Electronic shufflers

mragmoore

How do these work mechanically?

http://www.pokerchips.com/cards/card_shuf.html


What is the difference between the "manual" shuffler and the battery operated one?

Are these things any good? From what I've read, some casinos have them.

Most home games / tournies employ dealers to shuffle?

How do home shuffle machines compare to a dealer shuffling ( non professional or otherwise ).

Thanks,

- Andrew Moore

Pigga

The manual one looks like u turn a 'crank' of some sorts to do it

i've had almost the identical one for the batterie op'd one......its really not that good. at least i would waste my money on it.... i got one (battery op'd) for xmas one year for when i was playing M:TG and it didnt really shuffle it, and was very annoyingly loud.....

save time and money, use your hands

mragmoore

Thanks Piggy Wiggy.

I wouldn't want those things to mangle Magic - The Gathering cards.

It's hard to figure out how they would work.

Yorkpoker

They're fun, but they don't actually mix well. The cards take about 5 times through the machine to mix - and that takes about a minute and a half to do.

Basically, you halve your deck and place each half on each side of the machine. Then, you push the button which starts these little wheels spinning that grab cards and mix em together.

It works, doesn't mangle cards, but takes a long time. And it's noisy. You're better off washing the cards for 5 or 10 seconds before shuffling them each time.

mragmoore

A surprisingly low-tech device in the age of high-tech...

UglyJimStudly

mragmoore wrote:

How do these work mechanically?

They just riffle-shuffle the two halves the deck (or two decks, or whatever you load in) together. You'd need to cut the deck and repeat the shuffle six or seven times to get a random shuffle.

mragmoore wrote:

Are these things any good? From what I've read, some casinos have them.

Casinos use much better, and much more expensive, automatic shufflers. An example of the type they buy:

http://www.vendingdata.com/products/shufflers/shuffler_poker

Another one; I think this is the type used at one of the casinos I frequent (River Rock, in Vancouver):

http://www.shufflemaster.com/02_products/utility_products/shufflers/shufflers_sd/deck_mate.asp

Price for either is in the thousands, as opposed to the $30 novelty types. I'm thinking you probably get what you pay for.

mragmoore wrote:

How do home shuffle machines compare to a dealer shuffling ( non professional or otherwise ).

The novelty ones are much worse than a decent hand shuffle. The professional-quality ones are more random than almost all dealers, but can be pretty hard on the cards. Of course, they're also a lot more expensive than most home games likely justify.