The Sweet Sound of the
Shuffle
17 February 2006
By Mark Pilarski
Dear Mark,
Could you please explain the physical process of
shuffling that casinos use in blackjack? Also,
why when a new deck is brought in, do some
casinos place them face down and swish them
around like we did as a kid when playing the
game of Fish? Richard C.
Casinos differ on shuffling procedures used to
prepare a deck or decks for continued play. They
may include "riffling" or "stripping" the cards
as well as "washing", "plugging", "boxing", and
other idiosyncratic techniques. The ultimate
goal, when a dealer shuffles up, is to achieve
some level of randomization in the order of the
cards. I'll discuss the three most commonly used
shuffling methods used in casinos today:
Riffling, stripping and washing the cards.
Riffling the cards is the most commonly used
shuffling technique used on all casino card
games. To accomplish a riffle, the deck is
divided roughly in half, then the dealer will
pull the card corners up with the thumbs and let
the two halves "riffle" together, interleaving
the two halves into a solid deck. Sometimes
called "zipping" the cards, riffling a deck can
range from a fine riffle to a coarse riffle.
Dealers usually riffle the cards between three
and five times before dealing the next round.
Stripping is a shuffling technique that reverses
the sequential order of groups of cards in the
deck. Say for instance a dealer took the first
card off the top of a deck and placed it on the
table, and then took the second card off the top
and placed it on top of the first card.
Continuing this process through the entire 52
cards would exactly reverse their order. This
characterizes the basic process of stripping.
Dealers don’t strip cards one at a time, but
instead they rapidly pull small clumps of cards
off the top of the deck, actually altering the
order of cards in the deck. The number of cards
in the clumps determines how fine or coarse the
stripping process is. Stripping the deck is a
procedure that some casinos make their dealers
employ before riffling the deck.
Washing, per your Fish question, where cards are
placed face down and fanned out to form a stock,
is where the dealer spreads the cards on the
table face down and then proceeds to commingle
the cards in a washing-like motion before
collecting them up and performing a more
conventional riffle shuffle. Card washing is
intended to remove any consistencies in the
sequencing of the cards, and are typically
washed, Richard, when new decks are brought into
a game.
Dear Mark,
I sat next to a player who began with $100, and
over a three hour period had won over two
thousand. Then his luck turned and he lost it
all in under 10 minutes. What makes a player
give all his winnings back? Bud W.
In the poker world, Bud, it’s called "going
tilt">on tilt." In blackjack, we call it
"steaming". Either way, it's when a player loses
emotional control of his game and starts betting
more aggressively, often impulsively, in an
attempt to turn his bad luck around. I’ve seen
this reckless conduct far more often than you
can imagine, that of a player trying to spin
straw into gold, only to become so frustrated
with how poorly his playing session is going,
that he losses his entire bankroll in mere
minutes. Canny players avoid that fate by
setting and sticking to loss and gain limits
Gambling Wisdom of the Week: "People are by far
the worse when it comes to superstitions. They
have lucky charms, lucky jackets, lucky
underwear, and God knows what they have in their
pockets that's lucky." -- Tony Korfman
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