slug tracking headaches

[Automatic Monkey]

The technique I described is for those that are starting out and want to try their hand at shuffletracking with a basic technique thats somewhat easy for beginners. To answer your question on how often could you get a count such as I described right off the bat, on a fairly regular basis if you have the talent to put them there.

No, you can't. Assuming you are talking High-Low, you cannot guarantee 9 of the first 13 cards in a shoe will be high cards if the cards are being shuffled with a shuffle actually used in casinos.

Also I wouldn't worry about you violating any code if I were you, so far I don't think you quite get it. By the way, could you answer the question I originally asked, will you be playing with an advantage in my example, and if so how do you know?

Sorry, but the AP's who actually use these techniques (rather than bloviating about them on message boards) are loyal to one another if only as fellows of the trade and we don't talk about particular shuffles nor particular casinos. Ever. It destroys opportunities and deprives players of their income. You have violated this code on this site and that is how I know you don't quite get it. And as one would expect you were wrong about the vulnerability of that particular shuffle.

In the example you have given, there is not enough information for you to know if I have an advantage because you don't know what shuffle I'm talking about and I'm not going to tell you. Shuffles that are that easy are rare and tend not to last very long, but good places to start looking for them are small, remote joints with lax supervision where you will often find dealers blowing shuffles in such a way as to make them vulnerable. You'll also see it sometimes when a casino has just changed its shuffle.

 

[RJT]

Yes, and a reasonable assessment of that variance is that that variance is very high. The variance in straight counting will also balance out, and many of us will go bankrupt waiting for that to happen. It is no different for tracking.

If you go bankrupt waiting for that you didn't make a reasonable assessment of varience.

The kind of tracking you are talking about where you take the relatively unmolested first round and cut it to a position where you will know when to play it has both the least variance and the least power of all the ST techniques. You can play all night to predict an advantage for only a couple of hands that way. Other forms of tracking are much more powerful, but they usually require a computer.

And are illegal. Keep it AP not criminal.

Again, it depends on the shuffle, and it depends on the dealer. Dealer grabs have variability too, some more than others, and some shuffles are more sensitive to the size of the dealer grabs than others. The shuffles that are more sensitive are both more vulnerable and have higher variance.

That's where the visual aspect of tracking come in. Everything i stated previously still applies. A map may have some basic uses as a first step to decoding a shuffle, but if you can use your eye it's never going to work.

Invest in CVShuffle, and you will see that with any real-world shuffle implemented by any real-world dealer...

Tell you what, when you can estimate a stack to a 1/4 deck or less, then you can talk about "real world shuffles". As it stands you've open admitted that you can't do that, so you can't shuffle track. Full stop.

... if the shuffle has a stepladder you will sometimes find any card from the mother shoe in any part of the daughter shoe. Therefore you can never know where all of your packet is, nor what cards have been mixed in with it. Variance.

I've played against real world shuffles - including that oh so fear step ladder, and still am able to tell you how much of my packet ends up where. As i stated before, any individual occurance is entirely inconsequenetial. By analysing the long term i can say that in the packet i eventually cut to the front - or whatever desired position - i have x amount of the cards that were in my original slug. I can also give an assessment of where the other cards in the slug went. Perfectly tracking a shuffle - which was the word you used, "perfectly" - means that the cards that you track are always where you expect them to be. No exceptions.

RJT.

 

[RJT]

No, you can't. Assuming you are talking High-Low, you cannot guarantee 9 of the first 13 cards in a shoe will be high cards if the cards are being shuffled with a shuffle actually used in casinos.

Actually you can. By cutting the good packet to the front you greatly increase the chances of the packet repeating. You don't have the visual dexterity to manage that, so yes the shuffles that the casinos use are going to stop you on that level. If you have the required visual dexterity then yes you can force a good 1/4 deck to occur far more regularly than it would naturally.

RJT.

 

[Bojack1]

No, you can't. Assuming you are talking High-Low, you cannot guarantee 9 of the first 13 cards in a shoe will be high cards if the cards are being shuffled with a shuffle actually used in casinos.



Sorry, but the AP's who actually use these techniques (rather than bloviating about them on message boards) are loyal to one another if only as fellows of the trade and we don't talk about particular shuffles nor particular casinos. Ever. It destroys opportunities and deprives players of their income. You have violated this code on this site and that is how I know you don't quite get it. And as one would expect you were wrong about the vulnerability of that particular shuffle.

In the example you have given, there is not enough information for you to know if I have an advantage because you don't know what shuffle I'm talking about and I'm not going to tell you. Shuffles that are that easy are rare and tend not to last very long, but good places to start looking for them are small, remote joints with lax supervision where you will often find dealers blowing shuffles in such a way as to make them vulnerable. You'll also see it sometimes when a casino has just changed its shuffle.

Man, you are not part of some community or brotherhood. Some day you will see this. You post thousands of comments on message boards and play blackjack occasionally. This is fact. I've seen your game, and its left wanting. As a blackjack player you are a good mathametician, leave it at that. You have issues that I care not where they stem from, but the references to real play coming from you are quite laughable to say the least. I will not debate you as its impossible to instill wisdom on the unwilling, so play as you like, and enjoy imparting the message boards with all that you know about the game. Let the buyer beware.

