Ø  Cutoffs – Cards remaining in the shoe just before the shuffle.

Ø  Plug – Plugs commonly occur at the start of a shuffle to combine the discards and the cutoffs. The remaining cards are inserted into the discards. They may be placed on the top, into the middle, or broken into two to four groups and inserted into several areas.

Ø  Pile – The dealer divides the post-plug stack of cards into separate piles on the table, usually in a predetermined pattern.

Ø  Grab – The dealer grabs a portion of a pile and either places it on the table as a new pile or riffles it with another pile.

Ø  Split – Often the first step is to split the full stack into two piles. I call this the split and differentiate this from other grabs because the accuracy is often less than for the other grabs.

Ø  Riffle – The dealer combines two piles in a classic shuffle interleaving the two piles.

Ø  Strip – Stripping a pile of cards is the process of picking up a pile and stripping bunches of cards from the top and or bottom to build a new pile. If the dealer performed this one at a time, the cards would be reversed in order.

Ø  Stepladder – We start with two large piles. Cards are grabbed from both piles and riffled to create a new pile. Cards are grabbed from one of the two original piles and the new pile, riffled and placed on top of the new pile. Cards are grabbed from the other original pile and the new pile, riffled and placed on top of the new file. The process alternates between the two original piles until all cards are in the new pile. (In rare cases, you may find a three-pile stepladder.)

Ø  Ace Sequencing – Also ace prediction. A branch of shuffle tracking that follows aces through the shuffle and predicts when they will hit in the next shoe.

The dealer starts a shuffle by placing the cards from the discard tray in one pile and the cards remaining in the shoe in another pile. They are usually combined in some manner to create a single pile, so that the same shuffle can be used for after a shoe as is used for new decks. Some dealers directly plug the cutoffs into the discards.

 © 2009 Norman Wattenberger