How to Shuffle Cards like a Casino Dealer

We are going to be doing a single deck shuffle, a double deck shuffle, and also an eight deck shuffle.

I have a question for you guys. How many still get kids at their house? Like on Halloween where they actually come up to the door and knock and ask for candy? We haven’t had that in years and years and years. But during Halloween we never get anyone knocking on our door. All these kids go to these parents' safe or kid friendly places to get their candy. They don’t go to doors anymore. Is that just here? Or do you experience that too?

Trivia question: What was the name of the only on screen female red shirt in the original series of Star Trek? Heather - Good question. I can picture her. I think she is blond. Aren’t they all blond? I don’t know her name. I am going to guess and say Marrion? Marie? Was it with an M? Was I close? I think I failed that one. Good thing I am not on Jeopardy.

Scorned one: There is a big apartment complex near my house with a lot of kids in it, so they always come for Halloween. If I lived in Vegas I wouldn’t let my kids trick-or-treat anyway.

Trivia Answer: It was Leslie Thompson in the episode By Any Other Name. Thank you for that trivia. She was turned into a mineral cube and crushed on one of the Kelvins. She was a brunette. Oh I even got the hair color wrong. Noooo.

The Basic Shuffle

First thing we are going to do is shuffle a single deck. Now I am going to show you the basic shuffle and then I am going to show you something that you can do practice at home. And then we are going to go into the different ways of doing the same thing that I just taught you.

Riffling

So, the first thing that I am going to teach you is the riffle. Now with the shuffle, a shuffle is not the same thing as a riffle. So when people say shuffle, what they are thinking about is this. They are going around and they are saying that it is a shuffle. But as a dealer, in the dealing industry that is not a shuffle. That is called a riffle. So what is a shuffle? A shuffle is basically all of the shuffling components put together all at once to create the shuffle. For example, you have riffle (that is the fist step), strip, riffle, box, and then a riffle. all of that together is a shuffle. That is what an actual shuffle is. When you put all of those components together. And the one that we think about when we are saying shuffling is actually called riffling. Which is this. That is the first thing that I am going to teach you.

So how do you riffle? Now the way I riffle is I put the two cards together. There is not very much space in between if you notice, right here. It is pretty much side to side. I put my hand in an A figure. So here is the tip of the A, this is the connecting point of the A, right there. I am only pressing on two points of the card. So I am pressing on this point right here with my finger. And this point right here with this portion of my palm. I am only putting pressure on those two points. That is all the pressure that I am putting on, right there. And then I am lifting with my thumbs. So I lift the cards, and the cards fall into place. That is a riffle.

So again, put hands in an A structure. Just like so, putting points right here and right here. And then I am using my thumbs to lift the corners next to my thumbs. I am lifting them and letting them fall into place. And then you push them together. That is the basics of the riffle. Now if you are having trouble holding the deck. For example, you put your thumbs behind the deck, the forefingers in front of the deck and the middle fingers on the sides and that keeps it in place. That is the basics on how to riffle.

Now there are plenty of people out there that are having problems with this. No problem! We are going to answer your questions. Actually, I will probably answer your questions and then go into this. Let’s see if you have any questions.

Example question: What if you are a guy. What if the cards are so small that you can’t do what I am teaching you. How do you shuffle the deck if you can’t really hold the cards because your hands are way bigger than your instructors. A: I am teaching you to do the A position, I am teaching you to put the points on your finger and on this portion of your hand right there and I am teaching you to lift up with your thumbs. But some people have trouble with that.

So if your hands are really big, you can grip the deck like a claw. So make like a little claw.

That is how you are going to grip the deck. Now what do you do? You are basically holding the deck in place using your fingers. So your forefinger, your middle finger is on the top. Your ring finger, and pinky, that is on the side. And you are holding it in place like so.

You are just using your thumbs and you are lightly lifting up on the corners and letting the cards fall into place. So it's really really easy. Holding the cards in place, lifting up with your thumbs and letting the cards fall into place. If you have bigger hands, if you have trouble learning how to shuffle the way I am teaching you how to shuffle, go ahead and give this a try. See if this feels better to you. That is the whole point. This needs to feel good to you. This needs to feel good in your hands. If you are sitting there and you are trying to shuffle and you are putting a lot of pressure on your hands and you are sitting there and you are trying to force the cards to do what you want them to do. You are like “I am trying to force you to do what I want you to do, why aren’t you doing it?” Like they are fighting back. Well here is the thing. If you fight the cards trying to shuffle, they are going to fight back. It’s going to be so hard and so difficult and miserable. You don’t want to do that. If you are easy with the cards, the cards are going to be easy with you. Which means you can handle them easily, they will move easily. You can rifle them easily. Put them together easily ish. It just comes together easy. That really depends on you. So if you are putting on a lot of pressure, if your hands – if your knuckles are white, because you are putting so much freaking pressure on them, that they are like turning a different color, then you know you are being too hard on your cards. You need to be a lot nicer with the cards. So gently hold them in place. If you are a guy with large hands you would hold them with claw hands. And then gently lift up and let them fall into place. If you are more like me, a woman with small hands, then you will shuffle like that.

