Perfect Faro Shuffles

Faro Shuffling is a technique where two packets of cards are pressed together and stitch themselves together, one to one. It takes a goodly amount of practice to actually pull it off reliably, but if you can, it’s a tremendously fun skill to have.

There are two primary kinds of faros performed on a 52-card deck, that being an ‘In’ and an ‘Out’ faro. An ‘Out’ faro is one where the top and bottom cards of the deck are preserved on the outside of the deck, an ‘In’ is where they are moved to the interior of the deck.

If the user can perform perfect cuts and faro shuffles, it will take 26 ‘In’ shuffles to completely reverse the deck of 52 cards, and another 26 shuffles to return it to original order. However, by performing ‘Out’ shuffles, the full deck will be returned to the original sequence in only eight shuffles.

I’m working on mastering this, because it’s dang fun and appeals to my brain. And, as a predictable way of reordering decks and can be rolled into some fun illusions.

For reference, standard new deck order is A♠️-K♠️,A♦️-K♦️,K♣️-A♣️,K♥️-A♥️.

While performing eight perfect cuts and ‘Out’ faros, if you start with standard new deck order, these are the eight cut cards: