Card shuffler with staging area for collecting groups of cards

An apparatus for delivering shuffled plural hands of playing cards in a card game, comprising:

• a playing card in-feed tray capable of receiving a first group of playing cards to be shuffled;
• a first card moving mechanism capable of delivering playing cards from the card in-feed tray to a playing card randomization apparatus;
• the card randomization apparatus having at least one staging area for receiving subsets of randomized playing cards;
• a single playing card receiving tray;
• a second playing card moving mechanism capable of moving a subset of randomized playing cards from the at least one staging area to the single playing card receiving tray as a second group of playing cards;
• a sensing mechanism for sensing at least a presence of playing cards in the single playing card receiving tray;
• and
• a processor programmed to control the playing card randomization apparatus and the playing card moving mechanisms so that more than one subset of playing cards is delivered to the single playing card receiving tray, one subset at a time, during a single shuffling operation.