Alright now I am a bit confused. After all the smoke clears on this thread I have the question can you shuffletrack or not nowadays? I was thinking about buying Snyder's shuffeltrack cookbook but am under the impression that its a little dated now, is this true? Is there anything I can do to practice at home just trying to track cards until I can learn the math in how to use it?
Shuffle Tracking
- Thread starter JoeV
- Start date
tracking
Yes joev there is a Santa Claus and it is possible gain a great advantage. All the talk about the dilutions and evs with the tracks are part of tracking game. Arnold Synder gives a good start on this theory in his books and it's good reading. He does explain that it takes alot of ablility and practice to be good and I agree. I started this thread with the purpose of discussion and theories and that's what we got. I track or practice at the casinos as added amusement. My skill wouldn't net me any real gain at this point but things could change. I would like to thank all the gentlemen that added to this thread regardless of input. blackchipjim
Yes joev there is a Santa Claus and it is possible gain a great advantage. All the talk about the dilutions and evs with the tracks are part of tracking game. Arnold Synder gives a good start on this theory in his books and it's good reading. He does explain that it takes alot of ablility and practice to be good and I agree. I started this thread with the purpose of discussion and theories and that's what we got. I track or practice at the casinos as added amusement. My skill wouldn't net me any real gain at this point but things could change. I would like to thank all the gentlemen that added to this thread regardless of input. blackchipjim
Hey Joe,
The shffle tracker's cookbook is the best material on the market about shuffle tracking and the information's as useable as it ever was. Even when the book had just been released the majority of shuffles were of a level of complexity that shuffle tracking wasn't going to give you enough of an advantage by itself to warrent moving over to it and away from counting. The best way to deal with shuffle tracking is to treat it - as i stated before - as opportunistic. There are great games out there for the tracker, but you have to look to find them and more to the point, you have to know what you're looking for. Sometimes you'll have to travel to get to them, but when you find a game that you can beat with a substantial advantage and you are good enough to beat it, all the waiting is worthwhile.
RJT.
The shffle tracker's cookbook is the best material on the market about shuffle tracking and the information's as useable as it ever was. Even when the book had just been released the majority of shuffles were of a level of complexity that shuffle tracking wasn't going to give you enough of an advantage by itself to warrent moving over to it and away from counting. The best way to deal with shuffle tracking is to treat it - as i stated before - as opportunistic. There are great games out there for the tracker, but you have to look to find them and more to the point, you have to know what you're looking for. Sometimes you'll have to travel to get to them, but when you find a game that you can beat with a substantial advantage and you are good enough to beat it, all the waiting is worthwhile.
RJT.
:laugh: 
You can shuffle track. The problem is that most shuffles create sufficient dilution that if you were to rely on it as your primary technique, your win rate will be lower than that of a good aggressive counting game. With every shuffle there is a maximum theoretical win rate you can extract from it due to the dilution, even if you were to use a computer, and no amount of practice will get you beyond that point.
Sometimes you can find a very weak shuffle or a dealer shuffling improperly thus giving a shuffle tracker a large advantage, but these are uncommon opportunities on the order of holecarding opportunities which take a lot of work to find, and should only be discussed privately.
Sometimes you can find a very weak shuffle or a dealer shuffling improperly thus giving a shuffle tracker a large advantage, but these are uncommon opportunities on the order of holecarding opportunities which take a lot of work to find, and should only be discussed privately.
I'm going to be as honest as I can with you here Joe, the odds are against you that you will perform shuffletracking with any degree of success in a casino. That will be one of the first things you read when you buy Snyder's book (which I do recommend), and its a painful truth to most. That being said, there is a small chance you can become one of the few that actually pull it off. As stated by others before even if you are able to perform it successfully it will not replace counting. It will however enhance your overall game and present you with some great opportunistic advantages.
As far as practicing tracking I think the book will help you with some drills. One of the things that I do is color one edge of a slug of cards, usually 1/4 deck but it doesn't hurt to do various other sizes also. Keeping them together put them in the pile of 6 or 8 decks, whichever size shoe you usually play. Make note of where the cards are and then turn the pile away from you so yo can't see the marked cards. Now cut to the exact point where you think they start. At first you will see that even though its only been a couple of seconds since you knew where they are your cut will not be exact. Practice until it is, give or take a couple. Its better to be a little heavy with your cut if you're not perfect though, so you don't cut out any of your packet.
When you you've got that down try placing the cards in the stack again and then shuffling using the same exact shuffle the casino you play in uses. You may want to observe the actual shuffle before you guess how they do it for a true gauge on how it works. Once you have the shuffle down, watch your colored cards as you shuffle to see where they end up. Once you are familiar with some basic shuffle characteristics, turn the cards so you can't see the marked ones and try cutting to where you think they are. They may be split up and diluted quite a bit sometimes, but thats okay as long as you can recognize that. Not playing a bad track is just as important if not more as cutting to a good one. This is all very basic stuff I'm telling you, but it gives you a good visual on whats happening. You will need more detailed info to actually play a shuffletrack, but thats what the books are for. Also I'm sure along the way as you have questions there will be others to help you out.
