Shuffling

[mattkoz]

How do you shuffle your cards to get a good randomization, but still keep them from wearing out? Any techniques?

[BigBadHarve]

I do a combination of overhand and riffle shuffle. That gives a good randomization.

As for not letting your cards wear out, use card sleeves. All of my cards are in pristine shape, and I've had most of them for 13 years, I never play without them.

-BBH

[Demacus]

I can vouche for the card sleeves, as I have some cards from OP and Powersurge that are showing definate signs of wear and tear due to the lack of sleeves used when I first started playing CCGs.  The damage to the cards is from just about 1-2 months only of not sleeving the cards, around which point I discovered sleeves and now properly wrap every game in plastic.  But I have a pretty worn Wounded Animal, which shows how easily the cards wear without sleeves.

[Nate Grey]

I do a combination of overhand and riffle shuffle. That gives a good randomization.

Never knew that the way I shuffled was called a "riffle" shuffle. You learn something new every day.

[gameplan.exe]

now that i'm using sleeves regularly, i've been standing the cards up, cutting the deck, and standing the two halves next to eachother and loosely just shimmying the two halves together. it doesn't seem to put any strain whatsoever on the cards, and the tapered edge that the sleeves create seems to work really well for combining the two deck halves, card by card.

and then i also "muck" them, as my mom says, which i think is the "riffle" that was mentioned above 

[steve2275]

i cant shuffle worth a damn

[Nate Grey]

Nothing worse than getting crappy hands because of poor shuffling.  I do a quick post-shuffle test to see how good my hands are coming out. That tends to be a good indicator for me. Of course I have to follow it up with a quick reshuffle but by then it does the trick.