Left handed and shuffling

[Profesor Bain]

Is there any ruling regarding shuffling your deck in a precise way? I have a friend who this past weekend attended to a Regional and on his last round his rival called a judge and told him that the way he was shuffling (his normal way being left-handed) he (my friend) could see his cards. He was asked to shuffle the "right-handed" way. Later, he shuffled again his way (without thinking it because it's his natural way of shuffling) and was given a warning by the Head Judge.

Is this really an action to be punished for? In my opinion it can be considered a discrimination over left-handed people, as I can assure I've seen my friend play may times and none of them he was shuffling in a way which he could see his cards.

 

[PokePop]

I'm not really understanding why "left handed" vs "right handed" means that a player needs to be able to see the cards while they are shuffling. They would be mirror images of each other.
Whether shuffling "right handed" or "left handed" the cards must be held in such a way so that they player cannot look at their faces while shuffling. I would not mandate a specific shuffling hold, however I would mandate that they not be able to look at their cards.

Without actually watching the shuffle taking place, it's impossible to see what that judge objected to. I doubt it was just the fact of being left handed.

Being somewhat ambidextrous myself, I do many actions in a left handed manner, so I'm not even such which way of shuffling is right handed and which way is left handed.

 

[tutti]

Being right handed, I shuffle with my left hand holding my deck in place and my right hand moving my cards around. If I can see my cards while shuffling, I can just flip the deck while shuffling. That should be possible if you're left handed as well.

 

[clanfrazier]

I have corrected players shuffling upside down, "so their cards don't get bent from shuffling the same way". This also happens to let the player see the bottom cards of the deck, if not several deep. Obviously, knowing what the bottom few cards of your deck are is not a good or fair thing, so I have no problem correcting that. Is this what you are referring to, or just a different hand placement?

I'm a lefty, although, like Pop, quite ambidextrous, and I have never heard of left vs. right shuffling.

 

[Chairman Kaga]

Regardless of what hand you're using, being able to see any cards in the deck is bad. It not only defeats most of the point of shuffling (that the deck should be random without any knowledge of any specific card's location within), it enables a lot of shady behavior.

A rather prominent ban in recent memory in Magic: The Gathering was a player that took advantage of seeing the bottom card of the deck and then using sleights and partial false shuffles to stack their opponent's deck (subjecting them to mana flood or mana screw, whatever was more beneficial to him at the time).

Suffice it to say, any method of shuffling that involves any card face being visible should be corrected quickly.

 

[bulbasnore]

You have to shuffle in a way that neither you nor your opponent can see the cards faces.

We used to have a boy who had a stroke play at some of our events. He could smash shuffle his deck one handed. Based on his overcoming, I'd say left or right, just practice a smash or riffle shuffle that doesn't show the cards to anyone. It's not a handedness issue.