If you have ever played poker in a casino you’ve seen countless dealers shuffle a deck of cards. They don’t do it like the majority of use shuffle cards at home. They can’t because the observant players would be able to track specific cards throughout the deck. The way most people shuffle, they expose at least the bottom cards, but this is not acceptable for a fair game which the casinos strive for. By using the dealer shuffle, you keep people from being able to see the bottom cards or any other cards during the shuffling process.

Tutorial

Begin with a deck of cards in a single pile on the table in front of you so that the long edge is horizontal. Place your thumbs on the side of the deck nearest to your body. The pinky fingers are placed on each respective side of the card. The middle and ring ringers of each hand are placed on the final side of the deck of cards, which is opposite where you placed your thumbs. It doesn’t really matter where you put the index fingers at this point, but I like to place my right index finger on the top card so that my fingernail is touching the card. The left index finger kind of floats out above the deck.

Cut the deck of cards in half by taking the top half away with your right hand and the bottom half away with your left hand. Once the deck is split take the index fingers and put them on the side of the cards which does not have any fingers. While doing this it helps to straighten out the cards which may have shifted a bit during the cut.

Move your right thumb to the lower left corner of the right card pile and your left thumb to the lower right corner of the left pile.

Remove your index fingers from the side of the cards. Put them on top of the cards in a location that is roughly the halfway point between your thumb and middle finger.

Lift up on each card pile with your thumb and put a little bit of pressure down on the cards with the index fingers. At the same time bring the two parts of the deck closer together.

Lift the thumb across the corner of the cards so that one by one the bottom cards fall out of each half of the deck. Make sure to do this fast enough so the corners of the cards from each side mix together on the table. Only about a 1/4 to 1/2 an inch of the corners need to actually overlap.

Once all of the cards have been released by your thumbs, move the thumbs back to the side of the cards closest to your body. Push the two halves of the deck together to form a single pile again.

Repeat the process as necessary.

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