New to Counting

[cburg07]

I love the website and have gotten a lot of good info so far. I have two questions. I am going to Vegas over memorial day weekend and have heard of casinos starting to use automatic shufflers during play.

1. Is it still possible to count cards if these are around?
2. What are the best casinos in Vegas for playing black jack?

[rukus]

1. if you mean automatic shufflers (not continuous shufflers! - these are NOT countable), then yes you can still count on these tables. just make sure they arent pulling 1-2 decks out of a machine shuffling 6-8 decks. as a matter of fact you will get more hands per hour, which is a good thing when trying to get to the long run. the reason professionals dont typically play these is because they use additional techniques such as shuffle tracking which is impossible with auto shufflers.
2. ill leave this to those who play in vegas most of their time.

[vonQuux]

Originally Posted by cburg07

Is it still possible to count cards if these are around?

As I understand it, it's possible to beat CSMs but it requires a great deal of skill as well as a significant amount of knowledge about the specific model in question. For your purposes I would definitely treat them as un-countable.

On the other hand I'm quite new to counting. Consider my answer overruled if any of the regulars disagree with this assessment.

vQ

[ihate17]

Originally Posted by cburg07

I love the website and have gotten a lot of good info so far. I have two questions. I am going to Vegas over memorial day weekend and have heard of casinos starting to use automatic shufflers during play.

1. Is it still possible to count cards if these are around?
2. What are the best casinos in Vegas for playing black jack?

An ASM (auto shuffler) just takes 6 decks and shuffles them while you are playing with a different 6 deck stack. These are countable as explained earlier.

A CSM (continuous shuffler) has 4-5 decks in it that are constantly being shuffled and after every hand or two the dealer inserts the discards into the machine. These are not considered countable.

CBJN Current blackjack news: A publication you can purchase at bj21.com which will give you rules, approx pen and other information for most every blackjack game in the U.S. and Canada. It is a very good starting source for finding good games in places like Vegas, saving you a ton of shoe leather. It is not foolproof, but a glance at the Vegas section will help you know which places you want to avoid and which will be at least worth a look.

ihate17