 

[Automatic Monkey]

Actually you can. By cutting the good packet to the front you greatly increase the chances of the packet repeating. You don't have the visual dexterity to manage that, so yes the shuffles that the casinos use are going to stop you on that level. If you have the required visual dexterity then yes you can force a good 1/4 deck to occur far more regularly than it would naturally.

RJT.

I didn't say a good 1/4 deck, I said 9 of 13 cards being predictably high. A good 1/4 deck only requires one extra high card. For you to know what 9 of 13 cards will be they would have to either not be shuffled, or you would have to know what they have been shuffled with. If it is a multi-pass shuffle you would have to know all the sections of the mother shoe that have been combined with it.

If all you are doing is tracking the first grab out of the shoe, you start out by diluting its richness by a factor associated with the shuffle. On a good day that factor will be 4. Then you have to consider that you will not always have the cut card, and the person cutting may cut it out of play or to the back of the shoe where you will have to wait to play it. Dilute your advantage further. Now, you have to consider that most of the time the composition of those first cards is going to be neutral or low cards, or otherwise not worth playing.

Not to say the technique isn't worth it at all, but as an adjunct to counting, not a substitute. I use it myself to help improve the results of my counting game, to make it slightly more likely that I will receive high cards when my counting predicts high cards. But that's all it's really worth.

 

[RJT]

I didn't say a good 1/4 deck, I said 9 of 13 cards being predictably high. A good 1/4 deck only requires one extra high card. For you to know what 9 of 13 cards will be they would have to either not be shuffled, or you would have to know what they have been shuffled with. If it is a multi-pass shuffle you would have to know all the sections of the mother shoe that have been combined with it.

And i didn't say that it would guarentee the 9/13 result, but you can make it occur far more frequently than it would naturally.

If all you are doing is tracking the first grab out of the shoe, you start out by diluting its richness by a factor associated with the shuffle. On a good day that factor will be 4. Then you have to consider that you will not always have the cut card, and the person cutting may cut it out of play or to the back of the shoe where you will have to wait to play it. Dilute your advantage further. Now, you have to consider that most of the time the composition of those first cards is going to be neutral or low cards, or otherwise not worth playing.

Moving away from the beginner - a person who realistically can shuffle track, can find his packet with or without the cut card. You will get the occasions where it's cut out of play, or when it gets split by someone else cut, but you account for these things and recognise where your packet is after the cut. Whether you have the cut card or not, you should be able to play the packet in the vast majority of occasions.
Also, if you're not getting the cut card the majority of the time you're doing something wrong. Knowing how to ask other players in the right way gets me the cut i'd say about 7 out of every 10 times i want it. That makes the whole process easier.

Not to say the technique isn't worth it at all, but as an adjunct to counting, not a substitute. I use it myself to help improve the results of my counting game, to make it slightly more likely that I will receive high cards when my counting predicts high cards. But that's all it's really worth.

Who suggested using it as a replacement to counting? And that's not really worth it. You use this to play through a high packet of cards and know they are there. If you are just using it to double check your count, your wasting your time using shuffle tracking at all. Bit like cutting a packet of high cards to a point just in front of the shuffle card, counting through the shoe then getting to the end with a good count and going 'great i know the count's right cause i put the high cards there'. If you only play based on the count, you're knee-capping your advantage.

RJT.

 

[Automatic Monkey]

And i didn't say that it would guarentee the 9/13 result, but you can make it occur far more frequently than it would naturally.

Not far more frequently, and I know you didn't say 9/13.

Moving away from the beginner - a person who realistically can shuffle track, can find his packet with or without the cut card. You will get the occasions where it's cut out of play, or when it gets split by someone else cut, but you account for these things and recognise where your packet is after the cut. Whether you have the cut card or not, you should be able to play the packet in the vast majority of occasions.

No. Around here, expect to be playing this kind of game in a 8D shoe with 2D cut off. Assuming the packet is diluted into a two deck zone, and assuming a random cut, the zone is going to be partially or totally behind the cut card 50% of the time. That is not a vast majority. if you find a good game, let's say 6D/1.5D cut, it's going to be cut into even more frequently.

The best way to use this technique, I've found, is to cut a bunch of low cards to the front and watch those rounds get dealt out the next shoe, then start playing with an advantage. If the low cards don't come out right away, you know you've gotten a rotten deal on the distribution and you can start backcounting another table now.

Also, if you're not getting the cut card the majority of the time you're dsomething wrong. Knowing how to ask other players in the right way gets me the cut i'd say about 7 out of every 10 times i want it. That makes the whole process easier.

Where I play, 7 out of 10 people are of races other than mine and are very superstitious about these things and the chances of getting the cut card from them are zero. My player's card is printed in Chinese, and most of them don't appreciate a roundeye of any kind at their table.

What I have found to be more successful is simply telling them where to cut, and explaining why.

Who suggested using it as a replacement to counting? And that's not really worth it. You use this to play through a high packet of cards and know they are there. If you are just using it to double check your count, your wasting your time using shuffle tracking at all. Bit like cutting a packet of high cards to a point just in front of the shuffle card, counting through the shoe then getting to the end with a good count and going 'great i know the count's right cause i put the high cards there'. If you only play based on the count, you're knee-capping your advantage.

RJT.

