Good points, all. If you can afford one, great. They're pretty cool, and you're right that most home games are haphazard. I've spent years training my players, and now everybody's complaint about my game is that it makes them realize how slow all the other games are.

But most of us here can't afford a $500 shuffler, and most of us here won't be able to take our $500 shuffler with us to other games. For everybody that resists learning how to shuffle "professionally" go to http://www.howtoshuffle.com/ and LEARN IT. I know I keep repeating it, but it's because people tend to be very resistant to this. I guarantee that everything you hate about shuffling will vanish as soon as you learn how.

I'm a professional, and I SUCK at shuffling plastic decks with the standard paper deck bridge method. The cards clump, and often go flying everywhere. Even when I'm doing it right, it's a lot of hand movement, and it takes forever. The professional method - which takes A FEW MINUTES TO LEARN - minimizes hand movement to almost nothing, and is over before you blink. Best of all, you can do it anywhere.

Seriously. All the reasons you don't want to learn are the reasons you SHOULD learn. Unless you like taking 10x as long as necessary to shuffle, all while exposing cards to the entire table.

Die, scum!




arrghhhhhh..... that is awesome.

Update on my $9 mechanical shuffler: While packing to move, I put it in the box to donate to charity. I removed the 9V battery from it and replaced my smoke alarm battery with it -- this is likely the best use I've gotten out of it.