The Red-Red Shuffle aka The Scotland Shuffle

Pete McCabe wrote:

The Simplex OOTW [Note: This trick was released to supporters in WWCV2] is fantastic. I always thought Galaxy was almost a great idea but not quite. Your fix with the wrong card solves the problem. Thanks for that too.

But I am on a one-man crusade to get people to stop recommending the Ireland red-black shuffle. It’s a terrible move, especially for amateurs who don’t practice continuously. Here’s one I worked out that’s much better.

Start by shuffling about a third of the deck freely. Then do the switch move where you drop everything left and pick up everything you’ve already shuffled. Now shuffle the rest of the cards freely.

This will mix the upper third of the deck only. Perfect for OOTW or any trick with a bottom half of the deck stack.

I disagree with Pete that the Red-Black Shuffle is terrible. Although it’s easy to do terribly. Due to the nature of the shuffle it’s very easy for people to be casual and loose at the beginning…then very careful as they—fip-fip-fip-fip-fip-fip—peel off cards singly…then again very casual at the end. This doesn’t look good, but it’s not that difficult to make it less obvious, in my experience.

That being said, I like the shuffle he suggests quite a bit and may end up using it in place of the Red-Black shuffle in the future. It’s a little more difficult than the Red-Black shuffle. But not too difficult. I can do it and I don’t consider myself particularly proficient with sleights.

Here it is after about 15 minutes of practice. It’s not perfect, and there are tells for someone who knows what to look for. But for the people I perform for, this will certainly pass as a standard shuffle.

Pete came up with this about 20 years ago, but it may be a case of reinvention. If so, let me know so I can properly credit it.

[A note on the naming: The standard Red-Black Shuffle will shuffle the red cards…and then the black cards (or however you have your deck separated). This is the Red-Red Shuffle because you just shuffle the Red cards (or whatever your top half is) then the red again. The deck ends up with the same top and bottom halves. The Red-Black Shuffle is also called the Ireland shuffle. Not after the country, but after Laurie Ireland who is often credited with it, even though Charles Jordan poorly described it first in 30 Card Mysteries in 1919. Pete McCabe is Irish, so I considered naming this, The Red-Red Shuffle aka The Ireland (The Country, Not The Last Name) Shuffle. But chose The Scotland Shuffle because the McCabes settled in Ireland from Scotland around 1350. Ultimately, I just wanted to keep the confusing naming convention in place.]