English

On Card guessing after a single shelf shuffle

Combinatorics 2026-02-24 v2 Probability

Abstract

We consider a card guessing game with complete feedback. An ordered deck of nn cards labeled 11 up to nn is shelf-shuffled exactly one time. One after the other a single card is drawn from the shuffled deck. The guesser makes has guess and the card is shown until no cards remain. We provide a distributional analysis of the number of correct guesses under the optimal strategy. We re-obtain the previously derived expectation and add a complete description of the distribution. We also obtain a central limit theorem for the number nn of cards tending to infinity. Furthermore, we discuss an unbalanced, biased shelf shuffle and show how to derive the extend our analysis, also adding the complete position matrix. Finally, a refined analysis of the number of correct guesses is carried out, distinguishing between pure luck guesses and certified correct guesses.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.12928,
  title  = {On Card guessing after a single shelf shuffle},
  author = {Markus Kuba},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.12928},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

12 pages; typos corrected

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:35:19.604Z