Also, it really doesn’t matter if you are a guy or a girl. I am just using that as an example. If you are a guy and it’s easier to shuffle like this then go ahead and shuffle like that. If you are a girl and it’s easier to shuffle with your hands like a claw, holding it like so, then go ahead and do it like that. No problem. Now the only thing that you really want to focus on is when you are lifting the cards, you don’t want to lift them so far up that the person behind you can see what the cards are. You don’t want to lift that far up. You want to lift far enough that they fall into place but not far enough up that you are showing the entire world what the cards are.

Q: Do you ever wash the cards at the table like you do in a poker game?

A: Yes. So when you are on a handheld game, either a single deck or a double deck, every two hours they are going to change your cards. When they change your cards there is a certain procedure that you are going to go through to put the cards into play. One of the things that you are supposed to do is wash the deck. Like so.

This is my favorite thing about shuffling. However I am upset that you only get to do it when there's new cards. You don’t get to do this on like a normal shuffle. Otherwise that would be way fun. Way more fun. But yes you would wash the deck like so. And then do the shuffle. If we have enough time today I can go into what to do when you get new cards at the table and the procedure that you have to go through, when you get new cards.

Q: The cards fight dirty.

A: Yes they do!

Okay, so we learned to riffle, again. And two different ways of riffling, depending on how you feel and what is comfortable for you. Remember if you are having a problem learning how to do this, then instead of starting off with a single deck, like so, I want you to take just a little portion off the single deck and then practice your riffling with those. That might make it easier for you. It can be half the deck. It can be a quarter or third of the deck. Just take a small amount. Practice riffling, and then when you feel comfortable, when you feel like you are ready to move on. Then grab more of that deck and add on to it, and then riffle again.

You are going to have to – when you are doing this at home, you are going to have to do it a million times. This is one of those things where you are working on your muscle memory. Which means you have to do it over and over and over again, a hundred million times, and then a couple more times just to be on the safe side. So practice at home. In Fact, if you are a new person out there who wants to be a dealer and you are not sure what step to take first, learning how to shuffle the deck is a great way to learn how to be a dealer. This is the foremost skill that is needed in order to be a casino dealer. So again keep adding to your deck until you have a full deck. You can sit here and riffle with no problem. The cards aren’t fighting you. You aren't having any problems.

Also, you want to make sure that the deck is laced. Now here is what I am talking about.

So this is a laced deck right here. As you can see there are no chunks in between the cards. It looks like the cards are laced pretty well. When you are shuffling, that’s what you want it to look like. What you don’t want it to look like is a chunk deck. A chunk deck would be like this.

So if you can see the difference right there. A chunk deck has a lot of chunks in it. There are a lot of missing pieces or spaces in between the deck. That means that the deck was not riffled properly. So check and make sure your deck is laced or chunked. You want it to be laced and not chunked. So that is it for a riffle.

Stripping

So the next thing we are going to do is stripping. A strip is when you hold the cards slightly high above the table. Put it at an angle like so (see below). Just a downward angle.

Then you are going to take the cards from the top and put them at the bottom. And keep doing that five to seven times. That is a strip. One of the ways – a couple of ways you do not want to strip besides you know with clothes. That is not what I am talking about. So one of the ways you don’t want to strip is you don’t want to take the cards from the bottom and put them on the bottom. You are not doing anything. That is not stripping. It’s not doing jack. So never take the cards from the bottom and put them down. When you are stipping, always take the cards from the top of the deck and put them on the bottom. Also, don’t hold the deck up so high off the table, instead you hold it slightly off the table. If you don’t want anyone to see what the cards are. So you don’t want to keep it too far off the table. Just enough that you can strip the deck. So that is stripping. Next up is boxing.

Boxing

You are holding the deck, you take a few from the bottom, take it off, turn it 180 degrees and place that portion on the top of the deck. That is boxing the deck. So again, take one third of the bottom portion of the deck, turn it 180 degrees and then place it back on top of the deck. The reason why you strip, box, riffle and all that stuff, is you are trying to get a really good blend of the cards together. You don’t want people to be able to track the cards. And people do track the cards. They mark the cards in some way, they know where certain areas of the cards are. So let’s say if a bunch of 10s came out, they know where in the deck all of those 10s are, and then they track it. One of the things you do to stop them from tracking the cards is you box the deck, like so. Same thing with stripping, you are trying to blend the cards together the best as possible so they can’t track the cards.

