I kept getting the same cards in the same order after a few rounds of Catan, and I thought my sleeves were just worn out. Tried a new shuffle method about 3 weeks ago after reading a forum post about pile shuffling with 30 cards. Turns out my mash shuffle was only mixing the top half of the deck because my grip was too tight. Swapped to a proper riffle with a mat under the cards, and now the distribution is actually random. Tested it 50 times with a marker card and it finally moved around. Anyone else spend way too long on a basic habit that just needed a small tweak?
Did you ever watch those old magic trick videos where they show how easy it is to fake a shuffle? That's what finally clicked for me. I saw a clip of a guy doing a false riffle and realized my "real" shuffle looked exactly like his fake one lol.