Shuffletrack Sidebets

Saw a Lucky Ladies QhQh hit tonight with a dealer blackjack. Made the guy $7500 (1000:1). After the shuffle next time around there were 3 cards seperating the two Queen of hearts. Is this the norm for an 8deck hand shuffled shoe game? I'm a bit uninformed when it comes to shuffle tracking and have never heard of anyone using it for side-bets. Though Im sure tracking the aces players would put up the dollar on progressive blackjack. Anyone have experience with this?
BW

What you have observed is the fundamental principle of sequencing- that with a riffle shuffle cards tend to stay in order, with a number of cards inserted in the interstices and that number ranging from a constant for a perfect riffle, to a somewhat variable number for a real-world riffle.

Sequencing can be used for probably every bet that exists. With a BJ sidebet I'd say that would make tracking an ace even more powerful than it is in the regular game.

So how do u know they were the same 2 Queens?

You really cant. But if they only did one riffle then it is very likely that they were the exact same queens of hearts. Since I think that with one riffle the average displacement is about 3 cards, and he did say exactly 3 cards were in between them.

3 cards between

I can't be sure they were the same Queens, but they came out three cards between which is intinctively what I thought should happen with the standard 8 deck shuffle, just wanted to verify with someone more experienced. 3 other Qh's came out in that shoe and all were by themselves. I watched the shuffle/cut closely and missed by about a 3/4deck where I thought they should have come out. I was surprised the casino didn't switch out the decks after it hit, they use a lot of ASM's but not on that table luckily. Either way after it hit so many ploppies joined the 'hot table' that I figured unless there was 7 cards between, the ladies wouldn't be together again....Still I was drawn to watch just in case.

The average displacement is only 1 card for one riffle.

Oh yeah, I meant 2 riffles.

I though it was something like 1 riffle=1 card, 2 riffles =3cards, 3 riffles=7cards.

I use a slightly simpler method. Just raise 2 to the power of the number of riffles and you will know which card should "hit the money." With two riffles, the 4th card (2^2) will be the money card. With three riffles it will be the 8th card (2^3). With a standard two-pass shuffle it would be about six riffles and 64 cards away (2^6)...assuming it didn't get stripped away (and that is a BIG "if"). That is why it is so important to have the strip happen early in the shuffle (before too many riffles) and to avoid multiple-pass shuffles when sequencing. Those are two factors to look for when scouting for beatable shuffles.

-Sonny-

Unless you are playing heads up against the dealer, i'm not convinced that sequencing is the best method to attact this game. I'd need a look at the payout schedual, but just off the top of my head tracking a whole packet with a lot of queens would more than likely be a better use of your time - you'll get more chances at the lower payouts.
Of course with sequencing if you just managed to land one queen of hearts as the first card, you could potentially raise this into a very +ve EV game. As with any game that relies on a highly unlikely event for the 'jackpot' it's going to have a high varience.

RJT.

I did some analysis for the lucky ladies side bet for card steering/sequencing, you can find the posts here. I'm not sure if my math or dacium math is 100% correct but it might be worth looking at again. I know I made a couple of mistakes but for some reason his numbers seem really high too.

Here's the thread
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=4514

Josh

I guess, maybe, if u knew the cards around the first occurence, then u might know more likely if they were the same queens? U crazy guys ever do that?

Brock - were u playing one-on-one?