Hand Shuffle as the Most Common Technique

The most common shuffle

The overhand shuffle is one of the simplest card shufflers techniques which is aimed on randomization as well as all other types. The method implies that small parts of the deck are replaced from the top of a deck and removed in opposite hand in reverse order. It is a casual and slovenly in some way shuffle in comparison with for example much more sophisticated riffle shuffle and table riffle shuffle. The methods of shuffling frequently may be recognized in different parts of the world due to their popularity in certain countries. For instance, European casinos and gamblers mostly prefer the overhand shuffling and have difficulties with performing the riffle, while in USA the riffle and table riffle shuffling is the most widespread. The overhand technique is exactly the one which is better to start with if you want to learn different methods.

Overhand technique

In spite of the fact it is the easiest one, a lot of people perform it in the wrong way. It is hard to understand the details of the method from the text with no visualization but try to follow the instruction below to learn the overhand shuffle correctly.

What you going to do its pulling the cards with your right thumb. Some people try to throw about their cards with the left hand which look very sloppy and do not performs a proper randomization .

Instructions for practice

Take the deck of cards in proper way: put your thumb on the back-side of deck, index finger goes on the front-bottom edge and your little finger, ring finger and middle finger are on the 'face side' of the deck. So the deck is in your left hand and all that you need to do is pull the cards to your right hand using your right thumb.

The really right way of doing it is when you perform the shuffle from the top of a deck. A lot of people pull out the middle chunk of the deck and the reason why it is not appropriate is that in this way you never shuffle the bottom cards, they simply stays in the same order. So it is better to pull the top chunk into the right hand.

We suggest you not to use the overhand shuffle as the only shuffle if you play poker, for example, at casino. You should better choose more complicated method or even better to combine some of them.