That's not what I meant, I don't use it to check my count, but to help reduce the effect of variance in my count. When you have a good count, every one of those extra high cards you have counted could be behind the cut card and like a lamb to the slaughter, you'll never know and keep betting as the count gets higher and higher and you keep getting bad cards. A skilled cut card placement can increase the chances of the high cards being in play and the low cards out of play. The advantage gained by this kind of tracking alone is too dilute to practically use it without counting.

 

[JoeV]

This might seem like a stupid question but what is a step ladder shuffle?

 

[RJT]

No. Around here, expect to be playing this kind of game in a 8D shoe with 2D cut off. Assuming the packet is diluted into a two deck zone, and assuming a random cut, the zone is going to be partially or totally behind the cut card 50% of the time. That is not a vast majority. if you find a good game, let's say 6D/1.5D cut, it's going to be cut into even more frequently.

If you are tracking a half deck packet with a count of -12 that goes through a 2 pass shuffle the first being a stepladder and the second being a R&R on the first pass you can expect your ½ deck to get mixed firstly with another half deck which will contain on average 1.1 extra low cards, but to be conservative we’ll round to 2. This takes our count to -10 of which we can expect to keep only ¾ due to the stepladder taking us to -7.5 and assume that another 1 extra low card gets mixed in so we’ll be super conservative and round to -6.
Then the next pass – we’ve got a 1 deck packet with a count of -6 which will get mixed with a packet further 1 deck packet with an average of 1.2 extra low cards, rounding up to 2, leaving us ultimately with a total count on the packet of -4. This would give us a TC of 2 on our packet and a playable packet – albeit not a great one.
With a 2 deck packet, it will be split 1/3 of the time and 2/3 of the time it will be unaffected by a random cut (all of this is of course assuming a 6 deck shoe). Now it doesn’t matter if some of it is cut behind the shuffle card, the section in front of the shuffle card is still going to have the same average TC. For example if half of it was cut off that would leave you with a 1 deck packet with an average count of -2, leaving you the same TC of 2. Still an advantage packet and not something you should turn your nose up at.
Now this is far from an ideal shuffle for this kind of technique, but it is still usable. I have also aired very much on the side of caution here rounding off 2.2 high cards just to ensure that I don’t over-bet. As long as I am as proficient as I should be I should always be under betting my advantage.
Of course I haven’t taken into account any dealer errors here or my packet getting split by the dealer, but this is something you would have to deal with at the time, making a decision on whether or not that packet was worth playing by visual skill alone. It is far from unusual for a dealer to actually make a packet stronger rather than weaker with their uneven grabs and shuffle irregularities, so you always need to use your eyes to select the best opportunities.

The best way to use this technique, I've found, is to cut a bunch of low cards to the front and watch those rounds get dealt out the next shoe, then start playing with an advantage. If the low cards don't come out right away, you know you've gotten a rotten deal on the distribution and you can start backcounting another table now.

This is one of the worst possible ways that you could handle that situation and i don't know of one person who actually uses these techniques successfully who would even consider playing it that way. Guarenting that you play through as many of the small cards as possible whilst having no guarentee of getting the extra high cards (you will get some of them on average, but only some - the rest will lie behind the cut card varience will balance it out, but it will not level out the extra low cards you play through). That actually creates a larger disadvantage for you.
And if the low cards don't come out - and this is where so many shuffle tracker wannabes fall down - the chances are you didn't make a very good job of tracking the packet. Once in a while you'll get as you put it a "rotten deal on the distribution", but if that's happening on any regular basis you are doing something wrong.
The idea is to play through more of the high cards not force the count up by seeing extra low cards. Far better - yet still far from perfect - would be to cut the low cards out of play and adjust your count up the way. As long as you are doing your calculations correctly the varience will balance itself out, you end up playing through more high cards and less low cards which is the objective of shuffle tracking.

Where I play, 7 out of 10 people are of races other than mine and are very superstitious about these things and the chances of getting the cut card from them are zero. My player's card is printed in Chinese, and most of them don't appreciate a roundeye of any kind at their table.

What I have found to be more successful is simply telling them where to cut, and explaining why.

I’ve dealt with these superstitious people as well. I’ve been told that “You haven’t won a hand since you sat down so why would I be lucky now?” – I still get the cut card 7 out of 10 times on average (and I got it on that occasion). You just need to know how to ask for it. You find that many people are glad to give the responsibility up.
Also I’ve played in both AC and Connecticut. If you are saying that you are non-white and consider Caucasians superstitious (the only way I could imagine you getting a figure like 7 out of 10 being of other race than yourself as there was no way the ratios where that high for the other minorities) I would suggest that Caucasians are no more superstitious than any other race, and certainly compared to Asian gamblers tend to be a lot less so.
It’s also a little misguided to think that the US is the only western country in the world that experiences this sort of diversity of race. You go to any of the casinos in the city centers in the UK and you’ll find many many players of African and Asian decent.
Explaining why you should cut where you would cut? Novel, but it’ll get you kicked out quickly enough. If you demonstrate a knowledge of the location of packets of high cards and it turns out to be right you’ve completely blown – and more – any cover shuffle tracking might have provided you.

