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I usually use a riffle shuffle with unsleeved cards. Riffle shuffling sleeved cards however is, uh, slightly disastrous as cards frequently get caught in the sleeve openings.
What's a good way to shuffle sleeved cards? i Is there's good riffle technique?
While cards are equally thick across the surface, cards in sleeves are not. They get thinner near the edges. This makes for a very easy faro shuffle.
But generally, just make sure you're shuffling the cards along their long edges. This prevents cards falling out of their sleeves and sleeves intertwining.
I usually use a riffle shuffle with sleeved cards with not problems. What I do is have the top of the sleeves pointed away from me, split the deck into two parts, and riffle them so they are in a V shape with only the bottom right corner of the left pile over lapping the bottom left of the right pile.
If you sill cannot shuffle them that way the next best way is a mash shuffle or side shuffle. For this one take the deck and split it in two piles again, then take the two piles and 'mash' them together along the long side.
There are other ways of shuffling as shown on Wikipedia, but from what I've heard these are the two techniques that create a random deck the fastest.
Riffle is not easy on the sleeves or the cards. Use the faro shuffle on the long edge and then do a "power shuffle". One by one from the top of the deck make 6 - 8 files. Once all cards are in 6 - 8 smaller piles, randomly start stacking the piles. Then cut and perform a faro shuffle. Performing both of these techniques a couple of times will give you an adequate shuffle without damaging sleeves or cards.
