The day I realized I was shuffling Commander decks wrong for 3 years

So I've been playing Commander since 2021, mostly at a local shop in Portland. Last Tuesday a guy watched me mash shuffle my 99-card deck and just laughed. He pointed out I was only splitting the deck in half every time, never letting the cards interlace properly. I thought my sleeves were just too sticky, but no, it was my technique all along. Now I do the overhand shuffle too, and my mana floods dropped way down. Has anyone else had a basic mechanic click late, or am I the only one who played that long without noticing?

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the_william23d ago

...and honestly the overhand shuffle part is the real game changer, not just the mash. I picked up the mash correctly after a year but refused to do overhand because it felt like it was damaging the cards, so I was just doing the same split over and over. Turns out the whole point is to break up those clumps of lands that stick together from how you grab the deck after a game, and one type of shuffle alone just cant do that. I started doing like five overhand passes mixed with mashes and my opening hands went from unplayable to actually fun, its wild what a difference technique makes.