That's not what I meant, I don't use it to check my count, but to help reduce the effect of variance in my count. When you have a good count, every one of those extra high cards you have counted could be behind the cut card and like a lamb to the slaughter, you'll never know and keep betting as the count gets higher and higher and you keep getting bad cards. A skilled cut card placement can increase the chances of the high cards being in play and the low cards out of play. The advantage gained by this kind of tracking alone is too dilute to practically use it without counting.

And just as likely, all the high cards will be in front of the cut card and you'll be playing with a higher advantage than you think you are. This effect of not being able to judge where exactly in the remaining deck these extra high cards are is already accounted for in the estimate on advantage you have from counting and hence the bet size you place. When you can guarantee that your cards are in a smaller area they your advantage rises exponentially. I’ll say again – if you are just using shuffle tracking to reduce the variance of counting and guarantee your high cards are where you say they are, then you are missing out on a huge chunk of the potential gain from shuffle tracking.
Again nobody was talking about using this instead of counting. Certainly it is a far stronger technique in the right conditions and those conditions do still exist if you are prepared to look for them, but for a shuffle like this it is a technique that is only going to reach its full potential if you can harvest packets from any point in the shoe. If you cannot manage that, then yes you should stick to counting and use this to add a little extra.


RJT.

 

[RJT]

This might seem like a stupid question but what is a step ladder shuffle?

Hey Joe,
A step ladder shuffle is when the dealer splits the pile into 2 then takes a grab off each pile and shuffles them together and lays them down as the shuffled stack, then takes a grab off one of the 2 piles and a grab off the shuffled stack then shuffles them together, takes a grab of the other pile and again off the shuffled stack etc etc.
Obviously the pattern can change, they may split it the orignal pile into more than 2 or any other variation, but it is this re-shuffling of the shuffled cards that defines it as a step ladder.

RJT.

 

[Automatic Monkey]

If you are tracking a half deck packet with a count of -12 that goes through a 2 pass shuffle the first being a stepladder and the second being a R&R on the first pass you can expect your ½ deck to get mixed firstly with another half deck which will contain on average 1.1 extra low cards, but to be conservative we’ll round to 2. This takes our count to -10 of which we can expect to keep only ¾ due to the stepladder taking us to -7.5 and assume that another 1 extra low card gets mixed in so we’ll be super conservative and round to -6.
Then the next pass – we’ve got a 1 deck packet with a count of -6 which will get mixed with a packet further 1 deck packet with an average of 1.2 extra low cards, rounding up to 2, leaving us ultimately with a total count on the packet of -4. This would give us a TC of 2 on our packet and a playable packet – albeit not a great one.

No, that's wrong. If you put a half deck through the kind of shuffle you describe, part of the packet is going to be diluted by a factor of 4 and part is going to be diluted by a factor of 8.

With a 2 deck packet, it will be split 1/3 of the time and 2/3 of the time it will be unaffected by a random cut (all of this is of course assuming a 6 deck shoe).

But it's not a 2 deck packet, it's a 4 deck packet (because of the factor of 8 dilution) and we don't always have 6D shoes available. This kind of game might be better off on an 8D shoe.

Now it doesn’t matter if some of it is cut behind the shuffle card, the section in front of the shuffle card is still going to have the same average TC.

Irrelevant. The part that is behind the cut card is EV down the toilet. You cannot disregard this when calculating the value of this kind of approach.

For example if half of it was cut off that would leave you with a 1 deck packet with an average count of -2, leaving you the same TC of 2. Still an advantage packet and not something you should turn your nose up at.
Now this is far from an ideal shuffle for this kind of technique, but it is still usable. I have also aired very much on the side of caution here rounding off 2.2 high cards just to ensure that I don’t over-bet. As long as I am as proficient as I should be I should always be under betting my advantage.

Underbetting your advantage is again, EV down the toilet. Never underbet your advantage. You need it to make up for the times you don't have the advantage. You've already screwed up the math seriously.

Of course I haven’t taken into account any dealer errors here or my packet getting split by the dealer, but this is something you would have to deal with at the time, making a decision on whether or not that packet was worth playing by visual skill alone.

Unless you are tracking the very first half-deck in the discards, it almost always will be split. When you can tell exactly by how much (probably requires locating the packet and the dealer grab to 2-3 cards), you'll be able to tell how much your advantage has changed and compensate.

It is far from unusual for a dealer to actually make a packet stronger rather than weaker with their uneven grabs and shuffle irregularities, so you always need to use your eyes to select the best opportunities.

But they will usually make it weaker. What you are suggesting requires tracking every part of the shoe, not just a heavy or light segment.

This is one of the worst possible ways that you could handle that situation and i don't know of one person who actually uses these techniques successfully who would even consider playing it that way.

I do.

Guarenting that you play through as many of the small cards as possible whilst having no guarentee of getting the extra high cards (you will get some of them on average, but only some - the rest will lie behind the cut card varience will balance it out, but it will not level out the extra low cards you play through). That actually creates a larger disadvantage for you.

Who said anything about playing them? You can play them if you want, but if I've cut a raft of low cards to the front of a shoe, I'm going to sit there and watch them get dealt out before I start playing.

And if the low cards don't come out - and this is where so many shuffle tracker wannabes fall down - the chances are you didn't make a very good job of tracking the packet. Once in a while you'll get as you put it a "rotten deal on the distribution", but if that's happening on any regular basis you are doing something wrong.

