Randomness of Solitaire deal?

[Steve Swift]

I've been playing the Solitaire game which came with my S4 for a few months. Last night, the initial deal was the run of cards 8-9-10-Jack-Queen-King-Ace (but not in that order, and mixed black suits:



I wonder if this was a truly random deal (as random as a device can go), or if it was influenced in some way? If it was truly random, then the odds against such a draw must be astronomical. I used to introduce random variations into some of my CGI webpages, just to maintain a degree of interest. So I understand the urge to play tricks like this.

 

[B. Diddy]

Wow, maybe you should go to Vegas!

My understanding is that it's actually very difficult to program true randomness into apps. So either your hand was a little wink from the developer, or it was a very lucky deal.

 

[Steve Swift]

I wrote a quick program to repeatedly deal 7 cards at random, and counted the number of times that I got the 8-9-10-Jack-Queen-King-Ace combination in all black...

It turns out to be around a 1 in about 1,064,271 chance of getting something similar to my deal. My deal has other interesting features - sequences 8-9-10 and Jack-Queen-King which make it look more interesting.