To wash in a poker tournament means to mix the deck by making sure that the dealer spreads the cards in a face-down mode on the table. The dealer is able to do this by mixing them up with each other before they are dealt out to the players. A dealer may choose to wash the deck to ‘reset’ it before going ahead to shuffle the cards. The main reason why this is done is to reduce the level of ‘prediction’ that takes place immediately after a previous game has just been concluded.
Some highly experienced poker players are good in such a practice whereby they memorize the pattern of cards that are being played and how they are arranged. They do this so that they can almost accurately be able to know who gets what card. Therefore, dealers are required to “wash” a deck as a checkmating technique so that the cards can be well mixed in between card numbers and suits before they are dealt to players. This term is also known as “scramble” among poker players.
