Was that a Scramble Shuffle?
There are a large variety of different shuffling techniques used at online poker casinos these days. Most the time casinos either use the riffle technique, the online poker table riffle technique, or some form of mechanized shuffling technique. What I never expected to see at the professional poker tables was the scramble shuffle. As a brief recap, the scrambler shuffle is the technique often used by small children and beginning players who have not figured out how to hold the cards. They put all the cards on the table facedown and then just mix them together using their hands. This is a slow, space consuming, and mathematically flawed technique. With all the stigma attached to the scramble shuffle, I was surprised to see that some casinos actually use in on their poker tables. The particular instance that I am thinking about involved a dealer using a scramble shuffle on a new pack to show that it was randomized. To be fair, he then shuffled the cards using a more traditional method to ensure mathematical accuracy. While the thought may have been there, I found it difficult to get over my first impression of the caliber of the table. I can’t play a serious poker game at a table that uses a scramble shuffle.
