Hot table- any studies

tallmanvegas

Well-Known Member
#1
Any validity of "hot tables" out there. As I was playing this weekend, I started my first session 1 on 1 in high limits. The dealer seemed to be not in a good mood as I tried some small talk. After first 10 hands or so, I was getting destroyed, couldn't do anything right, so I pick up the rest of my units and saw another table open 1 on 1 in which this dealer was very friendly to me. I asked him how's this table doing. He said he just handed out 20k 5 minutes before I got there. So, he shuffles up, we begin, and was a dream shoe which I couldn't do anything wrong, I've never seen that before. I was pressing up to 2500 a hand and hitting all my doubles and splits. To end, it was the best session shoe I've ever seen. Any experience with what happened to me. 2 people back to back beat the table up, was told it's a good table, and kicked butt. And I put this in voodoo forum for this particular reason
Tallman
 

stopgambling

Well-Known Member
#3
i think you will hit those good tables just slight less often than the bad tables.i think thats a problem .because if you count you will win slight more than you lose in the long run.so,if you play for hot or cold table you will lose slight more than you will win in the long run.
 

aslan

Well-Known Member
#4
I am sure there are studies that examine the effect of various configurations of shoes on house and player advantage. But, alas, I don't know of any of them. It only stands to reason that some card sequences may favor the house or the player. I wish someone would either produce such a study or would perform such a study. We all know that clumps of high and low cards are absolutely indispensible to card counting. If the count always hovered around zero, we'd never have a discernible advantage. So what happens when the cards achieve other configurations? I don't know; do you? And how hard is it to shuffle into or out of such configurations? As shuffle tracking demonstrates, it's not what it immediately appears to be. Tables do get hot, and table do get cold, but what that means, I have no idea. It may be just random coincidence and have nothing to do with the arrangement of the cards, but this is not a self-evident truth. I'd like to see for one thing if at some point a table tends to persist in extremely losing or winning shoes. This could be demonstrated perhaps by some sort of simulation. A study of the underlying card structure may or may not reveal some telling characteristics of winning and losing shoes, and what effect shuffling, number of hands, card burning, etc., has on this. As it is, it's a voodoo science to be talking about hot and cold tables and the flow of the cards. I hope somebody can turn it into a legitimate science some day.
 

MangoJ

Well-Known Member
#6
aslan said:
A study of the underlying card structure may or may not reveal some telling characteristics of winning and losing shoes, and what effect shuffling, number of hands, card burning, etc., has on this. As it is, it's a voodoo science to be talking about hot and cold tables and the flow of the cards. I hope somebody can turn it into a legitimate science some day.
This topic is indeed very interesting, but I think understanding is much easier than practical application. Any counting system gives you the key: High cards are valuable to the player, while low cards are valuable to the dealer.
A bunch of cards is a mixture of high, low, and neutral cards, in a randomized order. Random means that this is a smooth distribution, but since cards are not smeared over the whole shoe, but on distinct positions, cards in a a shoe exhibits "shot noise".

Imagine you get a cup of (raw) rice, and you throw it on the floor. The rice will distribute on the floor over a (more or less) flat random distribution. But since the rice is granular, the distance between some grains will be a lot closer than the average distance, and on some larger spots there will be substantially less grains.

This is shot noise, it's origin is the pure random and independent distribution of a fixed number of granular particles. The number of grains on any given area follows a Poisson distribution. Like the grains of rice, high, neutral, and low cards distribute in the shoe in a random shuffle. There will be high cards that are closer together than the average distance, and cards will be farer away than average. As each card is independent (unless they are somehow "sticky") this local clustering is completely random. In any segment of the shoe, the number of specific cards will also follow a Poisson distribution.
This is very well understood.

The problem is: as the origin is in complete randomization, there is nothing to exploit from such an Poisson shoe.
The only way to exploit a perfectly shuffled shoe is to implement a non-poisson distribution. One method would be indeed "sticky" rice: If you would wet the grains to make them sticky, then two neighbouring grains will tend to be closes together during the throw than statistically expected (if they were dry). This would be artificially clustering wet grains (again, on the average). If you could do something similar with the cards, which means changing the physical properties of how they "interact", it could be used to exploit the game. High cards would then likely to be followed by other high cards, (and vice versa low cards followed by low cards). Then, even with a perfect shuffle procedure, you would maintain an advantage with an adaptive strategy.

Changing the physical properties is not a fiction, you can make the game of 3-card Monte much much smaller (with electrons or similar quantum objects). You are then entering the quantum-mechanical regime, where particles behave substantial different than expected. A version of something like 2of5-card Monte has been created by physicists, where even a completely random strategy (i.e. picking spots at random) performs substantially worser than naive probabilities would predict.