Who cares? The cards are the cards, and it makes no difference whatsoever whether they're not where I expect them to be because of dealer error, my error, or an unfortunate distribution.

In the Bible, the book of John chapter 20 says:

 24Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"
      But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."

 26A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 27Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."

 28Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"

 29Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

You wish to have faith in yourself, in the dealer, and in the cards falling right. There is only One Thing I have faith in, and it's not any of those. Maybe you're a better Christian than I, I have no idea, but when it comes to advantage play, when given a choice it is always better to see before believing than to accept something on faith.

Experienced AP's lunge at an opportunity to see something happen before placing a bet, rather than betting followed by guessing and hoping, which is the technique you're describing.

The idea is to play through more of the high cards not force the count up by seeing extra low cards. Far better - yet still far from perfect - would be to cut the low cards out of play and adjust your count up the way. As long as you are doing your calculations correctly the varience will balance itself out, you end up playing through more high cards and less low cards which is the objective of shuffle tracking.

No, never wait for variance to balance itself out when you have an opportunity to reduce variance instead. You can bet more when you reduce it. Any form of shuffle tracking involves some watching and waiting.

Besides, we've already established that a half deck track is going to be distributed among 2 to 4 decks. Do you often play games with 2-4 decks cut off? If not, you can't steer the track fully into the cutoff; some of it will end up in the played part of the shoe. I'd rather watch it all come out up front, then I know exactly what kind of a distribution I've got before I start handling big money.

And just as likely, all the high cards will be in front of the cut card and you'll be playing with a higher advantage than you think you are. This effect of not being able to judge where exactly in the remaining deck these extra high cards are is already accounted for in the estimate on advantage you have from counting and hence the bet size you place.

That's not what I want. You can never eliminate all variance from this game and you have to count anyway. Move high cards up front, you have to bet your black chips up front and only hope the cards ended up where you wanted. Move low cards up front, and you can sit back and watch as your count increases. Ideally, one would want to move high cards to the end of the play zone before the cut cards, which is the same as moving low cards everywhere else, but this is something different than what we're talking about.

When you can guarantee that your cards are in a smaller area they your advantage rises exponentially. I’ll say again – if you are just using shuffle tracking to reduce the variance of counting and guarantee your high cards are where you say they are, then you are missing out on a huge chunk of the potential gain from shuffle tracking.

You can guarantee nothing with shuffle tracking. All you can do with it is condense some of the cards in some of the shoe, some of the time.

Again nobody was talking about using this instead of counting. Certainly it is a far stronger technique in the right conditions and those conditions do still exist if you are prepared to look for them, but for a shuffle like this it is a technique that is only going to reach its full potential if you can harvest packets from any point in the shoe. If you cannot manage that, then yes you should stick to counting and use this to add a little extra.

Again, that's a different kind of tracking too. There's only so much I can say about this without jeopardizing advantages for myself and others. I can't fully fault you for the bad counsel you are under, but please divest yourself from the pep talk and sales pitch briefly and listen to reason: ST is not easy and it's not a matter of training visual skills, deck estimation to a 1/4 deck isn't going to help you. The reality is that real-world shuffles leave little advantage to be had in themselves and if you are going to track packets it's best used as a boost to an already well-designed counting game.

 

[RJT]

No, that's wrong. If you put a half deck through the kind of shuffle you describe, part of the packet is going to be diluted by a factor of 4 and part is going to be diluted by a factor of 8.




But it's not a 2 deck packet, it's a 4 deck packet (because of the factor of 8 dilution) and we don't always have 6D shoes available. This kind of game might be better off on an 8D shoe.

No i'm afraid you're wrong on this one. Half ad deck gets mixed with half a deck on the first pass. Even if it's a step ladder you ignore a certain amount of the slug due to it being to diluted. So after one pass you have a 1 deck packet - or 2 grabs. 2nd pass will mix your 2 grabs with a further 2 grabs. That makes a total of 2 decks (or 4 half decks ). All it takes is a little common sense to work that out.

Irrelevant. The part that is behind the cut card is EV down the toilet. You cannot disregard this when calculating the value of this kind of approach.

So you want to flush EV by cutting low cards to the top of the pack, but you're quite happy to ignore a good packet because you couldn't get access to the cut card and some of its ended out of play? Seems a little contradictory. The few times i don't get the cut card i'm be happy to take whatever part of the packet i can get. Advantage is advantage.

Underbetting your advantage is again, EV down the toilet. Never underbet your advantage. You need it to make up for the times you don't have the advantage. You've already screwed up the math seriously.

As anyone who actually does shuffle track know, it is preferrable to underbet your possible advantage - or be slightly conservative - rather than risk over betting which can be far worse. I was also airing very much on the side of conservatism in that example to prove that advantage was still gainable. I may not be quite so harsh when acutally playing.

Unless you are tracking the very first half-deck in the discards, it almost always will be split. When you can tell exactly by how much (probably requires locating the packet and the dealer grab to 2-3 cards), you'll be able to tell how much your advantage has changed and compensate.

Completely true - but you are yet to refute the fact that you can't even estimate a stack to a 1/4 deck, so what are you doing claiming you can track successfully?

But they will usually make it weaker. What you are suggesting requires tracking every part of the shoe, not just a heavy or light segment.

