Related Articles
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Rolling Stone may receive an affiliate commission.
Even professional blackjack dealers are known to make use of an automatic card shuffler, so there’s no reason you can’t use a card shuffler for your amateur tournaments and games at home as well. Particularly if you’re fond of card games requiring multiple decks, like blackjack, or if you’re simply not able to shuffle well on your own, automatic card shufflers can take a lot of irritation out of getting a game going. You don’t need a Vegas-ready shuffler, but there are still a couple factors we recommend considering.
How Does a Card Shuffler Work?
The best card shufflers are pretty simple, and most debate comes down to whether you want a manual crank-operated shuffler or an automatic battery-operated kind. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, including ease-of-use and tendency to jam. You also should take a look at the capacity of the shuffler, meaning how many decks it is capable of shuffling at once. Depending on the game, this could be a make or break factor.
Manual vs. Battery: If you’re looking for something really hands-free, a battery-operated shuffler does the job at the push of a button. In general, these can also handle several decks at once, which is a huge plus. That said, these machines are more likely to jam than manually-operated shufflers, potentially damaging the cards. Manual shufflers are operated with a crank, so as soon as you notice a card getting stuck, you can remove it. Using a crank also means you have more control of the speed of shuffling, so you can keep an eye out for problems. For the most part, this tends to lead to fewer snags.
Capacity: Card shufflers can generally handle anywhere from one to six decks at a time. If you’re fond of games like “Hand-and-Food,” for example, which require the use of several decks, a high-capacity shuffler could be life changing (nobody likes having to shuffle six decks of cards every hand). For games requiring only one deck, or maybe two, a six-deck capacity probably isn’t necessary.