Q: Have any customers tried to eat a card or some similar story? Story please.

A: Yes, I did have a customer eat a card. This is a fun story. Okay, so this happened when I first started dealing blackjack. It was the first year that I was dealing. So I was still really new to it. Every single year, the first two weeks of December we always have the National Rodeo Final. And they come in and it’s always a bunch of cowboys and everything. They come in and they get drunk and they act all crazy and stuff. So we had a whole casino full of cowboys. Everybody was walking around, drinking and acting crazy, and I am dealing on a game. One of the cowboys was there, and he is spending a lot of money. He is betting about a thousand dollars a hand. I hit him, I think I gave him a 15 or a 16 and I had a 10 up card. So I hit him and I gave him a 10 for a bust for a 26 right? Well he snatches up that 10 crumples it up and puts it in his mouth and eats it in front of me and then asks me for another card.

I was just like, “Are you kidding me!” So I call over my floorman and I am like, we need another 10 of hearts. He was like, “What do you mean we need another 10 of hearts? Don’t BS me! Can’t you see how busy we are right now? I got stuff to do. Don’t pull my chain. I am busy.” I was like no seriously we lost a 10 of hearts. What do you want me to do? And he didn’t believe me again. So I said, “Look, check the cameras. I am not lying. What do you want me to do? We don’t have a 10 of hearts?” So he finally goes to the podium, calls the cameras, he is mad because he thinks I am wasting his time. Cameras check it out and they are like, yeah the player did in fact eat the card. So he comes over and you can see his face. He is astonished. He is like flabbergasted. He is like, “Well you know, if he wants another card so badly, give him another card.” Excuse me? So I hit him and I give him a five for 21 and we ended up paying the guy. I dealt for the rest of my hour. Instead of getting a break, I went over to the floorman and I was like, “What the hell just happened? Why did you give that guy another card? He ate the card?” He was like, “You gotta look at it this way, the guy has been here for three days, he has lost $30,000 every single day. For $90,000 we can afford to give him another card.”

Oh my goodness! So yes, players do eat cards. Players do eat chips. Players eat a lot of stuff they shouldn’t eat. It’s just like kids. It’s like babysitting.

Q: Did he tip you?

A: No he didn’t tip me. He was like down $90,000. He was not tipping at all. I was just happy he didn’t bite my head off.

So, let us continue again. We just previously went through different steps of shuffling, riffle, strip and box. Those are the steps.

Single Deck Shuffle

So now let’s do a single deck shuffle. If you are auditioning for a casino and you have to do a single deck shuffle go ahead and use this shuffle. The first step would be to riffle, strip, box, and riffle. And that is a single deck shuffle. Simple, easy, and quick. After you are done you put the cut card on top of the deck. Hand it to the player. Again make sure you don’t pass the insurance line and you never show the wide side of the deck to the player. So have them cut, and then you can start dealing the game. Okay so now let’s do a double deck. Now that we did the single deck, let’s do a double deck. Now double deck is going to be a little bit harder than single decks. Single decks are fun, and nice and easy to shuffle and there is usually no problems. But people usually have a harder time with the double deck as they do with a single deck.

Double Deck Shuffle

Double decks are a little harder to shuffle especially the riffle part. Now the key to riffling a double deck is remember, you don’t want to fight the cards. You are gently lifting on the corner and you are letting the cards fall into place. You just let the cards do their thing. You don’t fight it. If you are fighting it, it’s going to fight you. Again, hold it in the way that feels comfortable for you. My way is in the A position. That is what I learned, that is what I know. Go ahead to hold it, what feels comfortable to you. Gently lift the cards and let them fall into place. Go ahead and push the cards together. Don’t put a lot of pressure on it. Be really nice, easy, gentle, soft and then push them together. It makes them so much easier to shuffle a double deck when you are not fighting the cards. Again hold the cards in the way that feels comfortable to you, gently lift up on the corners and let the corners fall into place. And then push the cards together. Very easy. Very simple. Again, it’s strip, riffle, box and then riffle. If you can do all of that stuff you can do a double deck shuffle. Now just to keep in mind, whatever casino you guys are going to be working at, each casino is going to have a different shuffle. No matter how you are going to learn it today, no matter how you practice it at home, a million times, it doesn’t matter. When you go to that new casino, you have to shuffle the way they teach you. And every casino is different. If you learned a shuffle at your breakin house and then you move to a different casino, even though that original shuffle is dead set in your mind. It’s ingrained in your mind, you have to learn a new way of shuffling and you have to do that for that casino.