Not true. Mapping a shuffle can expose many weaknesses which can be taken advantage of. Also you need to be aware of the edges of your packet and how they will affect you if they happen to be taken with your packet. Sometimes your packet will be mixed with 1/3 of a deck rather than 1/2 a deck. This makes a big difference and you should be aware of this.

Who said anything about playing them? You can play them if you want, but if I've cut a raft of low cards to the front of a shoe, I'm going to sit there and watch them get dealt out before I start playing.

Yet still flush EV down the toilet as there were far better ways to use that information.

Who cares? The cards are the cards, and it makes no difference whatsoever whether they're not where I expect them to be because of dealer error, my error, or an unfortunate distribution.

No such thing as a dealer error when it comes to shuffles, only a poor tracker who didn't pay enough attention or practice enough before s/he started. Personally i would care a lot if i was losing money due to my own incompetence. But hey if people want to flush their cash down the toilet with a "who cares, it was probably a bad distribution" attitude who i'm i to argue.

In the Bible, the book of John chapter 20 says:

 24Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"
      But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."

 26A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 27Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."

 28Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"

 29Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

Please don't start quoting relgious texts at me. I am familiar with the Bible and it holds no significance to me what-so-ever. It's irritating enough when people come round door to door forcing their beliefs in your face.

You wish to have faith in yourself, in the dealer, and in the cards falling right. There is only One Thing I have faith in, and it's not any of those. Maybe you're a better Christian than I, I have no idea, but when it comes to advantage play, when given a choice it is always better to see before believing than to accept something on faith.

I have faith in myself yes. That faith comes for a very long time spent practicing and proving to myself time and time again exactly what i am capible of and where my weaknesses are.
You say that it's better to see first, but do you see the high cards in front of the shuffle point when the count's high and you're betting big? No, so why do you bet on that? Because you know the maths and you understand that your varience will be balanced out as long as you've made a correct assessment of risk.

Experienced AP's lunge at an opportunity to see something happen before placing a bet, rather than betting followed by guessing and hoping, which is the technique you're describing.

Experienced AP's make sure they are well practiced then apply that practice to a real world environment. Unsuccessful AP's jump in saying they can shuffle track without the visual accuity to do it. When you know how to get the advantage you take everything you can get. You don't walk away from a good packet just because some of it is behind the shuffle card. Obviously you would prefer to get the cut card every time and play all of your packet, but those times you don't get the cut card, you make the best of the advantages you can get.

No, never wait for variance to balance itself out when you have an opportunity to reduce variance instead. You can bet more when you reduce it. Any form of shuffle tracking involves some watching and waiting.

Playing with a higher advantage does reduce varience. So throwing away advantage increases rather than decreases varience. In this case you should be cutting the low cards out of play and adjusting accordingly. This will increase your advantage and hence lower your varience further than cutting the low cards to the front so you can check you were right. If you are at a stage where you should be shuffle tracking in the casino, you should no longer need to check - you know you're right.

That's not what I want. You can never eliminate all variance from this game and you have to count anyway. Move high cards up front, you have to bet your black chips up front and only hope the cards ended up where you wanted. Move low cards up front, and you can sit back and watch as your count increases. Ideally, one would want to move high cards to the end of the play zone before the cut cards, which is the same as moving low cards everywhere else, but this is something different than what we're talking about.

Shuffle tracking requires a lot more practice and dedication that card counting and this is exactly why. With shuffle tracking you can't afford to get it wrong, so most people shouldn't even attempt it. To get the real advantage you have to know exactly where your cards are. That's what i've been saying all through this thread. You either know where the cards are or you don't. If you do - play for the highest advantage. It takes a huge amount of work to get to the stage where you can follow packets accurately through a shuffle, but it's far from impossible. If you don't - don't waste time pretending. This wait and see style shuffle tracking isn't worth it because it simply isn't good enough. It's not a strong technique.

You can guarantee nothing with shuffle tracking. All you can do with it is condense some of the cards in some of the shoe, some of the time.

Now this just comes down to a mis-guided understanding of what is and is not humanly possible. If you can't track a packet through a shuffle that's fine. Others can. Accurately. Nothing to do with dealers, simply to do with accurately being able to visually follow a small group of cards through a shuffle that happens right in front of your eyes. Once learned it's not hard to say that such an amount got cut off here and the packet got split there. It's just practice, albeit a lot of practice.

Again, that's a different kind of tracking too. There's only so much I can say about this without jeopardizing advantages for myself and others. I can't fully fault you for the bad counsel you are under, but please divest yourself from the pep talk and sales pitch briefly and listen to reason: ST is not easy and it's not a matter of training visual skills, deck estimation to a 1/4 deck isn't going to help you. The reality is that real-world shuffles leave little advantage to be had in themselves and if you are going to track packets it's best used as a boost to an already well-designed counting game.

I'm going to end this here. I've shown where and why you're wrong and that's all i've got to say. You can't track. It is visual. You're right, you need to be more accurate than 1/4, but you can't manage that so you're kinda screwed.
You're little rants are ammusing i'm sure to those that know no better than to listen to you, but rather boring to any with even a slight clue. If you could even drop your ego for long enough to ask genuine advice, then you might improve your fairly sub-standard game, but as you once again have to take the converstation down to being patronising and making veiled insults about Bojack i'll just leave you to it.

RJT.

