i never see people shuffling like that. Literally every person I know only mash shuffle and pile shuffle

dude you have probably heard this a million times but you sound like ross aka david schwimmer lol

im kinda surprised that with so many card games, no company has pushed forward some "deck shufling machine" at least for tournament play.

you are never allowed to have sleeved cards turned different directions.

I am literately watching this several times while practicing how to shuffle your way cause I completely such at riffle shuffling. But Thank you for all the help and Advice. I am learning a lot from your videos!

never ever seen anyone shuffle the way he stated "normal people" shuffle. wtf who would do that?

lol can't wait for that commander segment for shuffling aka "good luck and cut" lol

Love the video! glad it turned out well :) lots of good info.

Thanks for this video D.; helped a lot in my games where i got screwed because of not shuffling THE RIGHT WAY...looking forward to your other videos

hand reveal video

I personally prefer mash shuffling over riffle shuffling. I usually mash shuffle for about 3 minutes between rounds and do some chop cuts before each game.

this is a video of pure card bending

i just go full brian kibler basically

IMO: A combo of mashing, chops, and pile shuffling (a non-factor, i.e. 7) is best for randomization and health of sleeves... not to mention it is more controlled and helps prevent cards sliding around. If you do riffle, to keep them all the same direction just rotate one pile 180 degrees so the sleeves stay consistently oriented.

I have a specific way of shuffling to account for that bottom top thing you mentioned I do a shuffle that slides the two halves of the deck past each other into my hand but I always make sure it is slightly in favour of the cards that were on the botom moving to the to and the cards that were on the top moving to the bottom and I do that about 7 times to get pretty consistently good draws.

How do you feel about the new Eclipse sleeves? I have a couple decks sleeved with them and I really like the shuffle-ability of them

nom nom nom lamb

I would be pissed if someone riffle/bridge shuffled my deck. Hell no

hey dude your fuckin awesome. i planned to just watch like 3 minutes of this video, now ya got me. gonna watch the whole thing. good luck in your duels

What's the brand of the black card sleeves you used?

I have some serious issues with shuffling, and i'm trying to figure out how to fix it... I mostly play commander, so 99 cards to shuffle. And that's just too many. I literally can't hold 45-50 sleeved (let alone double sleeved) cards in each hand to riffle shuffle. Is there any way to randomize while shuffling the deck in two halves, or something like that? Because that's what I've been doing, but it's almost constantly mana screwing me.

In what format do you have 8 and 12 of a card?

i do not bend my cards ever, manually ripple them 1 by 1

I'm 4 years late to this video but I have to say the way he shuffles in it physically hurts me

What shuffling technique are you using I can't do that, I don't know how.

This was more of a video of shuffling tips rather than an explanation of why properly shuffling is so important. There was only a few seconds in the beginning where you briefly talked about the reasoning. You also kind of left out half of the shuffling equation, which is why you make certain your opponent is shuffling properly as well. You correctly point out that properly randomizing your own cards increases your chances of your deck performing how it was designed to. But the even more important reason shuffling is important is making sure your opponent is not stacking their deck. A poorly randomized deck is in fact the goal of the deck stacker. You shouldn't be mistakenly giving anyone the impression that they should be excited when they see an opponent clearly fail to adequately randomize their deck.

No idea what it is but I tend to have the worst luck with my hand draws in 60 cd constructed. I mash shuffle 8-10 times. But in 40+ card sealed I tend to be really happy with my draws. It's so consistent - weird.