As far as practicing tracking I think the book will help you with some drills. One of the things that I do is color one edge of a slug of cards, usually 1/4 deck but it doesn't hurt to do various other sizes also. Keeping them together put them in the pile of 6 or 8 decks, whichever size shoe you usually play. Make note of where the cards are and then turn the pile away from you so yo can't see the marked cards. Now cut to the exact point where you think they start. At first you will see that even though its only been a couple of seconds since you knew where they are your cut will not be exact. Practice until it is, give or take a couple. Its better to be a little heavy with your cut if you're not perfect though, so you don't cut out any of your packet.
When you you've got that down try placing the cards in the stack again and then shuffling using the same exact shuffle the casino you play in uses. You may want to observe the actual shuffle before you guess how they do it for a true gauge on how it works. Once you have the shuffle down, watch your colored cards as you shuffle to see where they end up. Once you are familiar with some basic shuffle characteristics, turn the cards so you can't see the marked ones and try cutting to where you think they are. They may be split up and diluted quite a bit sometimes, but thats okay as long as you can recognize that. Not playing a bad track is just as important if not more as cutting to a good one. This is all very basic stuff I'm telling you, but it gives you a good visual on whats happening. You will need more detailed info to actually play a shuffletrack, but thats what the books are for. Also I'm sure along the way as you have questions there will be others to help you out.
I've got George C's book. It's really not worth the money. The information in it is fine, just very basic. My problem with it was more to do with the fact that i didn't even pay twice as much for the Cookbook and it provided at least 10x the information in a far clearer and more in deapth fashion. If you're that interested, get the Cookbook.
RJT.
RJT.
And I might as well flog QFIT's CVShuffle software here. Once you get over the learning curve it will tell you everything you need to know about a shuffle, and applying the data you get from it to general blackjack math (you'll probably need to write your own routines and spreadsheets to do this) you can figure out what you can and cannot do with a particular shuffle.
Haven't used it yet, but it should be a good way to determine how simple cut card techniques can boost the counting game.
When I'm doing analysis what I normally use is the card-to-card data in CVShuffle. It's a painful technique, but I'll grab 100 or so card-to-card data sets and cut-and-paste them to an Excel file. Then I have a solid sample of a particular dealer's output on a particular shuffle and I can apply them to any tracking or sequencing scheme I wish, with enough data to give me some reasonable statistics. You can apply this method to your visual techniques if you wish; you just write your program to "see" a packet with some degree of accuracy you determine, and again "see" where it ends up in the daughter shoe, and you'll be able to determine just how many of the cards you were hoping for end up where you expected, plus the standard deviation of that number. For nearly all shuffles, you won't be encouraged.
Just one thing though, there is a word which is sometimes used in American society (particularly in the Northeast) and that's omerta. BJ Bob may be able to give an insightful discussion of this word and it's implications, and it's something you must observe on these websites (and really, with nearly everyone) when doing research into particular shuffles or particular techniques. I myself have been busted for this a few times when I was starting out, coming up with an new idea then coming to a site "Hey guys, look what I just discovered, you can..." , resulting in a few unhappy notes from full-time pros who rely on exactly this unpublished technique. Having a solid reputation for observing omerta will open doors for you.
When I'm doing analysis what I normally use is the card-to-card data in CVShuffle. It's a painful technique, but I'll grab 100 or so card-to-card data sets and cut-and-paste them to an Excel file. Then I have a solid sample of a particular dealer's output on a particular shuffle and I can apply them to any tracking or sequencing scheme I wish, with enough data to give me some reasonable statistics. You can apply this method to your visual techniques if you wish; you just write your program to "see" a packet with some degree of accuracy you determine, and again "see" where it ends up in the daughter shoe, and you'll be able to determine just how many of the cards you were hoping for end up where you expected, plus the standard deviation of that number. For nearly all shuffles, you won't be encouraged.
Just one thing though, there is a word which is sometimes used in American society (particularly in the Northeast) and that's omerta. BJ Bob may be able to give an insightful discussion of this word and it's implications, and it's something you must observe on these websites (and really, with nearly everyone) when doing research into particular shuffles or particular techniques. I myself have been busted for this a few times when I was starting out, coming up with an new idea then coming to a site "Hey guys, look what I just discovered, you can..." , resulting in a few unhappy notes from full-time pros who rely on exactly this unpublished technique. Having a solid reputation for observing omerta will open doors for you.
