Automatic card shufflers for home games — worth it? (3 Viewers)

[justsomedude]

If it's the same one i'm thinking of, oddly enough I was kind of debating on getting one of these for dealing purposes.
Shuffling would be terrible though unless you "preshuffled" somehow because none of the bottom cards would ever end up on top and vice versa. Any eagle eyed player could easily track where key cards go. This could be fixed with a good wash or a bunch of stripping but it's extra steps and someone still needs to do it.

It’s tough as a dealer because it sits on the table and takes up a ton of space where pots and flops end up. And that’s why it got moved it to a side table for shuffle-only.

As for randomization, we ran each deck through twice, then cut prior to every deal. That, along with scooping the muck and stub was enough to satisfy us. Probably far from perfect; but satisfactory for a home game.

 

[upNdown]

• Are automatic shufflers actually worth it, or do they end up being more trouble than they’re worth?
• Do they meaningfully speed up hands per hour, or is the two-deck system still better?
• If I were to get one, would something like the ST-1000 be good enough?

1. it depends on the situation. But when there's a dedicated dealer, yes an automatic shuffler can make a lot of sense. Especially if it prevents one poor bastard on your left from shuffling every hand.
2. No. Unless you've been using a single deck, or unless the people who shuffle are horrible slow shufflers who can't shuffle a deck in the time it takes to play a hand, then a shuffler will not speed things up. A two deck system means one deck is always ready to be dealt - what could be faster than that?
3. The shuffletech is loud as hell. Whether you can tolerate that or whether it's worth it to spend on a deckmate - that's up to you.

 

[TankingRowlet]

Been using a ShuffleTech weekly (6 hours a week) religiously for 2 years or so. Haven't had to send back for any problems or do any maintenance other than clean rollers every now and then (and I don't even do that very often).

Key is finding the correct cards that work well with the shuffler, which for me needed to be super stiff (Faded Spade FSX). This makes it so the machine almost never errors out or very rarely needs human intervention to fix (talking like once or twice in 5 hours).

Noise from it no problem once the game is going, conversation is flowing, music on TV is pumping. Mine is thrown shoddily into a cabinet with sound proofing but probably doesn't change much.

 

[Old State]

2. No. Unless you've been using a single deck, or unless the people who shuffle are horrible slow shufflers who can't shuffle a deck in the time it takes to play a hand, then a shuffler will not speed things up. A two deck system means one deck is always ready to be dealt - what could be faster than that?

Here is the reality…..Almost every person I’ve ever played cards with is a horrible shuffler. I actually can’t think of a single good one. Even the people that shouldn’t be. It’s just a matter of how bad they are.

I never liked two decks because they clutter the table and often interfere with others dealing or betting. People also either shuffle poorly or take so long to shuffle they are not done before the next hand…often because they are talking and not paying attention. This is what I’ve observed in playing poker for 20+ years in hundreds of games using two decks and I’ll never be convinced otherwise. It’s something that annoys me in every game and I think people just have become so accustomed to it they accept it as normal .

I’m a very proficient shuffler because I wanted to be and practiced years ago. I can do a casino shuffle in around 15 seconds. If everyone could shuffle like that two decks would have zero advantage. But 99.999999999% players will not ever learn to shuffle well.

In the last few games I’ve had the Deckmate it has significantly increased the amount of hands per hour over any two deck game I’ve ever played in. And just as importantly the cards actually get shuffled properly. With the shuffler there are properly shuffled cards always ready to be dealt.

 

[Timmah]

Automatic shufflers are game changers. We used to deal behind. People would get confused and many misdeals because they don’t know how to toss the cards.

I have two shuffle tech shufflers. One is mounted into the main table and one is mounted into a rolling file cart for the second table. I have debated installing the second one into the Barrington, but for now I prefer the cart.

Hands per hour go up. This is nice during a tournament. More hands before blinds go up.

I only use the Broken Arrow poker sized cards from @justincarothers. I use new setup each game. $9 in new cards per game is a small price to pay for jam free shuffling.

They are noisier than the deckmates, but 1/5 the cost. I also agree that once the game is in progress, you don’t hear it so much with the conversations and music. It was noticeable at first, but now it’s just background noise you don’t really hear anymore.