[4975] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Bridge
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ben Laurie)
Fri Jun 25 16:21:21 1999
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 16:34:45 +0100
From: Ben Laurie <ben@algroup.co.uk>
To: "Ge' Weijers" <ge@progressive-systems.com>
Cc: Matt Crawford <crawdad@fnal.gov>,
"Arnold G. Reinhold" <reinhold@world.std.com>, cryptography@c2.net,
coderpunks@toad.com
Ge' Weijers wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jun 23, 1999 at 12:46:43PM -0500, Matt Crawford wrote:
> > > > > There are 52! bridge hands, so a random hand has
> > > > > log2(56!) = 226 bits of entropy or 68 decimal digits worth.
> >
> > No, just 52! / (13!)^4 hands, which is around 2^96.
>
> The interesting part is to come up with an algorithm that only uses 96 bits.
Number the possible hands from 1..2^96, choose a 96 bit random number,
n, and pick the nth hand.
Cheers,
Ben.
--
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
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