The Riffle Shuffle for Playing Card Shuffling

Video Transcript

"I'm Joe Marshall with expertvillage.com and today we are going to discuss shuffles and cuts. This is called a riffle shuffle it looks like this and essentially the proper way to get into the and out of it so it is one continuous move in motion you could do it with a table or without a table it is the same exact moves. Only that it holds a little different. The way to properly do it is to hold the deck on the top with your ring finger and middle finger. On the other side hold it with your thumb. Your first finger goes on the back so that could push and give it a bow. You hold the deck like this. You other hand comes across. You fingers two middle finger want to go here and as you push to divide up the deck that is going to prevent the cards from shooting out. So you would do this. What you are going to do is drop them into the hand and lever them up with your other fingers. So that they mirror each other so they are ready to go into a riffle. This is a riffle you just bring it down on the table riffle the cards together and this is usually where most people stop their shuffle and just push it together as I said earlier. But, since you are on this type of setup your fingers are here you divide up the deck you are going to tumble it over into the other hand and you set it down. Since you are going to hold it you are in this position where your first two finger are still on the back and your fingers are underneath still you could dovetail it and that is that where you hold it in the position. You release and as you hands separate it would give it that cascading waterfall effect. It looks like that. As long as you are in this position where most people stop you dovetail it up by holding all the fingers underneath your thumbs stay on top because if your thumbs let go the cards are just going to split. So it is important to keep pressure on top of the deck and then you could actually hold there in this position cause the pressure is still great until you move your hands apart slightly like so and they would just fall down. That is the actual riffle shuffle and again as long as the fingers are on top the thumb divvies out. These fingers are here you can flip the pack up and you are right in that mirror position. This is call a get ready, every magician that is going to riffle shuffle need to understand that get ready cause it is going to separate them from the people that just play poker regular shuffles that take time like so. So the get ready, flip over, riffle, apply pressure, keeping the fingers underneath, thumbs on top and move the hands slightly apart and the waterfall, that is the riffle shuffle. "