P.S. I learned very little about shuffle tracking from Bojack. He pointed out a few interesting ideas, but my knowledge had been gained from other places than him, so next time please get your facts straight.

 

[Automatic Monkey]

No i'm afraid you're wrong on this one. Half ad deck gets mixed with half a deck on the first pass. Even if it's a step ladder you ignore a certain amount of the slug due to it being to diluted. So after one pass you have a 1 deck packet - or 2 grabs. 2nd pass will mix your 2 grabs with a further 2 grabs. That makes a total of 2 decks (or 4 half decks ). All it takes is a little common sense to work that out.

Ah, OK. Ignore it. A capital suggestion! How much of the slug would you suggest we ignore, and why, and how much variance does this add to your advantage?

So you want to flush EV by cutting low cards to the top of the pack, but you're quite happy to ignore a good packet because you couldn't get access to the cut card and some of its ended out of play? Seems a little contradictory. The few times i don't get the cut card i'm be happy to take whatever part of the packet i can get. Advantage is advantage.

Once you realize how little advantage you get with this type of tracking, you'll expend your efforts in other ways.

I do a lot of research into shuffles. Did you know that even with a computer tracking every card placed into the discards, with a typical casino shuffle the SD of a prediction of a 1 deck segment in the daughter shoe is about 5 High-Low TC's? In other words, if you predict a TC of +5 you can reasonably expect it to be between 0 and +10.

Now I realize you have more accuracy and calculative power than an Athlon processor, but can you suggest how one might adjust one's bet to compensate for this?

As anyone who actually does shuffle track know, it is preferrable to underbet your possible advantage - or be slightly conservative - rather than risk over betting which can be far worse. I was also airing very much on the side of conservatism in that example to prove that advantage was still gainable. I may not be quite so harsh when acutally playing.

Neither is good nor necessarily better than the other. You bet your advantage, with your variance factored in. This is Kelly's Theorem, which is what allows us to actually make money at this game. You can underbet your possible advantage while a counter is fully betting his real advantage. I'd rather be the counter.

Completely true - but you are yet to refute the fact that you can't even estimate a stack to a 1/4 deck, so what are you doing claiming you can track successfully?

Not to be an ass (really), but this statement shows that you are very limited in your knowledge of shuffle tracking. There are as many different ways to use tracking as there are ways of counting. Some require good visual skills, others do not. Most are fully unpublished.

No such thing as a dealer error when it comes to shuffles, only a poor tracker who didn't pay enough attention or practice enough before s/he started.

When I attack a shuffle, it's with the understanding that I'm already familiar with the shuffle and the dealer is going to do what s/he is supposed to do. If the dealer happens to do something different, this changes everything (or maybe not) and I have to be able to compensate or abort.

Funny story: one time I had set up a monster shoe and the dealer blew the shuffle and the PC came over and made her do it again. Everyone else at the table was giggling while I was scowling.

Personally i would care a lot if i was losing money due to my own incompetence. But hey if people want to flush their cash down the toilet with a "who cares, it was probably a bad distribution" attitude who i'm i to argue.

You miss the point. If the cards aren't where they're supposed to be, it makes no difference why. You lose. This isn't about my ego; when I'm playing BJ I'm not interested in showing my skills or proving a point because there is no one there who will appreciate it and all I'm interested in is getting my EV in and making enough money to stick a needle in my arm with something in it that night. :joker: That's why I assume everything that can go wrong, will, and minimize risk where possible.

Please don't start quoting relgious texts at me. I am familiar with the Bible and it holds no significance to me what-so-ever. It's irritating enough when people come round door to door forcing their beliefs in your face.

Again you miss the point. You have created a religion for yourself where you and your abilities are considered infallible. My faith is reserved for God and when it comes to blackjack, I'll trust what I see come out of the shoe before I trust my own opinions about myself and my abilities. For I make mistakes all the time.

I have faith in myself yes. That faith comes for a very long time spent practicing and proving to myself time and time again exactly what i am capible of and where my weaknesses are.
You say that it's better to see first, but do you see the high cards in front of the shuffle point when the count's high and you're betting big? No, so why do you bet on that? Because you know the maths and you understand that your varience will be balanced out as long as you've made a correct assessment of risk.

That's true. So why shuffle track at all? With backcounting you can assure that every hand you play will be at a theoretical advantage. Backcounting and shuffle tracking are not a good mix because the latter involves spending a lot of time watching tables in unplayable counts waiting for the shuffle. When I see a bunch of high cards come out in the first round, this is now a negative shoe and I have no more interest in it.

Playing with a higher advantage does reduce varience. So throwing away advantage increases rather than decreases varience.

WRONG! Kid, you can't even spell variance, let alone define it. Variance defines what proportion of your bankroll you can assign to any bet at a given advantage. There are games that I have an option to play that have an advantage higher than BJ but that I usually eschew, because the variance is so much higher as to make it not a worthwhile bet in the real world.

In this case you should be cutting the low cards out of play and adjusting accordingly. This will increase your advantage and hence lower your varience further than cutting the low cards to the front so you can check you were right. If you are at a stage where you should be shuffle tracking in the casino, you should no longer need to check - you know you're right.

