My informant plays Magic the Gathering.  One of the things you do in a game of Magic, before the start of the game, is you shuffle up your deck.  There are no strict rules to how a player may go about shuffling his or her deck, but there are a few preferred methods out there.  My informant prefers the method known as the 7-pile shuffle.  He learned this method by reading posts online from a Magic blogger by the name of Mike Flores.  According to Flores, who is regarded by my informant as an “activist of sorts with regards to the way people shuffle,” the 7-pile shuffle method is the best way to shuffle ones deck.  The 7-pile shuffle method involves taking your deck in one hand (or half your deck if it is too big to hold in your hand all at once) and dealing it out into seven piles in the way one would deal hands in poker.  After dealing out the entire deck into these piles, the player then recombines these piles.  After performing this shuffling ritual, my informant will then riffle shuffle about 5 or 6 times before deeming the deck adequately shuffled.  If he thinks the deck is particularly bad before starting out (usually right after a build session, where cards are often next to copies of each other and thus very non-random), he will perform the 7-pile shuffle twice before riffle shuffling.

I am also a Magic the Gathering player and I also employ the 7-pile shuffle method.  After each pile has been dealt, I will stack the 7 piles into two piles, then riffle shuffle those together before starting more riffle shuffle.  I learned the 7-pile shuffle method from a friend who simply said it was a good way to shuffle.  It’s also a good way to make sure you have the right number of cards in the deck, since you know which pile the last card should end up in if you did it right.  I also like the 7-pile shuffle method because when you start a game of Magic, each player draws 7 cards, so 7 piles for 7 cards lines up nicely.