Card washing, also called a wash or a scramble, is a way of mixing cards by hand on the table. The dealer spreads the deck face down across the felt and moves the cards around with both palms flat, in circular motions, before gathering them up. The movement looks like hands being scrubbed or laundry tumbling, which gave the technique its name.
The aim is to break up any order left from the previous game before a standard riffle shuffle, making the result more random and harder to track. Practice varies by game and house: some poker rooms wash between hands, while blackjack and baccarat tables usually wash when fresh decks are brought into play.
Do not confuse it with washing, the gesture dealers make to show their hands are empty. Both belong to the procedures that protect game integrity, alongside automatic shufflers and defences against shuffle tracking.