Help Teaching Kids to Shuffle

Zweicht

Zweicht

Aspiring Trainer
Member
My 6 year old daughter has picked up the TCG pretty quickly, even getting into deck building and strategy. I took her to her first league event yesterday, and she went 3-0 against against 2 different masters players (That is just the proud dad in me). The one issue she has is shuffling. Her hands are so small, especially when the cards are sleeved, that it makes it very difficult for her to shuffle at all. I ended up shuffling for her all afternoon. I don't think this is an issue at local events, but if she want's to do League Cups or anything else, I could see this becoming a problem. Any suggestions or tips on how to get her up to speed?
 
Pile shuffling is part of the solution, lay out 4-6 cards, put another card on top of each, then repeat
 
What I did when I was just staring I shuffled by taking 4-6 cards off the top of my deck and moving then randomly into my deck. Rinse and Repeat about 10 times. works pretty well once you get the hang of it.
 
I agree with @Jonathan Jung about how pile shuffling is the simplest solution, however it takes up a lot of time and space.

One solution is to split the deck in half and then shuffle by sliding the 2 halves together, like this:

deck shuffle.png
 
Zweicht said:
That is a great idea! I agree that pile shuffling takes a lot of time, and I have been working to speed up her pace of play. Thanks for the suggestion!
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It is what I do to shuffle, just be warned:

YOUR SLEEVES WILL SPLIT. A LOT.

To solve this problem, use dragon shield sleeves. I have been using mine for about half a year with heavy shuffling, and I think I have had 5 break on me. Ultra pro or the pokemon sleeves in the elite trainer box tend to split a lot more than dragon shield, so dragon shield is a good investment for not breaking sleeves in the middle of tournaments.
 
The Last Shaymin said:
It is what I do to shuffle, just be warned:

YOUR SLEEVES WILL SPLIT. A LOT.

To solve this problem, use dragon shield sleeves. I have been using mine for about half a year with heavy shuffling, and I think I have had 5 break on me. Ultra pro or the pokemon sleeves in the elite trainer box tend to split a lot more than dragon shield, so dragon shield is a good investment for not breaking sleeves in the middle of tournaments.
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It’s really not a major price difference, especially if they will last longer. Thanks for the tip!
 
The Last Shaymin said:
It is what I do to shuffle, just be warned:

YOUR SLEEVES WILL SPLIT. A LOT.

To solve this problem, use dragon shield sleeves. I have been using mine for about half a year with heavy shuffling, and I think I have had 5 break on me. Ultra pro or the pokemon sleeves in the elite trainer box tend to split a lot more than dragon shield, so dragon shield is a good investment for not breaking sleeves in the middle of tournaments.
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This right here. Dragon Shields are really nice, I used to really like Ultra Pro up until a couple years back when I had several brand new UP sleeves break open during the first game of a tournament, not a fun feeling.

The Elite Trainer sleeves seem a bit better than Ultra Pro but Dragon Shield is definately the good choice for dollar spent.
 
The pile shuffle approach is my preferred approach, and for the long-term as well. Why?

Zweicht said:
Her hands are so small...
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...while not as bad as for some, as an adult it can be really, really easy to mutilate cards while using one of the "faster" shuffling methods. Busting sleeves isn't great, but having one card suddenly slide sideways and get bent is not happy. >_< As a child still learning to fully control your hands while doing such a task, it seems a substantial risk. As an adult who might be on auto-pilot and has more strength and speed for the motions, I'm not sure if the risk really drops.

The main thing to remember with pile shuffling is to make it clear she shouldn't be "weaving". That may not even be a problem, but I remember - as a teen - failing to grasp the idea that a randomized deck was... random. XP I got it in my fool head that it should have a pretty even distribution of the major card Types (as I was still taking a 20-20-20 approach as a relative newbie). Thankfully an older player caught me doing it and set me straight before I had a chance to do it all that often.
 
wow I started teaching my brother this week and shuffling was the exact big problem, I taught him how to pile shuffling but he still would take forever.
optimal way I found was teaching him riffle shuffling by parts, first I taught him how to hold the piles, then to put his thumb on the corner, and just then I taught him to release it slowly and put the deck together.
 
For in game shuffling, I would recommend doing what TLS said. For the pre-gme shuffle, you usually want to do as good a shuffle you can, and the opponent usually won't mind since the game hasn't started yet. For that, I would recommend laying them out into six piles of ten, then continuously pick up a pile and put it on the other ones. This works out perfectly, since you go from 6 piles of 10 to 5 piles if 12, then to 4 piles of 15, then 3 piles of 20, then 2 piles of 30, then you can just shuffle those two together. This usually gives you a very good shuffle. Like Otaku said, though, be sure to make it random which piles you pick up, since you want it to be random. Once you get down to around 2 or 3 piles, you can even shuffle the piles like TLS said before distributing them out to make it even more random.

