For a rundown of shuffling techniques see: The Expert At The Card Table S.W.Erdnase and Card College (Volume 1) by Roberto Giobbi.
I'm not sure I'd recommend Erdnase for someone who isn't studying magic. It's popular because it was the book Dai Vernon learned from, but it is incredibly obtuse to read, and the descriptions can be ambiguous.
I would recommend Card College I though - Lots of illustrations and step by step instructions, and it has a collection of simple flourishes in it as well.
Useless: I should read the whole posts or threads before I reply:
Spoiler (mouseover to reveal):
In the big pile shuffle what's the movement he do after he's taken two piles but before he riffle?
Anyone willing to write a step by step guide of what he just did?
Edit: Oh, it was you. Even better :)
How do you manage to make it so "tight"? Or rather, how to get good at it? Just do it lots of times?
Was these just the cards with no sleeves or nothing? Would it be better to do bottom to bottom with sleeves? Is some extra plastic sticking out beneficial or not if sleeves?
Edit: It was already described. Thank you. Awesome :)
Pile shuffling is the only way I've found that seems to sufficiently mix the cards, particularly in games with large numbers of identical cards that get mated in normal play, i.e. Ticket to Ride. I go for random numbers of piles and a random distribution.
However, when using sleeved cards (or cards I don't care about) I usually just push the piles together in a big bunch at the end, whereas with cards I'm concerned about I pick up and stack the piles, cutting before the deal.
Pile shuffling is the only way I've found that seems to sufficiently mix the cards, particularly in games with large numbers of identical cards that get mated in normal play, i.e. Ticket to Ride. I go for random numbers of piles and a random distribution.
However, when using sleeved cards (or cards I don't care about) I usually just push the piles together in a big bunch at the end, whereas with cards I'm concerned about I pick up and stack the piles, cutting before the deal.
7 rounds of riffle is supposed to make (at least a normal deck but I don't see the difference) the deck random. Though I doubt you can't make a precise number, but good enough?
I assume this black jack (or whatever it was) riffle shuffle make the deck "random enough" even though not the whole deck may not be riffled seven times. (If you always interleave the cards in a riffle shuffle I doubt see how it would be impossible to tell all the cards positions after x rounds, and the same goes for this shuffle if you know where the decks are split, but there's a difference in that and someone actually doing that.)
So I've gotta ask. Since I grew up doing a 'riffle' shuffle (admittedly I didn't know it was called that) I guess I don't know of a "damaging" way of shuffling.
What is the damaging way to shuffle? Actually I was under the impression that the riffle was not terribly kind to cards since you're bending them.
So I've gotta ask. Since I grew up doing a 'riffle' shuffle (admittedly I didn't know it was called that) I guess I don't know of a "damaging" way of shuffling.
What is the damaging way to shuffle? Actually I was under the impression that the riffle was not terribly kind to cards since you're bending them.
I believe the most common thing is just overbending them with a riffle shuffle. Some people tend to bend the cards back quite far before letting them go instead of bending just as much as necessary.
So I've gotta ask. Since I grew up doing a 'riffle' shuffle (admittedly I didn't know it was called that) I guess I don't know of a "damaging" way of shuffling.
What is the damaging way to shuffle? Actually I was under the impression that the riffle was not terribly kind to cards since you're bending them.
I believe the most common thing is just overbending them with a riffle shuffle. Some people tend to bend the cards back quite far before letting them go instead of bending just as much as necessary.
Alright, I could see that being damaging.
I riffle shuffle my Thunderstone and Dominion cards and, if anything, it is helping get rid of some of the cards' contorted bend I've noticed to be fairly prevalent with the Thunderstone cards.
I don't shuffle: a deck of around 50 cards I will deal them out in stacks of 6, 7 or so, sometimes randomly. Then I randomly gather the piles back into a single deck.
I do pile shuffling. It's always an excellent shuffle and keeps the cards safe from wearing.
A 5 or 7 pile shuffle is usually enough.
I do that at the moment and it's fine for the start of the game, but I find it's a little cumbersome mid-game. That said, it is kind to the cards.
A single pile shuffle is a poor randomizer, though, if you start with 'clumps' of related cards. It is too good at breaking up the clumps (true randomization will usually have some seemingly non-random sequences).
Riffle shuffling is in this sense superior because one usually does several riffle shuffles while most people stop after a one pile shuffle.
Personally, when preparing a game after its been in the box, I will usually do two pile shuffles (with 3 and 5 piles typically) followed by some rough overhand shuffles followed by two or three Faro shuffles (Faro is similar to riffle, but much better at getting a true interleave and is effectively non-destructive). I'm sort of a fanatic about randomizing. The rational behind the steps:
a. pile shuffling insures no cards stick together. Doing two with a relatively prime number of piles produces a fairly arbitrary distribution of any previous clumps of related cards.
b. that being said, if we look at a previous clump after the two pile shuffles, the cards will have an interesting pattern of space between them. If the pile shuffle was done entirely uniformly, the pattern will look like two waves with different periods running through the deck. Even if not uniform, the chances that any of the related cards got back together is smaller than it should be. To insure that the sometimes-too-good Faro shuffle has a fair shot at really mixing things up, we want to break up the big waves. Overhand is great at this as it moves cards in pretty big but arbitrarily sized groups around.
c. Faro shuffle is then the real shuffle. After (b), the deck is unpredictable, but not truly random. After (c), I don't think you can do better at randomizing.
