Situational Betting Question

Right now I am reading "Blackbelt in Blackjack" by Arnold Snyder, and I have a question about Situational Betting.

It lists alot of situations and when the players expectation goes up and down, such as:

1) When the player wins a hand, he is more likely to lose the next hand.
2) When a player loses a hand, he is more likely to win the next hand.

Then there are more detailed ones such as:

3) When a player splits Aces, he is more likely to lose the next hand.
4) When the player makes a 4 card hand, he is more likely to win the next hand.
5) When the player gets a 4 card hand and so does the dealer, the players expectation rises more drastically.


All these make sense to me, but my real question is, since all of these theories (except maybe 1 and 2) are just based on basic counting theory, Do any of these apply to playing against a CSM?

No........ zg

some of those examples make sense to me also. my experience has been that some of those points do apply with a CSM. the problem is that my experience is so limited that it's virtually meaningless. these scenerios would need to be simulated in order to definatively answer your question. i don't know if there is a blackjack simulation program that could handle those scenerios. it would be most interesting to see the results. i've played the things where i'll wong in on them (they are virtually heat free) right after a unusually large majority of low cards has come out. my own experience doing that has been fairly sucessful. can't recommend it though as it needs to be simulated
my suspicion is that what ever edge is there would be miniscule making the CSM closer to a coin flip situation than the normal edge it holds. i just don't think the CSM can put a tables worth of cards right back on the table so there could be some merit in what we are hoping for there. thats only my opinion though your mileage may vary.
best regards,
mr fr0g

Those rules do not apply to CSMs. As you pointed out, they are based on the fact that certain cards are removed from the shoe. Snyder shows (actually, I think it was John Gwynn's study) that the overall effects of removal for certain hands (winning hands, losing hands, split aces, etc.) will generally change the overall EV very slightly (I think around 0.01% per occurrence).

The whole point of a CSM is that it re-circulates the cards immediately, essentially creating a shoe that is perpetually shuffled. You will therefore always be placing a bet “off the top” of the shoe. The effects of removal for the situations you listed are not relevant because the cards have been replaced immediately after their removal.

-Sonny-

i believe the cards have the potential to come out immeadiately but not like the potential that a roulette wheel has to for example produce black ten times or what ever in a row. what i'm trying to say is that i suspect the roulette wheel fits the model of an independent trial to a significantly greater degree than the king csm. lets say on a csm table you have six spots occupied counting the dealer. i think it's 2.7 cards per spot that will come out on average. thats about 16 cards. if the cards were hand shuffled it would be a pretty mean feat for those same sixteen cards to be dealt back again the very next round. i don't know exactly how the csm goes about feeding cards to the dealer but even if it has the potential to immeadiately re-deal the same cards i strongly suspect that such an occurance would be relatively unlikely. we know that the thing can't allways perform immeadiate re-deal of the same cards since if it did not even ploppies would play it. so this is why i think there is a degree of applicability of the rules Snyder outlined. the fact that the machine does have the capability to re-deal the cards immeadiately however would in my opinion make the possible edge realized miniscule and unfortunately probably not enough to overcome the house edge.

best regards,
mr fr0g

I don't think the King CSM can kick out the same just played cards in the next hand. I've been counting on this thing for a little while just for curiosity (casino is very close drive), including today. I was backcounting as another test today, and when the count was favorable, I jumped in. Out of 5 players and dealer, we all got 10's and I pushed. When I was learning BS these CSM games were OK to play but now I mainly use these tables to practice counting to increase my speed. What I have witnessed so far is these CSM's seem to consistantly clump low cards and high cards. I save my limited bankroll for better games but I'm finding some interesting trends with these things.

Why would low cards clump together and why would high cards clump together? They must just like to be with their own kind...