Thursday, February 16, 2006

Poker Tip: The One-Handed Shuffle

From the basic grip rotate your hand so the deck is standing vertically along the longest axis, holding the cards up with your little finger resting underneath. The vertical grip isn't strictly necessary, but it makes a clean cut of the cards easier. Bring your forefinger out from the back of the deck and grip the side of the deck above your middle finger. Use your forefinger to pull back half the cards. Now pinch the bottom half of the deck (closest to your palm) tightly between thumb and forefinger, letting the top half go with your thumb and balancing it on your little finger and supporting it with your middle and ring finger. You'll want to rotate your hand away from you slightly to do this, letting the top half of the deck balance neatly in your last three fingers.
Now comes the tricky part. With thumb and forefinger rotate the bottom half of the deck anticlockwise as far as you can while still cradling the top half mostly vertical with your bottom three fingers like so. This should bring your forefinger close to the opposite side of the top half of the deck. Now rotate your hand so the faces of the lower half of the deck (between thumb and forefinger) are pointing directly down and your palm is facing up. The top half of the should now be resting against the nail of your curled forefinger. What you want to do now is stretch and push upwards with your forefinger, so that it is touching the side of the top half of the deck. If you have big hands you will want to pinch the top half of the deck between middle and forefinger. If you have smaller hands (like myself) you should slide your middle finger underneath the top half of the deck and pinch the top half between forefinger and ring finger. Now pivot the two halves of the deck about your forefinger so that the corner of what was the top half of the deck is braced against the side of what was the bottom half of the deck. If you've done this correctly you should now be back at a stable grip with the deck in two halves next to each other.

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