Sorry if that was really confusing. I can have problems making myself clear at times, so I hope that wasn't terribly hard to read. Assuming I made this comprehensible, I hope this helps!
 
I worked with her last night on what TLS suggested, and it worked pretty well. It took a little bit for her to get the feel of it, but overall, a vast improvement on time spent. I also realized that normally you wouldn't be shuffling with a full 60 card deck for most of the game. So we took 7 off the top, 6 prize cards, and another 5 just from draw support. Taking those 15-18 cards made a world of difference, and the smaller the deck size, the easier it was. Now it is just practice, which she is actually excited to do. I am still teaching to pile shuffle before a game to help randomize, but I think that we have a good solution for the time being. Now maybe I can play at league too!
 
Zweicht said:
I worked with her last night on what TLS suggested, and it worked pretty well. It took a little bit for her to get the feel of it, but overall, a vast improvement on time spent. I also realized that normally you wouldn't be shuffling with a full 60 card deck for most of the game. So we took 7 off the top, 6 prize cards, and another 5 just from draw support. Taking those 15-18 cards made a world of difference, and the smaller the deck size, the easier it was. Now it is just practice, which she is actually excited to do. I am still teaching to pile shuffle before a game to help randomize, but I think that we have a good solution for the time being. Now maybe I can play at league too!
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I think it's awesome, what you're doing. Good luck in the future, and I hope everything goes well!
 
With everything practice is important. I agree that dragon shields will help your sleeves survive the practice best. I've had mine for 1.5 years and I've really only split 2 of them so far. I find the matte version easier to pick up and shuffle too. My son has the regular version of dragon shields and they've always felt "stickier" to me and harder to shuffle well. If hand size is a problem I agree that it helps to put two similar piles on the table and carefully push them together. Once the cards begin to mix pick up the pile and continue putting them together. Do that several times and you should end up with a fairly randomized deck.
 
Shfinx said:
For in game shuffling, I would recommend doing what TLS said. For the pre-gme shuffle, you usually want to do as good a shuffle you can, and the opponent usually won't mind since the game hasn't started yet. For that, I would recommend laying them out into six piles of ten, then continuously pick up a pile and put it on the other ones. This works out perfectly, since you go from 6 piles of 10 to 5 piles if 12, then to 4 piles of 15, then 3 piles of 20, then 2 piles of 30, then you can just shuffle those two together. This usually gives you a very good shuffle. Like Otaku said, though, be sure to make it random which piles you pick up, since you want it to be random. Once you get down to around 2 or 3 piles, you can even shuffle the piles like TLS said before distributing them out to make it even more random.

Sorry if that was really confusing. I can have problems making myself clear at times, so I hope that wasn't terribly hard to read. Assuming I made this comprehensible, I hope this helps!
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Pile shuffling is WAY LESS RANDOM than the version of mash shuffling TLS described. Even if they were the same speed, TLS's method is much better for producing a more randomized deck.

If all you are doing is variations on pile shuffles, it's entirely possible to have exact knowledge of where every card is located.
 
JGB146 said:
Pile shuffling is WAY LESS RANDOM than the version of mash shuffling TLS described. Even if they were the same speed, TLS's method is much better for producing a more randomized deck.

If all you are doing is variations on pile shuffles, it's entirely possible to have exact knowledge of where every card is located.
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The goal of shuffling one's deck in a TCG isn't true randomization, but sufficient randomization; destroying one's knowledge about the deck's current order, even if some cards aren't actually moving relative to all others. It takes a long time, by TCG tournament standards, for the preferred shuffling method to achieve this state, so even competitive players don't worry about doing so during a match... or making their opponent's do so. I want to refer to that shuffle as a "riffle shuffle", but I don't think that is the correct term. ^^' Whatever name it has, I think it takes around seven such shuffles (with each shuffle usually taking 15 seconds to a minute) to complete.

Proper pile shuffling begins and ends with another kind of shuffle. Thanks, @JGB146, for reminding me that this must be emphasized. You have to destroy the potential for easy cheating by doing such a thing. Pile shuffling is still slow compared to others, but it is easier for many, less damaging to the cards, and faster than having to call over one's parent. ;)
 
JGB146 said:
Pile shuffling is WAY LESS RANDOM than the version of mash shuffling TLS described. Even if they were the same speed, TLS's method is much better for producing a more randomized deck.

If all you are doing is variations on pile shuffles, it's entirely possible to have exact knowledge of where every card is located.
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What I meant to say is that you make sure to pick up random piles and to shuffle the piles as well. That way, there's no possible suspicion of cheating, since your opponent sees you shuffle piles in between when you pile them. It can take a very long time, though. It's probably too time-consuming to do in competitive play, but is a good thing to do in between matches or if you're at a league and also talking with your opponent while you shuffle. Obviously, you also let your opponent cut, so that further randomizes things.

Just as a side note, but isn't the fact that we're having this conversation just awesome? I love getting into way too much detail about things.
 
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