How do you shuffle cards?
By John Welford
@indexer (4852)
Leicester, England
November 27, 2018 8:04am CST
There are several ways in which you can shuffle a pack (deck) of cards, but I find that, if you are not very thorough, the result can be less than satisfactory and, if you are as clumsy as I am, you might well end up with cards thrown all over the room!
I therefore offer what I believe to be the only completely reliable method of getting a good shuffle. It might be a bit time-consuming, and it does require a bit more space than the usual methods, but it works for me!
Deal out the cards, face down, to an imaginary group of players, ideally about seven or eight of them. Deal them as unfairly and idiosyncratically as you can manage, so that player three may get a card, followed by player five, then player one, then player three again before you even think about player eight. Perhaps player nine has joined us, so he or she deserves a card. The only rule here is that no player gets two consecutive cards.
When you run out of cards, you will have a number of piles of cards in front of you, probably with different numbers of cards in each pile. Pick up the piles at random, taking no notice of the order in which you do so.
You can repeat the process if you like, and after you have done so you can be absolutely assured that the cards will be as well shuffled as they can get. No cards will be upside down, none will be under the radiator, and the next game or deal will be as fair as it can possibly be.
2 people like this
2 responses
@JohnRoberts (109846)
• Los Angeles, California
27 Nov 18
I wish I could shuffle like a card shark.
1 person likes this