Just to add some extra info, there's a lot of misunderstanding with that 7-shuffle study. I saw in an interview with the same guy who did the original study, he said that 7 is a lower bound. In other words, it will take at MINIMUM 7 shuffles, not maximum. Furthermore, he said that the math assumed that the order the cards were dropped in was random (NOT perfectly left-right-left-right-left-right etc). He went on to say that if performing "near-perfect" shuffles (almost perfectly weaving one from each at a time), such as those performed by skilled casino dealers (or in our case, a mash shuffle) would require somewhere around 20 shuffles to obtain randomness. My personal shuffling procedure is: Mash x5, then strip-cut. Do this 4 times. If shuffling an already random deck (e.g. if I just used a fetch-land), I just do the sequence twice, as I don't need to randomize as much as I just need to "forget" the info I learned from looking through it. How much I shuffle an opponent's deck depends on how much they shuffled it. I've played casually against someone who took their deck out of the box, pile-"shuffle"d once, and that was all. Their deck got a good shuffling from me for that game. On the other hand, when they shuffle a lot, I tend to just shuffle just once or twice and cut to the middle (side-note: always cut to the middle after shuffling your opponent's deck. It doesn't affect the randomness by any appreciable amount, but it gives them assurance that you didn't manipulate anything to the top). Also, unless you're always dropping the bottom pile first, enough shuffles will kick even the bottom card up to any position, even to the top. In a "perfect"ish shuffle, the position from the bottom will approximately double, until it makes it somewhere to the top half. It only takes 5-ish shuffles to do get to this point (2^5 = position 32).

Not everyone has the dexterity to rifle shuffle. If you pile shuffle different piles of different sizes is that not going to get the same result? Like a 5 then maybe a 7 then a 10 pile shuffle one after another; is that somehow insufficient?

clumps are part of random

what's the grey stuff that gets on your seleves

Shuffling a Commander deck can be quite a pain.I tend to get clumps even with nice clean sleeves. Just harder with a thicker double sleeved deck.

Desolator, your idea of Random isn't always accurate. You said "If I put 20 lands on the bottom, probably after [you know] 5/10 shuffles at least two of them are still on the bottom, and that's not random." - 16:16 First, that's not likely to happen with a riffle shuffle if you do it properly, you should note which deck goes down first so that you alternate from left to right (start with left hitting table first, then right hitting table first), this forces cards to rise and fall. Second, even if they DID that's still random. You wouldn't know which cards stayed at the bottom, and the ones that did followed no pattern. If it was a truly random shuffle the bottom card should stay the same at least 1/60 times you shuffle, it should have an equally random chance of being in any position, it's same position being equally as likely, if it doesn't you aren't shuffling randomly. I know from shuffling a 52 card deck, that if you follow the top/bottom card each shuffle you'll see it rise and fall to near bottom, to near top, to middle, to actual bottom, to actual top if you do it long enough, with no discernible pattern. Also, when you do a riffle you DON'T want it to be one card on top of one card from each hand. If you get it perfect LRLRLRLR then it's not "random" either you want it to be maybe LRLLRLRLRRRLLRLLRRLLLRRLR, so you can't predict it. This adds random-ability, though to your point, you don't want those chunks to be the same every round you shuffle, but chunks are good if they vary each time.

I can't shuffle so, that's a bit of a problem

10:50 just cut the deck in half and flip one half upside down and shuffle them togethwr. that way you can even see how your shuffle mixed the cards. you can even flip a single card and watch it move through the deck

i came to the same conclusion.

mash shuffling all the way

You disagree with Prof. Diaconis paper about the 7 riffle shuffles? Wow. That's disagreeing with Math there, Des.

Now, are you, actually,.... Ross Geller?

lol that was the worst shuffle test ever. land land land land land land land

Nononononlandlandnonlandnononlandnonnonononlandnononlandlandnonnonononononnonlandlandnonononlandnonon

Yeah you can not get TRULY random when you inspect the cards. :) That said it does drive me nuts when the cards are all different directions. I realise Desolator is displaying good intent but there are plenty of others out there who would not and others who will do so to win. Only thing I do not like is the various directions of the cards as it is so easy to mark cards but that said when done with sportsmanship sure. But it drives me batty to see the cards like that even in casual or at FNM.

kmc hyper matte sleeves

I can't shuffle that way. Not the brand, but the method. I straight up can't.

The reason you disagree with the experts is because you dont understand how professional poker (or blackjack etc) dealers shuffle. You dont just riffle the cards when you shuffle you also box and strip them.

