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The Chip Shuffle

Learning to shuffle chips is possibly one of the easiest chip tricks to master, yet also one of the nicest looking. While it may seem like a hard chip trick at first, once you find your groove it becomes almost a habit for many players. Here I will briefly guide you through performing the chip shuffle, and give you some of my personal tips along the way. As a note, this guide is written for a right handed person. If you are left handed, just reverse the finger placements on the chips.


Setting Up The Chip Shuffle
When you begin to attempt a chip shuffle, there are a few things that may ease the learning curve for you with this chip trick. Try to find a softer surface to start with, something that has a little push to it. Hard surfaces make it more difficult to lift up the chips at first. Next, it is much easier (in my opinion) to use some heavier chips, such as the ones used in casino's, rather than the lighter weight ones. As a beginner, I found that using four chips on each side was the easiest, and working up to more as I became proficient at it.


Performing the Chip Shuffle
The first step in the chip shuffle is to position your hands around your two stacks of chips. Make sure the two stacks are touching on each side, and for visual help, it is always nice to have different colors. Now, place your thumb and pointer (index) finger on the left stack of chips, with a little less than an inch of space inbetween (as a rule of thumb, this amount of space is good). Next, place your pinky and ring finger on the right stack of chips. This should leave your middle finger feeling a bit lonely right in the middle, which is exactly where you want to place it, right inbetween the crevice of the two chip stacks.


Shuffling the two stacks of chips together takes a bit of practice, this may take you a few minutes to get used to. Lightly press on the sides of the stacks with your two outer fingers, while pulling the insides of the stacks up with your middle finger. As they start to seperate themselves into a shuffle, press them together using your outer fingers. Depending on the size of your chip stack, you may have to move up it a bit more, i find that when dealing with larger ones, speed can be to your advantage. The chip shuffle is one of the most popular chip tricks around, so keep working at it and try to use bigger stacks as you go!