Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Given the average card player who can shuffle or riffle
Given the average card player who can shuffle or riffle in the ordinary manner, with some degree of smoothness, he can be taught a blind in five minutes that will nonplus the sharpest of his friends. But there are many players who cannot make an ordinary shuffle or riffle without bending, breaking, exposing or in some way ruining half the cards, and such bunglers must learn to handle a deck gracefully before attempting a flight to the higher branches of card manipulation. Uniformity of Action The inviolable rule of the professional is uniformity of action.
Any departure from his customary manner of holding,
Any departure from his customary manner of holding, shuffling, cutting or dealing the cards may be noticed, and is consequently avoided. The player who uses the old-fashioned hand shuffle will never resort to the table riffle in the same company and vice versa. The manner of holding the deck will always be the same, whether the action is to be true or blind.