miscellaneous

[blackjill]

Hello all,

I apologize if this was discussed already--I've searched the forum and couldn't find the right answer. Do automatic shuffling machines have any impact on the flow of cards? If you could choose, would you go with ASMs or dealer shuffled cards? I ended up going to AC and started practicing card counting. I was surprised by the fact that it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. It did get a bit tedious after a while (is there a point in card counting where you manage to stop focusing and just kind of start scanning the cards while having fun?) so I got nauseatingly drunk. At the end of the night I was up $300 (hey, I play the $5 table) so it wasn't that bad at all. However the count never got 'interesting'. It would always linger around 0. I do remember it once being -7 and another time +3. But for the most part it was pretty neutral. Is it really rare to score a decent + count?
Another unrelated question--what's it like at the Trump Marina?? I've never been there. Also, is it possible to walk to the Borgata from there?
Thanks.

[EasyRhino]

Think of ASMs as just a really fast shuffle. You'll get the same kinds of cards that you get out of a dealer shuffle. The advantage to a card counter is that they're fast (more hands per hour = more money).

Some advanced players can "shuffle track" lumps of high-value cards through a manual shuffle. This is obviously impossible with an ASM. I am not one of these players.

If you're not playing with an advantage, an ASM would speed up the game. More hands = more money lost, so they're bad.

A big problem with 8D shoes is that they take a long time to play through. If the tables are full, they take a LONG time to play through. So you may have witnessed the occassional "drought" of high counts, combined with a slow pace of play. TC of +3 is legit though, I hope you got a couple of elevated bets in.

Note that since counts are so glacial in shoe games, it's important to be able to bail on tables with negative counts and a few decks dealt (either playing or backcounting) and move on to another table that just shuffled to increase your chances of finding some good counts.