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Over-under shuffle cycle length for 14 cards

Question

A simple shuffle works like this: hold the deck face down and deal the cards one at a time from the left hand to the right, placing the 2nd card on top of the 1st, the 3rd underneath, the 4th on top, and so on, alternating until every card is moved. Repeating this shuffle on an even-sized deck eventually restores the original order; for instance 44 cards return after 33 shuffles, and decks of 2,4,8,16,32,642,4,8,16,32,64 cards return after 2,3,4,5,6,72,3,4,5,6,7 shuffles. How many shuffles bring a 1414-card deck back to its starting order?

Short answer

1414. Writing the shuffle as a permutation of the 1414 positions, it turns out to be a single 1414-cycle, so its order is 1414. A direct simulation confirms the deck first returns to its original order after 1414 shuffles.

Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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