LEAST favorite deck to shuffle...ever

Its got to be Anna K. I sold it off the first time I had it, it felt so awful to try shuffling. I am a riffle shuffler and these cards are so stiff you just can't bend them, at all.

Love the images, so I got another copy - both were 2nd editions. It will never be a deck I shuffle for the pleasure of it.

Had trouble with Templar Tarot: The Journey, but they are not as stiff so I learned how to do it. I don't think I would want cards that were larger than this, though.

Son Tarot from Schiffer. I literally had to shuffle that deck ~1500 times before it became easy to shuffle. (And after all that I lost interest in the deck....) The Mary-El shuffles like a dream compared to the Son Tarot....

I took my Son Tarot to BATS last year (year before that?) to show the Schiffer rep what I had to go through to make that deck usable.

swedishfish612 said:

- the Daniloff- squared corners, and I hate to corner round them in case I hate it, because I spent so much

Click to expand...

This is what's keeping me from ordering. Well plus the money . I love the artwork, but for the price, I think those right angles would bother me.

I don't think I can answer this. What about people who only have a few hundred decks, and will buy more decks in the future? How can they pick a deck as the worst to shuffle ever, if they haven't sampled more than a tiny fraction of the thousands of decks that are out there? And even if you think - say - 500 decks is a fair enough sample, what if you label a deck worst ever, then a year or three later buy half a dozen decks which reach a new low in shuffleability?

So with a mere 160 decks to my name and not having shuffled a lot of others that I don't own, I really am not qualified to answer this.

swedishfish612 said:

- Anna K, self-pub.- cardstock is WAY too thick to shuffle comfortably in any way, shape or form...but I love the images and the size enough to put up with it!

Click to expand...

This gave me a smile it is my all time favourite deck to shuffle!

Large Thoth Deck, Giant RWS, Wicca Moon are all large size decks awkward to shuffle.
Enigma Da Vinci deck is not that large, but it is thick - a few cards fly out during every shuffling.

Decks that are easy to shuffle are EL Gran Tarot, Fournier TdM and Liber T to name but a few.

foolMoon said:

Large Thoth Deck, Giant RWS, Wicca Moon are all large size decks awkward to shuffle.

Click to expand...

They are all smaller than many Visconti printings, and I love shuffling those. Okay, so I'm slow and I hold them oddly, having very short fingers, but size truly isn't a problem <grin> - with those decks I consider favourites to shuffle, it's about texture, not size.

If I were to find some slightly difficult, it would be the entirely unlaminated ones like the Valentina Visconti and the Soprafino, both of which ate small decks that sit nicely in my small hands, but being unlaminated the individual cards don't slide over each other easily, and require a very gentle shuffling technique. But even that is a pleasure in itself.

I have large hands and I can shuffle large Thoth quite easily but I've found Golden Tarot Visconti-Sforza impossible to shuffle. I mean, those cards are huge! Also RWS deck that came with PCS commemorial set is a bit awkward to riffle-shuffle because the cards are thick and bendy. But that is really the only downside of the deck and I can live with that.

Samweiss said:

I have large hands and I can shuffle large Thoth quite easily but I've found Golden Tarot Visconti-Sforza impossible to shuffle. I mean, those cards are huge!

Click to expand...

No, they're slightly smaller than the Cary-Yale and possibly the Piedpont, both of which I've been shuffling regularly over the last couple of years. Try turning them 90 degrees and doing a long, slow lace-shuffle instead of a short, fast one. You'll find that even with stubby fingers like mine if you've turned the deck side-on you can shuffle it well.

Yes the big Viscontis - and the Rohrig - but you know, if you really love a deck, you find a way. At least in terms of size. I guess if I loved the big Viscontis I'd just get on with it.

But the real problem is clumpiness. Decks clumping together. It simply makes a deck unshuffleable. How can you use tarot if you can't randomize the cards?

I have no problem with the Mary-el. Shuffles fine. Maybe I was lucky. But the Goepferd/Williams Light and Shadow Tarot is impossible to randomize. I simply had to give up. And I love the artwork.