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What is your choice for Best Marked Deck of 2014?

Mechanic Deck VR2 by Jimmy K.
4 (23.5%)
Sharps by LPCC
13 (76.5%)

Total Members Voted: 17

Voting closed: January 16, 2015, 12:32:05 AM

Best Marked deck of 2014

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Best Marked deck of 2014
« on: October 31, 2014, 01:23:29 AM »
 

Rose

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Best Marked deck of 2014

Nominated, not Seconded:
Mana Playing Cards v2 (Zinfandel & Indigo)

Nominated AND Seconded:
Mechanic Deck VR2 by Jimmy K.
Sharps by LPCC
« Last Edit: December 11, 2014, 09:03:38 AM by Don Boyer »
 

Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #1 on: November 02, 2014, 08:56:59 PM »
 

Card Player

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Sharps by Legends Playing Card Co.
« Last Edit: November 03, 2014, 04:00:43 PM by Card Player »
 

Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #2 on: November 03, 2014, 02:55:27 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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v2 Dealers by Daniel Madison/Ellusionist

Sharps by Legends Playing Card Co.

Oi, one nomination!  When voting for president, do you get to pick more than one person?  :))  And please remember it still has to be seconded.

So, now that you have to choose, which is the better of the two?
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Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #3 on: November 03, 2014, 08:41:12 AM »
 

bhong

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I want to nominate the Mechanic VR 2 deck.
 

Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #4 on: November 03, 2014, 08:44:50 AM »
 

Anthony

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I want to nominate the Mechanic VR 2 deck.

I second the VR2 Mechanics
 

Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #5 on: November 04, 2014, 09:34:18 AM »
 

aldazar

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v2 Dealers by Daniel Madison/Ellusionist

Sharps by Legends Playing Card Co.

Oi, one nomination!  When voting for president, do you get to pick more than one person?  :))  And please remember it still has to be seconded.

So, now that you have to choose, which is the better of the two?

Just to be clear, there is a very big difference between nominating and voting, and there are many electoral systems that permit multiple nominations from a single potential voter. Comparing multiple nominations to voting for the president is a red herring, and a poor one at that.

Obviously, you set the rules for your competition, and in this case, you've set it such that each person can only nominate one deck (or other item, as the case may be) per category, but that's an arbitrary rule and not one based on a universal standard (the fact that there have been many attempts to nominate multiple items in a single category points toward this), or even any (publicly stated) logic or reasoning.

That being said, I have no objection to the 1 nomination per category per person rule - just want to point out that it's an arbitrary rule and has little to nothing to do with how many votes one gets when voting for a president...

PS: To answer your (irrelevant) question on presidential voting (with an equally irrelevant answer since it has no application whatsoever to this competition), as a matter of fact, when you vote for President, at least in the US, you actually are technically voting for at least 2 people - the President and the Vice President, since they run together on the same ticket.
« Last Edit: November 04, 2014, 09:36:47 AM by aldazar »
 

Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #6 on: November 04, 2014, 10:51:56 AM »
 

Rose

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Thank you everyone for your nominations!!!
Just note if you pick 3-10 decks your first nomination will be the one that counts.
Also if the deck is yet to be released, the vote can only count if it is released in 2014.
 

Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #7 on: November 04, 2014, 01:58:09 PM »
 

Marcus

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Sharps by Legends Playing Card Co.
Seconded.
Yes, I might be the guy you remember from that thing at that place way back when.
 

Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #8 on: November 04, 2014, 03:10:17 PM »
 

Don Boyer

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Just to be clear, there is a very big difference between nominating and voting, and there are many electoral systems that permit multiple nominations from a single potential voter. Comparing multiple nominations to voting for the president is a red herring, and a poor one at that.

Obviously, you set the rules for your competition, and in this case, you've set it such that each person can only nominate one deck (or other item, as the case may be) per category, but that's an arbitrary rule and not one based on a universal standard (the fact that there have been many attempts to nominate multiple items in a single category points toward this), or even any (publicly stated) logic or reasoning.

That being said, I have no objection to the 1 nomination per category per person rule - just want to point out that it's an arbitrary rule and has little to nothing to do with how many votes one gets when voting for a president...

PS: To answer your (irrelevant) question on presidential voting (with an equally irrelevant answer since it has no application whatsoever to this competition), as a matter of fact, when you vote for President, at least in the US, you actually are technically voting for at least 2 people - the President and the Vice President, since they run together on the same ticket.

I felt it appropriate to use the one nomination rule because we are choosing the best - is there more than one best?

The fact that the US President and Vice President get elected together don't change the fact that you cast a single vote in order to get them elected.  It's a package deal.
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Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #9 on: December 06, 2014, 11:06:20 AM »
 

Nurul

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Sharps
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Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #10 on: December 06, 2014, 11:35:46 PM »
 

Don Boyer

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Sharps

Already chosen and seconded, my friend.  Check the list in the first post as well as the other posts before nominating.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2014, 11:36:09 PM by Don Boyer »
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Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #11 on: December 10, 2014, 12:23:05 PM »
 

PrincessTrouble

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I nominate Mana Playing Cards v2 Zinfandel / Indigo.
 

Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #12 on: January 02, 2015, 12:32:31 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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NOMINATIONS ARE CLOSED.  Voting is on.  It ends in 14 days.
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Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #13 on: August 20, 2015, 11:10:02 PM »
 

Sburk49

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I nominate Mana Playing Cards v2 Zinfandel / Indigo.

Whoa whoa HOLD up....

Those are marked?

I know I just revived an old topic but.... REALLY?
 

Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #14 on: August 21, 2015, 06:25:02 PM »
 

Don Boyer

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I nominate Mana Playing Cards v2 Zinfandel / Indigo.

Whoa whoa HOLD up....

Those are marked?

I know I just revived an old topic but.... REALLY?

Yup, they're marked.  It would be better to post about it in the topic about the deck - it's older, sure, but no one around here objects to meaningful contributions to older topics.

http://www.playingcardforum.com/index.php?topic=5427.0
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Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #15 on: December 10, 2017, 09:20:38 AM »
 

EndersGame

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I realize that this is an older thread, but seeing as the Sharps deck was the winner of this award, is there a place where I can find more about its marking system, or someone who can tell me more about it?

I am aware that it uses shades, but needs some help with the specifics.
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Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #16 on: December 11, 2017, 01:35:43 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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I realize that this is an older thread, but seeing as the Sharps deck was the winner of this award, is there a place where I can find more about its marking system, or someone who can tell me more about it?

I am aware that it uses shades, but needs some help with the specifics.

In most marking systems, they work as the name would imply - there are marks somewhere on the back of the playing card that will indicate what's printed on the front.  These might be additive marks, like someone coloring in a blank space or drawing a line or a dot, or they might be subtractive, like someone scratching a line or a dot into a field of color to reveal the white paper underneath.  There are also the easy-to-use "reader" decks, so called because they use simple, easy-to-read symbols rather than a concealed code of some kind - for example, in a regular marked deck, a King of Diamonds might have a specific set of dots or scrawls concealed somewhere in the back design, unknowable without knowing what the legend of the deck is, while in a reader deck, a King of Diamonds might have a "K" and either a "D" or a diamond symbol printed somewhere on the back, so the person using the deck only needs to know letters, numbers and symbols and not some arcane code.  Readers tend to be more easily detected but are also far easier to use.

The way a shade system typically works, all the cards are still printed "identically" in terms of the pattern on the back - the shapes, lines, etc.  The difference is that certain parts of the pattern are altered in terms of slight changes in the shade of a color used to print them.  It's meant to be very subtle but still readable to anyone who knows where and how to look.  You can't use a shade system to create a "reader" deck, and in order to be read, you have to know the legend for how it's marked, but they're among the hardest marking systems to spot, not counting decks employing things like UV inks or daubs, RFID chips, etc.

In this way, it shares a certain amount in common with modern steganography, a practice of hiding a message in a digital image.  They way that works is that you take your message, usually already encrypted for privacy, and determine the exact length of the string of bits (individual ones and zeros) needed to convey that message.  You find a digital image, typically a photograph, that has at least the same number of pixels (acronym for "picture element," the smallest part of a digital image), and you change the least-significant bit, typically the last bit, using a particular formula.  In a picture with 32-bit pixels, the color change is a difference of ½^32 - you're making that pixel one 4,294,067,266th closer to either brightest red or darkest violet in the color spectrum.  To the naked eye, that's truly undetectable.  To a computer, it's easily spotted, especially if the person using the computer has a copy of the original photo with which to compare the one concealing the steganographic message.

But back to my point - it's a change not in the overall shape of the back pattern, but in the coloration of the pattern, making it a far more subtle form of marking and tougher to spot.  A riffle test may or may not reveal it, depending on just how big a change the shade is.
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Re: Best Marked deck of 2014
« Reply #17 on: December 11, 2017, 11:37:34 PM »
 

EndersGame

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Thanks for the reply Don.  The publisher wasn't able to give more information, so I was hoping for some help here from someone else who owns the actual deck.

The closest to any clear information that I've found about the Sharps deck is in this post right here (although quite a few people in that thread report that they can't see the shading):

http://www.playingcardforum.com/index.php?topic=7426.msg107184#msg107184

That post includes the image below.  But unfortunately that still doesn't tell us which cards exactly these 54 images correspond to, so that we know what shading pattern to look for on a specific card.



Is there anyone who owns the deck that can help out at all, and give some indication of which cards these images represent, or share their experiences with the deck?  I do own the deck myself, so knowing the order of the cards listed in that image would already go some way to helping me figure out where I should be look for the subtle shadings/markings that are indicated in that chart.
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