forever to shuffle from staring at his hand forever to reading an opponents cards just to kill time. he would play slow, win game 1, then stall out so that he would get a 1-0-1 win
Dude got Saito Stalled. If it was the Saito Shuffle, that'd be one thing, but he was just cutting in for almost a solid minute, so this is definitely a case of the Saito Stall. I'm surprised he didn't stop, check his sideboard, and then go back to shuffling.
The shuffle technique he's using is at first a faro shuffle. I'm not saying he's cheating, merely pointing out that enough perfect faros will bring the deck back into it's original order and he seems pretty slick (check out the bottom card) and won't stop when asked. Also he divides the pack into piles in the same card order which could be sorting. We don't see the whole shuffle and I don't know him personally so he could be a trustworthy guy, legitimately shuffling. It does seem suspect though.
Faro shuffling at that speed with someone else's deck and with sleeves you're unfamiliar with is a huge stretch. Most magicians that utilize faro would not be able to shuffle at his speed with a deck of sleeved cards that you are unfamiliar with. Also doing false shuffles with an opponent's deck into a pile shuffle without getting a substantial amount of bottom peeks is an unlikely hypothesis
Ah yes, the shuffle where you take the bottom half of your deck and merge it with ~40% of the other bottom to know the top several cards, still in palm placement, is knowing where they’ll be. So is it shuffling problems or slight of hand?
Never said you did, not I've said that this is the only way to avoid it. Saito, the guy who created this shuffle, does it because it's faster and because it garantees a good shuffle.