Yeh i know what that means and that's why i engaged in discussion about such a useless shuffle. Discussing venues or stratagies to beat any worthwhile shuffle would have been ignored.
Now you see i find CVData ST very useful for examining certain aspects of shuffles but more useful i find is to simply shade a packet of cards, have someone perform the shuffle you desire again and again and again and examine the results you achieve. One pass shuffles are very lucrative regardless of the type of shuffle performed (although some are more desireable) although there are opportunities with certain 2 pass shuffles given certain conditions. If you can identify where your cards fall every time - or when you're packet's been destroyed - and when you've got it it's not too diluted then you've got a playable shuffle. As long as you can visually identify the location and spread of you're packet you never need worry about how much of it is there. Your eyes have already told you. There's more to it than that, but that's a very good start for any packet tracker. After that comes all the maths involved in risk assessment and such like.
RJT.
Now you see i find CVData ST very useful for examining certain aspects of shuffles but more useful i find is to simply shade a packet of cards, have someone perform the shuffle you desire again and again and again and examine the results you achieve. One pass shuffles are very lucrative regardless of the type of shuffle performed (although some are more desireable) although there are opportunities with certain 2 pass shuffles given certain conditions. If you can identify where your cards fall every time - or when you're packet's been destroyed - and when you've got it it's not too diluted then you've got a playable shuffle. As long as you can visually identify the location and spread of you're packet you never need worry about how much of it is there. Your eyes have already told you. There's more to it than that, but that's a very good start for any packet tracker. After that comes all the maths involved in risk assessment and such like.
RJT.
And my approach is to reverse the order and do the theory first. This way you know just how much accuracy is required, how much risk is involved and what the potential profit is before practicing anything. Who knows, it might tell you that you'll have to practice something quite different than what you thought.
With a few techniques like what you describe, it turned out that I could get a playable advantage, all right, but statistically the right conditions would occur maybe only once every few hours. That's not very good, all that time would be more profitably spent straight counting. So instead I concentrate only on tracking techniques that don't interfere with an aggressive counting game, and these techniques happen to require very little practice or visual accuracy to implement.
With a few techniques like what you describe, it turned out that I could get a playable advantage, all right, but statistically the right conditions would occur maybe only once every few hours. That's not very good, all that time would be more profitably spent straight counting. So instead I concentrate only on tracking techniques that don't interfere with an aggressive counting game, and these techniques happen to require very little practice or visual accuracy to implement.
And i can see the purpose to that. If it requires you to find a packet of 15 extra high cards to get a workable advantage, that would be a waste of time. However if you learn to look for certain opportunities you don't explore the mundane shuffles that offer little actual weakness. Now of course it's not all down to the shuffle, it's also very dependant on the dealer - look for those dealers who regularly plug in such a way as to shuffle the cut-offs into themselves, dealers who realiably shuffle certain packes of cards with certain other packs, hence creating stronger information etc etc. If you can find a dealer with weakness alongside a shuffle with weakness you've got yourself a gold mine.
If you know the weaknessess you are looking for before hand you can practice something specific. No doubt an analysis is always something that you should perform before investing any serious volumes of money, but in general they should be done to confirm the details of what you already know.
Again i would emphasize that as much as i was using the 2 pass stepladder shuffle as a point to prove that even a bad shuffle can be beaten, i completely agree that these aren't workable for any real advantage. I can gain an advantage there, but it would be weak enough that it wouldn't be worth the effort certainly not compared to a strong counting game.
Also any tracking technique that involves little visual accuracy is a disastor waiting to happen. Map tracking in any way is a technique that died a long time ago with the death of the simple one-pass R&R shuffles. Shuffles are as you've pointed out already too complex these days and just down right too fiddely. There's too many potential points for variation, too many points where the dealer can stray from the plan and the only way to know shuffle to shuffle if that has happened or not is to watch closely.
Sequencing techniques without visual aid is - just due to the high chances of false key and split sequneces - a very high risk game that will increase already huge variance. Again these are far better performed with visual tracking, vastly cutting down on the chances of false keys and split sequences.
RJT.
If you know the weaknessess you are looking for before hand you can practice something specific. No doubt an analysis is always something that you should perform before investing any serious volumes of money, but in general they should be done to confirm the details of what you already know.
Again i would emphasize that as much as i was using the 2 pass stepladder shuffle as a point to prove that even a bad shuffle can be beaten, i completely agree that these aren't workable for any real advantage. I can gain an advantage there, but it would be weak enough that it wouldn't be worth the effort certainly not compared to a strong counting game.
Also any tracking technique that involves little visual accuracy is a disastor waiting to happen. Map tracking in any way is a technique that died a long time ago with the death of the simple one-pass R&R shuffles. Shuffles are as you've pointed out already too complex these days and just down right too fiddely. There's too many potential points for variation, too many points where the dealer can stray from the plan and the only way to know shuffle to shuffle if that has happened or not is to watch closely.
