Yeah, climate is a bitch.
Up(p)date:
I'm practicing on a new kind of faro shuffle, one that i saw Jason England do, and then saw others do as well. The shuffle in question is a tabled one handed faro, quite a specific title indeed, yet there at least three different versions of the damn thing. It is done by splitting the deck in half, and then placing the two halves next to each other, but at an angle, so that only the two front corners are touching. Then you place one of your hands over it and proceed to squeeze them together, thus making the faro it self. Then you can finish the whole procedure with a fancy "bridge" flourish, or rather a reversed "bridge", which looks fairly classy in this instance. Normally i am not a fan of "bridge" flourishes, i.e. to take a deck which has been either riffled or faroed so that it consists of the two halves interwoven into eachother, but not entirely squared up, and bend it, so as to build up energy within the cards. Then slightly releasing the pressure from the hands, but not fully, this will force the cards to "collapse" into eachother, making a satisfying "riffle" sound and a nice "arch" shape, though be it but for a short time.
My main objection to this action is when it is preformed after a normal riffle shuffle, which is in fact the most common way of squaring up the deck after said shuffle. WHen this action is performed after a riffle, it will certainly look aesthetically pleasing, and produce the nice "riffle" sound, as well as filling the task of squaring up the deck. But the main problem is in the shuffle it self, it looks allright, and it fills the purpose of shuffling the cards, but when you compare it to the superior "casino" riffle, which is typically not followed by a bridge, it just looks bad. Though recently, it has shown that more people actually use the casino style riffle in conjunction with the bridge.
I much prefer the one handed bridge, which is typically done after faro shuffles, this bridge has a very different look than the two handed one, and to me, seems more "crisp".
When it comes to one handed shuffles, they are almost, as a rule, squared up using a bridge, for reasons that could well fill an equally long post... Anyway; this bridge is not like most other, it is done by compressing the cards along the edges, not the sides (the edges are the shorter sides, whilst the sides are the longer ones). A "reversed" bridge is where the cards are bent so that they bulge towards the ground, or table, instead of upwards.
So, in short, the one handed tabled faro shuffle can be finished with a bridge that is highly unusual, since it is both an "edgewise" bridge, but also a "reversed" one.
Last edited by uppkicker; Jun 3, 2016 at 12:01 AM.