Riffling
the cards is the most commonly used shuffling
technique used
on all casino card games. To accomplish a riffle,
the deck is divided
roughly in half, then the dealer will pull the
card corners up with the
thumbs and let the two halves "riffle"
together, interleaving the two
halves into a solid deck. Sometimes called "zipping"
the cards,
riffling a deck can range from a fine riffle to
a coarse riffle.
Dealers usually riffle the cards between three
and five times before
dealing the next round.
Stripping
is a shuffling technique that reverses the
sequential order
of groups of cards in the deck. Say for instance
a dealer took the
first card off the top of a deck and placed it
on the table, and then
took the second card off the top and placed it
on top of the first
card. Continuing this process through the entire
52 cards would exactly
reverse their order. This characterizes the basic
process of stripping.
Dealers
don't strip cards one at a time, but instead they
rapidly pull
small clumps of cards off the top of the deck,
actually altering the
order of cards in the deck. The number of cards
in the clumps
determines how fine or coarse the stripping process
is. Stripping the
deck is a procedure that some casinos make their
dealers employ before
riffling the deck.
Washing,
per your Fish question, where cards are placed
face down and
fanned out to form a stock, is where the dealer
spreads the cards on
the table face down and then proceeds to commingle
the cards in a
washing-like motion before collecting them up
and performing a more
conventional riffle shuffle. Card washing is intended
to remove any
consistencies in the sequencing of the cards,
and are typically washed,
Richard, when new decks are brought into a game.
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