New cards go from 30 to 11 when I want to review

[drusty]

I have a deck that shows as 30 new cards to review today, but when I click in, it shows as only 11.

[Danika_Dakika]

I expect that difference is sibling cards being buried. You can see that the number of Review cards drops by quite a bit too – same reason. Based on your Deck Options, Anki is prioritizing certain siblings over others.

[drusty]

I’m guessing a sibling card is testing the same card, in a different manner. All three of my cards are tested by

1. showing image
2. playing sound
3. showing word

so there’s nothing to worry about? all cards will be tested eventually which is the only thing I’m concerned with

[Keks]

Burying

Siblings and Burying

Burying

When Anki gathers cards, it first gathers intraday learning cards, then interday learning cards, then reviews, and finally new cards. This affects how burying works:

• If you have all burying options enabled, the sibling that comes earliest in that list will be shown. For example, a review card will be shown in preference to a new card.
• Siblings later in the list can not bury earlier card types. For example, if you disable burying of new cards, and study a new card, it will not bury any interday learning or review cards, and you may see both a review sibling and new sibling in the same session.

The options are:

• Bury new siblings: whether other new cards of the same note (e.g., reverse cards, adjacent cloze deletions) will be delayed until the next day.
• Bury review siblings: whether other review cards of the same note will be delayed until the next day.
• Bury interday learning siblings: whether other learning cards of the same note with intervals >= 1 day will be delayed until the next day.

For more info about burying cards, please see this section of the manual.

Siblings and Burying

Recall from [the basics](https://docs.ankiweb.net/getting-started.html) that Anki can create more than one card for each thing you input, such as a front→back card and a back→front card, or two different cloze deletions from the same text. These related cards are called 'siblings'.

When you answer a card that has siblings, Anki can prevent the card’s siblings from being shown in the same session by automatically ‘burying’ them. Buried cards are hidden from review until the clock rolls over to a new day or you manually unbury them using the “Unbury” button that’s visible at the bottom of the deck overview screen. Anki will bury siblings even if the siblings are not in the same deck (for instance, if you use the deck override feature).

You can enable burying from the deck options screen - there are separate settings for new cards and reviews.

Anki will only bury siblings that are new or review cards. It will not hide cards in learning, as time is of the essence for those cards. On the other hand, when you study a learning card, any new/review siblings will be buried.

Note: A card cannot be buried and suspended at the same time. Suspending a buried card will unbury it. Burying a suspended card does not work on Anki 2.1.49+, whereas on earlier versions, it will unsuspend the card.

[Danika_Dakika]

@drusty

I’m guessing a sibling card is testing the same card, in a different manner.

Basically. Just to line up on terminology, siblings are cards made from the same note. In your case, it sounds like your note type makes (up to) 3 sibling cards. So yes, the other cards will eventually be introduced, they are just taking turns on different days.

[drusty]

Thanks for that clarification. I was satisfied with this answer, but when I go to review today I see 30 to review, then when I click in to the deck I see 0. That doesn’t seem right. In the prior example it went from 30 to 11 which is 1/3 for the 3 different siblings per note which seemed to make sense.

[sorata]

This is probably due to burying. You have new cards that are siblings to review cards. They are all getting buried.

[Danika_Dakika]

@drusty

it went from 30 to 11 which is 1/3 for the 3 different siblings per note which seemed to make sense

I think that 30-to-11 was more of a coincidence than that. Picture something along the lines of (overly simplified case) –

• Let’s say you have 30 notes with New cards.
• On day 1, Anki introduced 1 card each from 30 of those notes – you studied them and graduated them to Review.
• Due to your intervals/options and fuzz factor, 19 of them will be due for Review tomorrow (day 2), 11 will be due the following day (day 3).
• On day 2, you have cards from 19 notes due for Review, so there are only 11 notes left that can introduce New cards (the 2nd card from those notes).

You can see how after more days of studying, based on how many New cards you have, and what notes they are coming from, you can get to “0 New cards” for today, even though there are 30+ more New cards that will be introduced when they can be.