About three months ago, my Tuesday night group switched from shuffling ahead to shuffling behind (i.e. "clean up your own mess"). There were a few complaints at first, and a couple people had a hard time getting used to it, but overall the change was welcome. It keeps the decks from crossing and speeds up the game a little bit.
I believe any home game that uses two decks will get more hands per hour than a single deck game. In my games, a new hand is often being dealt even before the deck is gathered from the previous hand - so it is unquestionably faster. Plus, my casual players are not always quick and efficient shufflers (and they don't care to spend a few hours of offline practice to become quick and efficient), so the extra deck speeds things up dramatically when these players deal.
And on cheating: I don't believe anyone in my group would ever cheat, period. Many of us are friends outside of poker, some of us work together, and the ostracization would not be worth the couple hundred bucks that a cheater might win in a .25/.50 cash game. But we are still fairly strict about shuffling and cutting procedure. Consistency is important, reasonable randomization of the deck is important, and avoiding the appearance of impropriety is important, especially when new players attend.
I know that nobody's cheating, but the new guy doesn't - so it's important that he sees consistency and fairness in every aspect of the game, or he's not coming back.
I believe any home game that uses two decks will get more hands per hour than a single deck game. In my games, a new hand is often being dealt even before the deck is gathered from the previous hand - so it is unquestionably faster. Plus, my casual players are not always quick and efficient shufflers (and they don't care to spend a few hours of offline practice to become quick and efficient), so the extra deck speeds things up dramatically when these players deal.
And on cheating: I don't believe anyone in my group would ever cheat, period. Many of us are friends outside of poker, some of us work together, and the ostracization would not be worth the couple hundred bucks that a cheater might win in a .25/.50 cash game. But we are still fairly strict about shuffling and cutting procedure. Consistency is important, reasonable randomization of the deck is important, and avoiding the appearance of impropriety is important, especially when new players attend.
I know that nobody's cheating, but the new guy doesn't - so it's important that he sees consistency and fairness in every aspect of the game, or he's not coming back.