I've shuffled very similar to this for over twelve years and seen a very dramatic uptick in my play win rate almost immediately after I started. The first eight years i did it wrong, but now I basically preach this method with every opponent, and if they don't do it, I do it for them. Games are only clean if the decks randomization is clean. The only thing I do different is that the chop cuts I do only ever go to the top. Two rifles, one chop, repeat five times.

Eh, I say it's not very good to have a perfect 50/50 shuffle. There are some nasty cheats with that, as are with pile shuffling. I say having a few clumps of three is usually good, especially since I shuffle at least 6 times anyway.

rem fuck yeah

Shuffling is also the most flawed part of MTG Arena.

i dont get the phrase: "and this is where i disagree with the experts in the poker community" poker dealers shuffle just like you. your so called "chop cuts" is called "box" in poker. a regular poker shuffle goes: wash, riffle, riffle, box, riffle and cut. Great video though!!

Oh nevermind! :3

Just do the classic drop n swirl. 100% randomness garunteed

"non non non non lan lan non non non non lan lan lan lan non non non..." the song of crying LOL players

They can bend and can flex back and they are way way way cheaper than mtg cards! Just saying =P

YOO

Des. You're great. Seriously, great video. But, dang, can you borrow someone's smartphone or drop like $20 on a used camera on eBay? You've been teasing this one for a while, but your camera sucks, so it kinda takes away from the overall thing. My eyes are bleeding. Really great info here, though. Thanks for the thoughtful and helpful tutorial.

a good and proper shuffle is why I never sleeve my decks.

I just weave shuffle as it seems very effective and the most commonly used among players,( no clumps when done right and very easy to do right) besides boxing my deck everytime i shuffle would drive me nuts

About time. I lose about 50% of my games due to bad shuffling. "Oh look I only got 4 vampires in here but they never show up" to "Why the hell am I pulling out my big angel on turn 2 when I only got 2 of them in here?"

not having all cards face the same direction is cheating.

I have never sen anyone shuffle the way you do, I've played regular cards, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, MTG, Dominion, Uno, Skip-BO, Sushi Go, and tons of other card games, not once have I seen someone shuffle that way, I've seen close to it, but A mash, sideways riffle, a regular riffle, pile, swirling the cards all around on the table in a big pile, and all sorts of weird combinations of the like. Idk what you mean by that's how most people shuffle, but it doesn't seem as efficient as a mash or riffle... Ok, never mind It just looked funny for a bit, I need sleep. Well, your first jab at traditional shuffling was that the bottom cards stay the same. That's only true if you don't know how to riffle shuffle, trust me, if you learn how to do it right, that won't happen. Here's a good tip for riffle shuffling, the hand with the bottom part of the deck goes in your non-dominant hand. Even if you don't realize it you lead most shuffles with your dominant hand, or you are supposed to anyways. If you lead with the top halves hand, the bottom cards will change in order. Also because of the sleeves a mash or two between a riffle is always nice. (Btw what you and me call a riffle is different). For a good shuffler the sleeves shouldn't really matter, unless, they are splitting or going all sorts of directions. On contrary to what you had said, a proper riffle won't effect your cards in any truly damaging way. What you had done between you "Riffle" shuffle; when you had tossed the deck in pieces or like 10 - 20, was less effective then a mash shuffle, but still effective for what you were doing. I'm not sure how much of that made sense, this was a lot longer and had a lot more details and explanations in it, but then I realized that this is KZfaq and nobody wants to hear about card to hand size ration and where to put your fingers, and pressure used on cards depending on how many are your shuffling. So this was the short version, even if I had sacrificed a lot the meat. If you really want a crazy in depth analysis view of it, just say so.

Love the video but you're shuffling makes me cringe. First of all, riff shuffling bends your cards over time, and second how do you have your cards all upside down? For me that just kills me on the inside.

Soooo it's shuffling and not the netdecking cheaters?

18 min vid...could of made it 10min but he keeps repeating and explaining the same stuff