So, unless you change the physical properties of cards, you will always end up with an poisson distributed shoe, which gains no information for the player, as cards do not interact, and will thus be completely randomized.
 

Gamblor

Well-Known Member
#7
Snyder has an article out there where for an unshuffled deck, and player plays against the dealer heads up, the player would actually have a not so slight edge over the house just using BS (+.61).

http://www.blackjackforumonline.com/content/random.htm

The only time I ever entered a table and for some reason did not feel good about playing, immediately dropped +20 units betting flat. This was off a fresh deck at a table that just opened up. Meh, but probably coincidence.
 

psyduck

Well-Known Member
#8
Player's advantage goes up with density of face cards up to a point, about 73% tens I believe. Players have no advantage in a portion of the shoe with only tens. They will push every hand with the dealer.

Our advantage at high counts primarily comes from BJ, proper double and split (my understanding at least). However, at hight counts the chance of double decreases although its success rate increases. I feel the best shoe for players must be some kind of "right" sequence of cards of all ranks.

I heard the worse shoe for a BS player is one with all fives. The player keeps doubling down and keeps losing.
 

aslan

Well-Known Member
#9
MangoJ said:
This topic is indeed very interesting, but I think understanding is much easier than practical application. Any counting system gives you the key: High cards are valuable to the player, while low cards are valuable to the dealer.
A bunch of cards is a mixture of high, low, and neutral cards, in a randomized order. Random means that this is a smooth distribution, but since cards are not smeared over the whole shoe, but on distinct positions, cards in a a shoe exhibits "shot noise".

Imagine you get a cup of (raw) rice, and you throw it on the floor. The rice will distribute on the floor over a (more or less) flat random distribution. But since the rice is granular, the distance between some grains will be a lot closer than the average distance, and on some larger spots there will be substantially less grains.

This is shot noise, it's origin is the pure random and independent distribution of a fixed number of granular particles. The number of grains on any given area follows a Poisson distribution. Like the grains of rice, high, neutral, and low cards distribute in the shoe in a random shuffle. There will be high cards that are closer together than the average distance, and cards will be farer away than average. As each card is independent (unless they are somehow "sticky") this local clustering is completely random. In any segment of the shoe, the number of specific cards will also follow a Poisson distribution.
This is very well understood.

The problem is: as the origin is in complete randomization, there is nothing to exploit from such an Poisson shoe.
The only way to exploit a perfectly shuffled shoe is to implement a non-poisson distribution. One method would be indeed "sticky" rice: If you would wet the grains to make them sticky, then two neighbouring grains will tend to be closes together during the throw than statistically expected (if they were dry). This would be artificially clustering wet grains (again, on the average). If you could do something similar with the cards, which means changing the physical properties of how they "interact", it could be used to exploit the game. High cards would then likely to be followed by other high cards, (and vice versa low cards followed by low cards). Then, even with a perfect shuffle procedure, you would maintain an advantage with an adaptive strategy.

Changing the physical properties is not a fiction, you can make the game of 3-card Monte much much smaller (with electrons or similar quantum objects). You are then entering the quantum-mechanical regime, where particles behave substantial different than expected. A version of something like 2of5-card Monte has been created by physicists, where even a completely random strategy (i.e. picking spots at random) performs substantially worser than naive probabilities would predict.

So, unless you change the physical properties of cards, you will always end up with an poisson distributed shoe, which gains no information for the player, as cards do not interact, and will thus be completely randomized.

Granted all of this, it still does not answer the question whether there are intrinsically favorable shoe configurations that are beneficial to the house/player and which are somehow discernible to the knowledgeable person. Tarzan has posted in several places how the absence of 7s, 8s, and 9s (more than half) is a situation that favors the house winning the overwhelming number of hands, sometimes even, all or near all hands. I don't know that for sure, but I do trust Tarzan who says so. This is a clearly discernible factor in shoe analysis, and someone with a level three count in which the 7s, 8s and 9s are factored in, might easily be able to pick up on this condition of the shoe.

Something that could be done would be to isolate a shoe where the house won nearly every hand. Then, back it up and examine the relative position of all cards. Is there anything unusual about their distribution? Then, change one card by eliminating a hand or by burning a card and observe what differences occur. Continue making systematic changes and recording the change in overall results. It would be interesting to see, for example, whether the ploppy superstition that changing one card can reverse the advantage. Or that dropping one hand can bring the advantage back to the players. What changes would have to be made to reverse the advantage? This would be a tedious trial and error process, but maybe a computer could be programmed to run quickly through all the possible iterations. My gut says there is science here, but it is buried very deeply. Someone, I can't help thinking, must have already done trailblazing work in this arena. Look how long simple basic strategy went unknown to gamblers and probability experts alike.

