Ruffled by The Shuffle and Card Clumping

BOND

Active Member
#1
Two experienced APs I met constantly complain about low-value cards clumping together, thus reducing or eliminating long term advantage.


Their argument is as follows:

The dealer pickup procedure causes low-value card clumping. The dealer first picks up the busted hands, then the losing hands, and then the winning hands followed by the dealer's hand. After the shuffle, these low-value card clumps are perserved. During high true counts, the low-value clumps cause the AP to lose more often on the double-downs and splits, and receive fewer blackjacks. In the middle of playing these low-value clumps, the AP should open 3 or more spots to disperse these low-value clumps.


My counter argument:

I agree that dealer pickup and shuffle procedure may cause low-value card clumping, but the AP will have an advantage in the long term. During high counts and low-value clumps, the AP will have short term -EV, but after those clumps the high percentage of ten-value cards and aces remaining in the shoe will more than compensate for the short term loses caused by the low-value card clumps. It is unnecessary for the AP to open 3 or more spots in an attempt to disperse these low-value clumps.


Any constructive insights and opinions?
 

MeWin$

Well-Known Member
#2
Ur Friends

Ur friends are wrong: but dont take my word for it.

Read the blackjack books by the experts and not one of them ever says to spread to three hands to seperate clumps.
 

Sucker

Well-Known Member
#3
MeWin$ said:
Ur friends are wrong: but dont take my word for it.

Read the blackjack books by the experts and not one of them ever says to spread to three hands to seperate clumps.
Yes, your friends are completely wrong; but unfortunately you're probably just wasting your breath if you try to reason with them. Sometimes the cards will RANDOMLY come out in such a way that it might SEEM like it's a valid theory. After witnessing this empirical evidence a couple of times, they'll be hooked; and NOTHING in the world will ever change their mind. :laugh:

Actually, there ARE books that claim validity to this theory, and the authors come up with explanations as to WHY they think it's true; and they also offer ways to (supposedly) counteract the problem. None of these authors have EVER come up with any proof WHATSOEVER to back up this claim.

WE; on the other hand, have a whole section DEVOTED to theories such as this; it's called "Blackjack-Voodoo Betting Strategies".
 

Friendo

Well-Known Member
#5
Empirical Evidence is Nearly Useless

Anyone watching me play this month would conclude that low counts and minimum bets provide a steady income. My earnings on mediocre counts have been really impressive: splits and doubles all over the place, followed by dealer busts. Higher counts are not as kind - I'm just south of even over the past few trips.

After yet another mediocre neutral-count shoe the other day, I had to tell myself "This isn't real: my mind is making something out of nothing."

Our minds have too short a horizon. We want to see patterns where there are none.
 

BOND

Active Member
#10
Disclaimer

DISCLAIMER: These two APs are not friends of mine and I do not play with them at the same casino.

I personally believe they have been spooked by short term variance (and difficult playing conditions) and are creating voodoo theories to explain their short term loses.

They probably need some anti-voodoo classes.:whip:
 
#11
alwayssplitaces said:
Theoretically you are playing at an advantage when the count is dropping and at a disadvantage when it is rising.
Ive pondered this fact many times but couldnt figure out how to take advantage of it. No math to it. Maybe I need to work on my ESP.:laugh:
 

psyduck

Well-Known Member
#12
tthree said:
Ive pondered this fact many times but couldnt figure out how to take advantage of it. No math to it. Maybe I need to work on my ESP.:laugh:
I think if you count cards, you already take advantage of it. Player's advantage comes at high counts. When the count is high, it is more likely to fall because there are more high cards in the deck.

Another way of taking advantage of falling count is to know the location of high cards by shuffle tracking.
 

bigplayer

Well-Known Member
#13
psyduck said:
I think if you count cards, you already take advantage of it. Player's advantage comes at high counts. When the count is high, it is more likely to fall because there are more high cards in the deck.

Another way of taking advantage of falling count is to know the location of high cards by shuffle tracking.
The high running count is likely to fall (move towards zero), the True Count is always most likely to stay unchanged. That is why wonging is so valuable...once a shoe TC goes substantially negative any rebound to a substantially positive TC becomes unlikely. Even if the count rebounds it seldom rebounds to the point where you would be putting out more than a mid-range bet...in the meantime the number of low cards that would have to come out to create the rebound in the count puts you at a huge disadvantage for those rounds. Earlier in the shoe when the high cards are all flying out you've been betting small even though you had a huge advantage (and didn't realize it).

Regarding the whole clumping issue...random does not mean evenly distributed. Blackjack's do not occur exactly every 21 hands and Video Poker Royal Flushes every 40,000 hands. The only time a shoe is evenly distributed is when they break open the fresh decks. Evenly mixed isn't random and any shuffle that isn't random is exploitable by someone. The more decks in play the more extreme the possible mixes of low and high cards can become....which is why you can get some really monster running counts in an eight deck game that you would never imagine seeing in a single or double deck game.
 

21gunsalute

Well-Known Member
#14
bigplayer said:
The high running count is likely to fall (move towards zero), the True Count is always most likely to stay unchanged.
Here we go again. Wrong! That is a gross misrepresentation of the True Count Theorum. On average, through billions of trials on different shoes a certain TC at a given point in the shoe(s) will remain constant, but in actual practice the TC can and does vary widely throughout any given shoe. It will average out to be the same over billions of trials because it will soar off in one direction as often as it plummets in the other. How many times do you see a shoe start off negative, shoot way off into positive territory and then plummet back into negative territory? I almost never see as TC remain constant throughout a shoe.
 

