Italian Shuffle

Here is the shuffle used by practically everyone down here in Italy. It is a fairly good shuffle but suffer from the problem that card edges and corners get damaged by the push action. Anyway it is easy to learn and lends itself nicely to some magical applications (not supplied here!), so grab a deck of cards and follow these simple instructions to add it to your repertoire.

Hold the deck in the right hand by the long edges as shown in the picture (fig. 1), thumb above and the other fingers below. With the other hand, grab the deck by the short edges and cut about half of it (fig. 2).

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Push this packet into the rest of the deck still hold by the right hand, which relaxes the grip in order to facilitate the insertion (fig. 3). The right thumb reaches for the packet and helps pushing it into the rest of the deck (fig. 4).

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

The deck is squared, usually using both hands (fig. 5), and we are back into the starting position.

Figure 5.

Repeat this sequence a few times and there you have the Italian Shuffle. Here is a short video (148K) to show how it looks like, and another video shot from a different angle (354K, quality is better).

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