I would like to know little things, like what is the likelihood of a shoe that has just favored the house by a huge margin, being shuffled and the next shoe being entirely different, maybe even favoring the player? How often do killer shoes show up for the player? I have played frequently for tens of hours with nothing but see-saw when suddenly I hit a shoe from heaven. Likewise, I have played see-saw for hours and hours when suddenly there comes a shoe from hell. Also, I have played for hour after hour and EVERY shoe was a shoe from hell (my single largest loss with me digging in my heels saying to myself: "It's all one continuous session. There is nothing scientific about changing tables. The longer I play the closer I get to the long run and consequently, will come out winner." And so I played on and on and nothing ever improved. On the contrary, I simply lost and lost and lost. At one point the entire table refused to play unless the house would authorize a reshuffle in the middle of the shoe, so it wasn't just me. This event happened at the Trump Plaza Casino several years ago. I know it's ploppy reasoning, but I sure wish I had changed tables that particular night. Who knows, there is always a remote chance that they were cheating, or maybe the cards just hit that peculiar random mix that is not easily shuffled away and results in bad shoe after bad shoe.

We are all ploppies in some way until science instructs us differently. The science is nearly silent in some of these areas.
 

sagefr0g

Well-Known Member
#10
aslan said:
Granted all of this, it still does not answer the question whether there are intrinsically favorable shoe configurations that are beneficial to the house/player and which are somehow discernible to the knowledgeable person. Tarzan has posted in several places how the absence of 7s, 8s, and 9s (more than half) is a situation that favors the house winning the overwhelming number of hands, sometimes even, all or near all hands. I don't know that for sure, but I do trust Tarzan who says so. This is a clearly discernible factor in shoe analysis, and someone with a level three count in which the 7s, 8s and 9s are factored in, might easily be able to pick up on this condition of the shoe.

Something that could be done would be to isolate a shoe where the house won nearly every hand. Then, back it up and examine the relative position of all cards. Is there anything unusual about their distribution? Then, change one card by eliminating a hand or by burning a card and observe what differences occur. Continue making systematic changes and recording the change in overall results. It would be interesting to see, for example, whether the ploppy superstition that changing one card can reverse the advantage. Or that dropping one hand can bring the advantage back to the players. What changes would have to be made to reverse the advantage? This would be a tedious trial and error process, but maybe a computer could be programmed to run quickly through all the possible iterations. My gut says there is science here, but it is buried very deeply. Someone, I can't help thinking, must have already done trailblazing work in this arena. Look how long simple basic strategy went unknown to gamblers and probability experts alike.

I would like to know little things, like what is the likelihood of a shoe that has just favored the house by a huge margin, being shuffled and the next shoe being entirely different, maybe even favoring the player? How often do killer shoes show up for the player? I have played frequently for tens of hours with nothing but see-saw when suddenly I hit a shoe from heaven. Likewise, I have played see-saw for hours and hours when suddenly there comes a shoe from hell. Also, I have played for hour after hour and EVERY shoe was a shoe from hell (my single largest loss with me digging in my heels saying to myself: "It's all one continuous session. There is nothing scientific about changing tables. The longer I play the closer I get to the long run and consequently, will come out winner." And so I played on and on and nothing ever improved. On the contrary, I simply lost and lost and lost. At one point the entire table refused to play unless the house would authorize a reshuffle in the middle of the shoe, so it wasn't just me. This event happened at the Trump Plaza Casino several years ago. I know it's ploppy reasoning, but I sure wish I had changed tables that particular night. Who knows, there is always a remote chance that they were cheating, or maybe the cards just hit that peculiar random mix that is not easily shuffled away and results in bad shoe after bad shoe.

We are all ploppies in some way until science instructs us differently. The science is nearly silent in some of these areas.
the Book has a section on coolers, nice write up and tables containing specific card order for the coolers. no cards missing, just cards set up in a certain order.
the magic won (Slieght) gave a demostration of a cooler at one of the bj bash's. it was amazing, play basic strategy against that deck and you lose every hand, errhh and as i recall, make an basic strategy error and still lose (edit: albeit sometimes deviation from basic strategy will trigger a win, but going back to basic ends up continuing to lose, oh and the cooler can be cut without destroying it's effectiveness).
oh and it can be set up the other way as well, too where the player wins every hand, lol.
so yeah, there are at least some known configurations of card order that are known to favor the dealer or the player, sorta thing.
can a pack to be dealt end up getting shuffled into such an order randomly, errrh well from our empirical experience one might well suspect so.:rolleyes:
 

