How to Shuffle Cards: Riffle, Bridge, Overhand and More

There are four shuffles worth knowing. Two of them you can learn in five minutes; the riffle with a bridge finish takes an evening of practice and is the one people mean when they say "shuffle like a pro".

The overhand shuffle — the easiest

1. Hold the deck on its long side in your right hand, faces towards your palm.
2. With your left thumb, pull small packets off the top into your left hand, one after another, until the right hand is empty.
3. Repeat four or five times.

It is gentle on the cards and fine for casual games, but it mixes slowly — clumps of cards tend to stay together.

The Hindu shuffle

Hold the deck from above by its ends in your right hand. With your left thumb and fingers, pull small packets off the top into your left palm, over and over. It looks neat, it is the usual shuffle across much of Asia, and like the overhand it works best repeated several times.

The riffle shuffle, with a bridge

This is the casino-style shuffle and the best at actually mixing a deck.

1. Cut the deck into two roughly equal halves, one in each hand.
2. Hold each half with your thumbs at the inner corners, your middle fingers at the far ends, and your index fingers resting on top.
3. Bend the halves slightly upwards with your thumbs, corners nearly touching.
4. Release cards from your thumbs so the two halves interleave as they fall. Go slowly at first — even interleaving matters more than speed.
5. The bridge: with the halves now meshed, press down with your thumbs and bend the deck into an arch, then relax your grip. The cards cascade back into one squared pack.

If the cards spray everywhere, you are bending too hard. Use a light curve and let your thumbs do the work.

How to shuffle without bending the cards

• The table riffle. Lay the two halves on the table, lift only the inner corners with your thumbs, riffle them together and push the halves into one. No bridge, almost no bend. Many casinos use this.
• The wash. Spread the deck face down on the table and swirl it around with both hands for twenty seconds. Ugly, but thorough and kind to the cards — the usual first shuffle with a brand-new deck.

Plastic cards forgive the bridge far better than paper ones; they spring back flat where paper creases.

How many shuffles does a deck need?

A famous 1992 study by mathematicians Dave Bayer and Persi Diaconis found that seven riffle shuffles properly mix a 52-card deck. Fewer leave noticeable order behind; more add very little. Overhand shuffles are far weaker — it takes many more of them to do the same job. For a home game: three or four riffles, a wash for a new deck, and a cut before the deal.

Shuffling with small hands

Split the deck into four piles, shuffle two pairs of quarter-decks, then shuffle the halves together. Smaller packets are much easier to control, and the result is the same.