Part of being a dealer is being flexible, and being able to follow policies and procedures exactly the way they are given to you. It’s not just casino to casino. So you could be dealing at one casino, and you still have to worry about this because – say for example one floorman likes you to do things a certain way and another floorman likes you to do it a different way. That floorman over there doesn’t like either of those ways and wants you to do it his way. As a dealer you have to remember every single floormans way of doing it. And then be like okay, I am in this floormans pit, he wants me to deal this way, I gotta deal this way. That is something else you need to keep in mind as a dealer.

Q: Can Pip shuffle?

A: No Pip can not shuffle, but she can eat a snack. She appreciates all the snacks that you give. Thanks for Superchat.

We talked about the single deck shuffle. We talked about the double deck shuffle. With a normal double deck shuffle you wouldn’t – when you are shuffling you always shuffle a single deck differently than you would a double deck, then you would a six or an eight deck shoe.

So I showed you how to shuffle a single deck, let me show you how to shuffle a double deck. Let me move a couple things. When you are shuffling the double deck. Take the deck and cut it in half, and then cut it in half again. So you have four different stacks on the table. Bring these two stacks, the two opposite stacks together, and then do a riffle, strip, box, and a riffle, and then put it in the center. Next take these two stacks and do the same thing. A riffle, strip, box, and a riffle. Bring it on top of the other deck. Bring it in and complete the shuffle by doing one final riffle. Okay and then you are going to finish the shuffle by doing one final riffle. So that is basically a double deck shuffle. We will do it one more time, then we will go into a six or eight deck shuffle. So you take the double deck, cut it in half. Cut it in half again, like so, grab these two stacks opposite each other and put them together in the middle. Complete a riffle, strip, box, and riffle. Then put it in the center.

Then take the remaining two and put them together and do exactly the same thing. Riffle, strip, box, and then riffle. Bring it together and complete the shuffle by doing one final riffle. Then you would offer the cards to be cut. The cards will be cut and the dealer would start dealing the cards.

Eight Deck Shuffle

Okay now we are going to do an eight deck shuffle. So you are at the end of the shoe and you totally are done. Come in here, here’s the cut card. Cool! Cut card is done. Now let’s do an eight deck shuffle. We have eight decks here. We are going to do the eight deck shuffle.

Q: Can you do any one handed cuts?

A: Are you talking about the player cut the card with one hand? Or are you talking about that magic maneuver that you cut the deck with one hand? (Answer below)

Eight deck shuffle. The first thing we do is we have cards in the shoe. So we are going to plug the cards. Let me show you what a plug is, it’s really quick. In this shuffle you don’t have to plug, but it is good to know what a plug is just in case you do have to plug at your casino. So some casinos will want you to plug the deck. You take the remaining cards that are in the shoe, you pick any random location in the deck. You put these cards in the deck. Push them together and then start doing the shuffle. That is plugging the deck. That is what it means when some casinos ask you to plug the deck. Now you know what that means. Now with the shuffle that I am going to teach you, you don't’ have to plug the deck. What you do is you take your plug right here, take it out of the shoe and just put it on top and now you are ready to go. I just wanted to let you know what a plug is so that way if a casino asks you to do it, you would be able to do it.

So we get the cards out and put them on the table. Go ahead and break them into four different stacks of two decks each. Approximately, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Don’t spend a lot of time on it. It’s not a big deal. Now what you are going to do is, you are going to bring it in, and you are going to do a riffle, box, riffle. So riffle, box, and then a riffle. Bring this one in riffle, box, riffle and we will do that with two other stacks as well. And again when you are cutting the deck in half, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Everybody is human. Everybody makes mistakes. Sometimes your hands don’t work. Don’t fret about it. Don’t worry about it. It’s totally okay as long as you do it. Now if you are chunking that is a different story. If you are lacing the cards and you are actually riffling and doing what you are supposed to then don’t worry about it. Like what I just did there, don’t worry about it. Just put it back, bring it back out and then do the riffle. It’s not a big deal if you make a mistake.

Okay, so we got all that done. Now what we are going to do is take about 35 cards off of every single deck. Bring it in and create a new stack. And then we are going to riffle, strip five times, and riffle. Then we are going to put this in the center in its own little stack. Then do the same thing. Take cards off of every deck, then we will riffle, strip five times, and then riffle. Again and again. And you are done shuffling an eight deck shoe. Bring it in, even out the edges and then offer the cut card to the player. And again, do not show the wide side of the deck to the player. Make sure that the deck is perpendicular to the player. So if the player is right here the deck is perpendicular, it’s like a T shape towards the player. Don’t go any further than the insurance line and then let them cut the deck.

Q: Yes, the magic maneuver. Can you do any?

A: Nope, I am not a magician. I am not a slight of hand person. I am happy just being able to shuffle the cards and not have them explode everywhere. For example, you hold the deck in one hand and you actually can maneuver in a way that you can cut the deck with one hand. I can’t do it. But you can get the idea of what I am talking about.