Just realized I've been shuffling Commander decks wrong for 6 months

Last Friday at my local shop in Portland, someone pointed out that I was overhand shuffling my Commander deck instead of mash shuffling. I thought it was fine, but then he showed me how the sleeves were causing cards to clump in groups of 5 or 6. Took 4 games to notice the pattern, my opening hands were always heavy on lands or light on ramp. I went back and checked my old notes, my win rate dropped from about 30 percent to 15 since I switched sleeves. Has anyone else had a hidden habit like this mess with their draws? How did you catch it?

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andrew69319d ago

There's a well known post from a magic writer about how mash shuffling is what you should be doing for 60 card decks, and it matters even more with 100 cards since you have more clumps to break up. He said you need at least 7 to 10 mash shuffles to get close to random, and overhand shuffling a deck that thick basically does nothing. Sleeves that stick together make it way worse too, so if yours are old or dirty you get those groups of 5 or 6 like you saw. My buddy had the same issue and started double sleeving plus doing 10 mashes before every game, said his land counts evened out within a week.

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