Mid-game I usually Faro a couple of times, overhand a couple (to account for top/bottom stability issues in any cut-and-interleave method) followed by a couple more Faros. Takes about 20-30 seconds.
For sleeved cards, I do the same thing except replace Faro with an overhand interleave.
I've thought about this way too much Perhaps being a slight-of-hand junkie in my youth and a math major in college was a bad combo!
I hate sleeves, and mainly because I find it much harder to riffle shuffle quickly with sleeves on cards - the stack is much harder to manage, and you can't get such a fine shuffle. My cards all end up with a telltale bend in them from repeat shuffling, but that doesn't bother me. It doesn't damage them in any other way. I do riffle shuffle on the long end though, not the short end - my father used to riffle shuffle along the short end of the cards, and that puts a much more damaging bend in the cards.
I find a decent riffle, done betwewen 7 and 10 times, is sufficiently randomizing, and unless that stack is too big to do all of it at once comfortably (e.g. Race for the Galaxy with the first two expansions!), it's fairly quick to do.
So we get back (larry is shot up in the belly) but its cool because Teresa "black widow" will stictch him back good. We hear on the police intercept radio that the cops have taken the bait and are stopping all outbound cargo freight trains. We are assured that the polizia have no idea that we are still within the city and will leave in 3 weeks time. The doors are shut to our smokey underground lair and then the tense heat of the moment drips away as everything goes slowmo. Grinning face, and I launch the cards up into the air. The camera by this point is above me you see? And as each of the cards flutters down to rest, I get Larry the new guy to clean up (little does he know that he'll be killed soon: no witnesses and he is untrustworthy) after picking the cards up, he then hands back a perfectly shuffled deck.
n.b. we were arrested shortly after: Larry dobbed us out to the police, turns out he was working for the McAndrews' family over in the Irish quarter. Man I knew he was way too jumpy....
Well we didn't need to go to plan B, so everything remained in tact - non destructive as OP says! Apart from that security guard who tried to play hero ¬_¬ - he'll wake up from his judo-chop coma in about 2 weeks though, so mostly non destructive.
For those who stack shuffle, how many piles do you create and what pattern of distribution do you use?
I've been creating six stacks(3 up/3 down) placing cards in an up/down pattern finally compiling the cards in stack order left to right. This works pretty well during setup where time isn't as much of an issue.
Riffle shuffle works fine with most cards. I just get annoyed when people can't do it without bending the cards excessively. You don't need to bend cards to 70+ degree angles just to shuffle them.
I do pile shuffling. It's always an excellent shuffle and keeps the cards safe from wearing.
A 5 or 7 pile shuffle is usually enough.
It should be noted that this isn't really shuffling! In a tournament that requires shuffling such as Magic this is not a legal shuffle. You can do it , but you have to end with a riffle shuffle or something else that actually randomizes. The reason being is that no actual shuffling is going on. You are just reorganizing the cards. If you wanted you could certainly count your cards and determine their final placement. Obviously, for something like Ticket To Ride this wouldn't matter and would be fine.
I mainly riffle, and occasionally intersperse some overhand shuffles.
It surprises me how often gamers don't know how to do a riffle when it's the best way to shuffle effectively and non-damaging to the cards. Seriously, it's well worth your time to watch a video and learn, it doesn't take that much practice.
It's really easy to perform the "wash" poorly and damage the cards because you're making very large motions so that if cards get crammed together there's sufficient force to hurt them. I never recommend this technique. Amateurs are likely to damage the cards and mix very poorly, someone who knows better techniques can just plain do better. If it's used at all it should be in ADDITION to something else. I do feel there is some value to using more than one technique which is why I mix riffles and overhands, each technique seems to have different "artifacts" which can cancel each other out when mixed. I also see the point of washing once on a brand new deck to break apart cards which were stuck together in the box perhaps.
Finally, a poorly done wash (the way most amateurs do it) just looks stupid, like you're a drunken walrus stirring cards with your flippers.
Which begs the question of how one can learn, improve and practice a basic riff shuffle. I have the problem that I have to do a good shuffle of some 40 small decks prior to a tournament I'm running in March and a shuffle of another deck for an important game the next day. The main set of decks involved in the tournament is small in card size (at most an inch and a half wide and three inches long) and has more cards than the typical deck (each has sixty cards, all of which need to be in the deck and all of which will be accessed before the game ends). I don't know if an online video is going to cut it, so maybe there's a teacher in Portland who can show me how it's done....
I usually take the deck in my left hand, then rapidly pick the top and bottom cards alternating into my right. (With thumb and middle finger.) Flip top into hand, flip bottom into bottom. Cut once or twice.
So I've gotta ask. Since I grew up doing a 'riffle' shuffle (admittedly I didn't know it was called that) I guess I don't know of a "damaging" way of shuffling.
What is the damaging way to shuffle? Actually I was under the impression that the riffle was not terribly kind to cards since you're bending them.
I believe the most common thing is just overbending them with a riffle shuffle. Some people tend to bend the cards back quite far before letting them go instead of bending just as much as necessary.
With stiff cards, there is no discernible bend necessary.
I'm forced to shuffle this way with large decks too.
Hi!
Perhaps being a slight-of-hand junkie in my youth and a math major in college was a bad combo!
