I sat down to play beat the devil with determination. I wanted to see the odds of winning beat the devil. Last time I played, it took 10 attempts to win once. This time it took 7 attempts to win once.
The odds went from about 9-10% to about 12.5%. Yes, I had to do some off-camera math. I used calculatorsoup to help me.
When I achieved a 10% chance of winning I was using the same deck. This time I shuffled the deck with a riffle shuffle at least 7 times and used a separate deck each time.
To learn more about shuffling methods and how they affect odds you can watch this video.
Also, check the Wikipedia article for shuffling as well if you want to learn more.
Then I used the Scopa, Wizard and French Tarot Decks to beat the devil. The Scopa deck has 40 cards and I easily beat the devil with 8 piles. The Wizard deck has 60 cards and it took only two times to beat the devil using 9 piles. With the 78 card French Tarot deck I used 10 piles to beat the devil on the first attempt. Quite the game isn’t it?
Bicycle Eco Edition Playing Cards
Learn more about beat the devil in this article