Sequencing techniques without visual aid is - just due to the high chances of false key and split sequneces - a very high risk game that will increase already huge variance. Again these are far better performed with visual tracking, vastly cutting down on the chances of false keys and split sequences.
RJT.
Alright I have more questions. First off I want to say thanks for you guys answering all my questions. Secondly I want to say I have been practicing with shaded cards the last couple of days and found what Bojack said about the 1/4 deck on the bottom of the discard tray is right on. I have been using a 2 pass step ladder shuffle with the first pass getting mixed with all 3 piles, and the 2nd pass just shuffling the 2 piles together just like the casino I play most does it. Every time so far the bottom 1/4 deck always ends up at the bottom 2 decks and once in a while 2 and a half if my picks are a little bigger. With this information is there anything I can do to use this for an advantage? Also sometimes I notice the marked cards are concentrated at the top and the bottom of the 2 decks with unknown cards in between. Is there a way to know this without marked cards or should I just stick with knowing that they are all in the bottom couple of decks and play it that way? Any advice is appreciated.
Hey Joe,
Now you're getting to the point where you really have to start looking at the dynamics of your specific shuffle.
This is an unusual technique and you won't be able to use it often, but it is a good point to start from. What you have to start looking at is the various nuances - is the grab with your packet picked up last or second last? How many times does the dealer riffle each grab? If your packet is picked up second last then its going to end up in a different location, if the dealer riffles each grab twice your packet is going to be spread over the whole deck grab whereas if they only riffle once since you're packet's on the bottom of the grab, it's going to be spread through the bottom 1/2 deck. The later is obviously perferrable as your packet will only be spread through 1 rather than 2 decks at the end of the shuffle.
If there's anything i can help you with, just let me know. It can be tricky to get your head round a lot of this stuff.
RJT.
Now you're getting to the point where you really have to start looking at the dynamics of your specific shuffle.
This is an unusual technique and you won't be able to use it often, but it is a good point to start from. What you have to start looking at is the various nuances - is the grab with your packet picked up last or second last? How many times does the dealer riffle each grab? If your packet is picked up second last then its going to end up in a different location, if the dealer riffles each grab twice your packet is going to be spread over the whole deck grab whereas if they only riffle once since you're packet's on the bottom of the grab, it's going to be spread through the bottom 1/2 deck. The later is obviously perferrable as your packet will only be spread through 1 rather than 2 decks at the end of the shuffle.
If there's anything i can help you with, just let me know. It can be tricky to get your head round a lot of this stuff.
RJT.
As to the advantage aspect - what you have to start considering in excess cards. Your 1/4 deck contains 9 extra high cards. There are another 23 1/4 deck packets (assuming a 6D shoe) so each of those packets will contain on average 0.4 extra low cards (9/24).
Now in the best situation where the dealer only riffles each grab once your packet is going to be mixed with 3 other 1/4 deck packets (to make the eventual 1 deck i mentioned in the previous post) each containing 0.4 extra low cards, so a total of 1.2 extra low cards. Just to be safe, i'm going to round up to 2 extra low cards here. So over all your new one deck packet is going to contain 7 extra high cards. Now using the Hi/Lo it's easy enough to do the calculations - You have a TC=7 then subtract 1 (assuming a TC-1 game) for the house advantage and place the bet you'd usually place at this count.
If the dealer was to riffle each grab twice things get a lot poorer than this, especially if your grab was taken as the second last grab, but this is something that you have to investigate for yourself.
Also be aware that this is a dramatic over simplification of the matter. It assumes perfect grabs (i.e. not splitting your packet) on the second pass and truthfully you shouldn't be betting the way i describe. You will have the advantage betting in that manner, but there's more advantage to take using other methods.
RJT.
Now in the best situation where the dealer only riffles each grab once your packet is going to be mixed with 3 other 1/4 deck packets (to make the eventual 1 deck i mentioned in the previous post) each containing 0.4 extra low cards, so a total of 1.2 extra low cards. Just to be safe, i'm going to round up to 2 extra low cards here. So over all your new one deck packet is going to contain 7 extra high cards. Now using the Hi/Lo it's easy enough to do the calculations - You have a TC=7 then subtract 1 (assuming a TC-1 game) for the house advantage and place the bet you'd usually place at this count.
If the dealer was to riffle each grab twice things get a lot poorer than this, especially if your grab was taken as the second last grab, but this is something that you have to investigate for yourself.
Also be aware that this is a dramatic over simplification of the matter. It assumes perfect grabs (i.e. not splitting your packet) on the second pass and truthfully you shouldn't be betting the way i describe. You will have the advantage betting in that manner, but there's more advantage to take using other methods.
RJT.