MangoJ

Well-Known Member
#16
21gunsalute said:
That is a gross misrepresentation of the True Count Theorum. On average, through billions of trials on different shoes a certain TC at a given point in the shoe(s) will remain constant, but in actual practice the TC can and does vary widely throughout any given shoe.
I think you have a misinterpretation of the theorem. The theorem doesn't state that the expected TC fluctuation is zero. The TC will fluctuate in any real shoe especially towards the end. The TC theorem states that the average TC value will be constant - that is when you average over the heavy fluctuations.

In other words:
Just because the TC is expected to be constant, it doesn't mean that the most probable outcome will be a flat TC line towards the end of the shoe.
In fact a flat TC towards the end is the least probable outcome (a deck corresponding to a flat TC has the least entropy)

Don't confuse statistical expectation with something that is most probable.
Expectation is an average over all possible outcomes with their corresponding probability. And very often (if variance is small), the expectation value lies near the most probable outcome. But if variance is high, the most probable outcomes are most often well separated, and the expectation value lies inbetween, nothing near the most probable outcome.
 

21gunsalute

Well-Known Member
#17
MangoJ said:
I think you have a misinterpretation of the theorem. The theorem doesn't state that the expected TC fluctuation is zero. The TC will fluctuate in any real shoe especially towards the end. The TC theorem states that the average TC value will be constant - that is when you average over the heavy fluctuations.

In other words:
Just because the TC is expected to be constant, it doesn't mean that the most probable outcome will be a flat TC line towards the end of the shoe.
In fact a flat TC towards the end is the least probable outcome (a deck corresponding to a flat TC has the least entropy)

Don't confuse statistical expectation with something that is most probable.
Expectation is an average over all possible outcomes with their corresponding probability. And very often (if variance is small), the expectation value lies near the most probable outcome. But if variance is high, the most probable outcomes are most often well separated, and the expectation value lies inbetween, nothing near the most probable outcome.
I believe that is what I stated. You did a much better job of explaining it though.
 

Nightshifter

Well-Known Member
#20
A general statement about cheating by the casino comes from a former casino owner, Harold Smith Jr. He states in his book, "We could cheat all the time, and they would never know it. We're far more expert at this business than they are." By "they," Smith is referring to the agents of the Gaming Control Board, who are supposed to be experts at detecting cheating. If Smith's statement is true, how can the average player ever hope to spot casino cheating?

The most effective way for a casino to cheat a player is to manipulate the gaming equipment, or “rigging” the equipment to make you lose. Hard to believe in this day and age, isn’t it?

The biggest reason for this is a “loophole” that the Nevada State Gaming Control Board (for example) has in it’s Minimum Internal Control Standards (or “MICS” for short). According to these documents, there are no such industry standards when it comes to Roulette Wheels, balls, card shoes, card shufflers, dice, tables, chairs, or anything else used to run table games! In fact, one of my NSGBC contacts (I’ll call him “Joe” for now…) told me “If they wanted to, a Casino in Nevada could use anything from a Golf Ball up to a Basketball to run a Roulette game.”

Don’t believe me? I know. I know. I realize how difficult this is to believe, but it’s all true! Check out the regulations on their website for yourself! Here is their website:
http://gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx?page=182

Armed with this knowledge, I dug a little deeper into famed Atlantic City, New Jersey. According to New Jersey State Gaming Regulations, there are also no standards about the use of card shufflers (another HUGE casino cheat), dice, gaming tables, and any/all other gaming equipment used in casinos!

If this is possible for Vegas and Atlantic City, then you can probably assume it’s the same around the world too. In the past, Las Vegas has set the benchmark example for all other states/countries when they developed their own Gaming rules and regs.

“How can that be possible?” you ask? Well, my NSGBC contact “Joe” told me that most Casinos more or less use their own “assumed” standards, for balls, wheel maintenance, etc. and that the NSGBC sees no wrongful doings with theirs OR the Casino’s practices so far. Yes, the NSGBC may do casino equipment checks constantly, but what are they checking against? There is absolutely nothing in writing as far as the MICS are concerned! So, ALL of their checks must be using those “assumed” standards – whatever they are!

So what prevents Casinos from using Golf Balls, loaded Dice, or whatever? Easy. It’s called “fear”. That is to say, fear that they will get a bad rep as a cheat! If they gain this bad reputation, then they lose money to their competition. So they make it look as honest as possible, without their cheating looking blatant.


So, since there is nothing in writing, how can the Nevada Gaming Commission legally charge a casino of cheating, using rigged equipment? This is the "loophole" that allows casinos to legally cheat. It is VERY easy to see a link of collusion if one was looking for it.

So, to keep the money coming in, in these hard economic times, the ways they cheat us today is much more sophisticated, subtle, and covert compared to the ways they openly cheated us in the past.

Now, let’s examine some of the more uncommonly known cheats.

Blackjack...


Specifically, the deck. Removing one or more ten-value cards and/or Aces from the deck can dramatically increase the house’s edge, and few players will notice the difference between a deck of 52 cards and a deck of 48, or even an eight-deck shoe from which half a deck has been removed... buuuuttttt…

What if the machine shufflers arrange it so that many of the 10-count cards are at the end of the shoe, behind the cut card? Isn’t that the same thing as removing them to give the House a huge advantage?

Let's say that the machine shufflers put an above average number of 10-value cards in the middle of the shoe. By default, most people cut the shoe in the middle too. Now, the dealer places the front half of the cut to the back and puts the card in about a deck's worth from the end. Now, there are a higher than average amount of 10-value cards that are no longer in play - thus, giving the House a HUGE advantage!
 
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