aslan

Well-Known Member
#11
sagefr0g said:
the Book has a section on coolers, nice write up and tables containing specific card order for the coolers. no cards missing, just cards set up in a certain order.
the magic won (Slieght) gave a demostration of a cooler at one of the bj bash's. it was amazing, play basic strategy against that deck and you lose every hand, errhh and as i recall, make an basic strategy error and still lose (edit: albeit sometimes deviation from basic strategy will trigger a win, but going back to basic ends up continuing to lose, oh and the cooler can be cut without destroying it's effectiveness).
oh and it can be set up the other way as well, too where the player wins every hand, lol.
so yeah, there are at least some known configurations of card order that are known to favor the dealer or the player, sorta thing.
can a pack to be dealt end up getting shuffled into such an order randomly, errrh well from our empirical experience one might well suspect so.:rolleyes:
Velly intellesting! View attachment 7833

Yes, and there is no way to defeat such card sequences. If you play BS you have to lose no matter where you cut the cards. Just imagine a card shuffling machine that was able to not only read the cards, but was able to shuffle them into one of those configurations. Wow! A Casino with 100% control over it's wins and losses. And, please, no one tell me that we do not have such technology already available to accomplish such a thing. It should make you think twice before you play at any illegal gambling house. I'm guess such a machine would probably retail in excess of $100 thousand, not that it would cost that much to make one.
 

Attachments

tallmanvegas

Well-Known Member
#14
Great information, this weekend was the second time in a row at my fav casino in vegas a dealer gave me a heads up about a table/shoe that's giving away money. Even though these dealers are not that knowledgable in this game, they do see patterns and trends, just a thought, but did me well this weekend
Tallman
 

FLASH1296

Well-Known Member
#15
Tarzan's breathtaking revelation that a shoe composed of balanced high and low cards,
BUT disproportionately over-represented 7's, 8's, and 9's, is nightmarish, warrants discussion.

To see the radical effect upon the player you need but extrapolate to the logical extremes —
a hypothetical deck (or shoe) consisting of only those ranks: 7's, 8's, and 9's.

There are 6 hands that you can be dealt:

7-8
7-9
8-9
7-7
8-8
9-9


The dealer can only display a 7, an 8, or a 9.

The 3 hands above that are not pairs you will hit and lose 100% of the time.
The pairs will fare differently:

7-7 you will hit and lose ⅔ of the time

8-8 you will HIT (not re-split); resulting in 100% losses.

9-9 will stand and win 100% of the time.

This results in an array of 18 hands, with 14 losses, 3 wins and 1 push.

An investment of $18 loses $11.

That yields an expectation of - 61.11%


Noteworthy — in this horror-scene:

No blackjacks.

No Doubles.

No 20's or 19's.
 

shadroch

Well-Known Member
#16
Look for tables that have a lot of empty glasses and overflowing ashtrays.
If it also has a distinct urine smell, you have found a super-hot table. Dive in.
 
#17
I have some information on side counts for HIOPT II and the biggest gain is from side counting a block of cards 6,7, and 8. The PE shoots up to 0.8 but my information doesn't include the block 7, 8 and 9. The effect Tarzan is referring to has everyone busting all the time. The dealer wins because he busts but you bust first.
 
#18
Tarzan knows when this distribution of cards is there. While you are losing like crazy how do you think he is playing these hands. Nothing like a high PE.
 

psyduck

Well-Known Member
#19
FLASH1296 said:
Tarzan's breathtaking revelation that a shoe composed of balanced high and low cards,
BUT disproportionately over-represented 7's, 8's, and 9's, is nightmarish, warrants discussion.

To see the radical effect upon the player you need but extrapolate to the logical extremes —
a hypothetical deck (or shoe) consisting of only those ranks: 7's, 8's, and 9's.

There are 6 hands that you can be dealt:

7-8
7-9
8-9
7-7
8-8
9-9


The dealer can only display a 7, an 8, or a 9.

The 3 hands above that are not pairs you will hit and lose 100% of the time.
The pairs will fare differently:

7-7 you will hit and lose ⅔ of the time

8-8 you will HIT (not re-split); resulting in 100% losses.

9-9 will stand and win 100% of the time.

This results in an array of 18 hands, with 14 losses, 3 wins and 1 push.

An investment of $18 loses $11.

That yields an expectation of - 61.11%


Noteworthy — in this horror-scene:

No blackjacks.

No Doubles.

No 20's or 19's.
What about 6? I remember that 6,7,8,9 are counted together in Tarzan count.
 

FLASH1296

Well-Known Member
#20
Actually Tarzan's Theorem references the 6,7,8,9 grouping.

I am brain dead today.

By tomorrow Tarzan will clarify this entire issue for us.
 
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