Shuffle tracking requires a lot more practice and dedication that card counting and this is exactly why. With shuffle tracking you can't afford to get it wrong, so most people shouldn't even attempt it. To get the real advantage you have to know exactly where your cards are. That's what i've been saying all through this thread. You either know where the cards are or you don't. If you do - play for the highest advantage. It takes a huge amount of work to get to the stage where you can follow packets accurately through a shuffle, but it's far from impossible. If you don't - don't waste time pretending. This wait and see style shuffle tracking isn't worth it because it simply isn't good enough. It's not a strong technique.

You never know where the cards are. There's always some uncertainty, it's greater than the uncertainty of counting and this may be hard for you to hear, but it's built into the shuffle itself. Good as Arnold's ST book is, the casino people have all read it too and adjusted their procedures, thus it is very rare to find a shuffle that alone is more vulnerable than a straight backcounting attack.

Now this just comes down to a mis-guided understanding of what is and is not humanly possible. If you can't track a packet through a shuffle that's fine. Others can. Accurately. Nothing to do with dealers, simply to do with accurately being able to visually follow a small group of cards through a shuffle that happens right in front of your eyes. Once learned it's not hard to say that such an amount got cut off here and the packet got split there. It's just practice, albeit a lot of practice.



I'm going to end this here. I've shown where and why you're wrong and that's all i've got to say. You can't track. It is visual. You're right, you need to be more accurate than 1/4, but you can't manage that so you're kinda screwed.
You're little rants are ammusing i'm sure to those that know no better than to listen to you, but rather boring to any with even a slight clue. If you could even drop your ego for long enough to ask genuine advice, then you might improve your fairly sub-standard game, but as you once again have to take the converstation down to being patronising and making veiled insults about Bojack i'll just leave you to it.

RJT.

P.S. I learned very little about shuffle tracking from Bojack. He pointed out a few interesting ideas, but my knowledge had been gained from other places than him, so next time please get your facts straight.

You know, whatever. One sure way to turn off sources of new information is to claim that you already know it all.

 

[Bojack1]

You know I feel bad about this thread. The purpose of most is to either ask questions or add insight. I get the feeling nobody will gain anything from this due to the nature of what gets posted after a few disagree. It should be no secret that as far as the practical application of playing, or drama series type stories, there is very little I agree on with Automatic Monkey. That being said I feel nobody reads threads that are nothing more than useless flailing away at each other. I think RJT has expressed good true valid points in shuffletracking methods that I fear will be missed because of obvious tension, but to be fair AM has expressed his opinions to the contrary as well. The fact that I don't agree with AM doesn't change the fact I think this thread should be looked at as full of info and try to remove the obvious undertones of some of the threads, mine included, and judge for yourself what actually is good or not so good for possibly incorporating it into your game. I will also like to caution it is not likely any just starting can learn any techniques such as shuffletracking reading a few message board posts, but it can give a start into research and direction. I will also warn to use discretion when taking advice from those you don't know, make sure things are what they are said to be before jumping into anything.

 

[RJT]

I have to agree with you on this one Bojack. Too many threads that actually contain some good discussion are getting burried under this extended non-sense. I kept this to a civil and polite disagreement on methods and was quite prepared to carry on a discourse on the subject.

RJT.

 

[RJT]

Fair doos Sonny, but i feel i still had a few valid points there.

• Critiquing spelling and grammer in another's posts is a sure sign of a failing argument. It shows a lack of anything constructive to add
• Condescending to someone only makes you look foolish. Referring to someone by terms like "Kid" only show that you can't gain the upper hand through reasoned argument and have to try to belittle the person to improve your standing.
• Making statements like "I can't fully fault you for the bad counsel you are under, but please divest yourself from the pep talk and sales pitch" can never be construed as polite dicourse. Simply demeaning - as in trying to take responsibility away from someone not capable of it - and as i stated earlier a fairly obvious veiled insult.

I doubt that you can disagree with any of that.

RJT.

 

[RJT]

For the sake of completeness i will respond to some of this

Ah, OK. Ignore it. A capital suggestion! How much of the slug would you suggest we ignore, and why, and how much variance does this add to your advantage?

A 2 deck pack where 3/4 of your slug lands gives an advantage. The other 1/4 of your slug gets mixed through a larger area and will provide no advantage.

I do a lot of research into shuffles. Did you know that even with a computer tracking every card placed into the discards, with a typical casino shuffle the SD of a prediction of a 1 deck segment in the daughter shoe is about 5 High-Low TC's? In other words, if you predict a TC of +5 you can reasonably expect it to be between 0 and +10.

Now I realize you have more accuracy and calculative power than an Athlon processor, but can you suggest how one might adjust one's bet to compensate for this?

If you are using map tracking yes you are going to have a very high variation in the amount of your packet that actually ends up where you think it will end up. A computer is simply not capible of watching a packet. A human is. A computer is not capible of watching the dealer and estimating that 3 cards got skimmed off the top of your packet. A human is. A computer is not capible of noticing that your packet got mixed with a 3/4 deck grab not a 1/2 deck grab. A human is. Much of shuffle tracking is educated judgements by the tracker.
I've no doubt that computers can simulate a realistic shuffle, but the results of a player who is never more than 5 cards out and a player who is map tracking will be vasty different.

Neither is good nor necessarily better than the other. You bet your advantage, with your variance factored in. This is Kelly's Theorem, which is what allows us to actually make money at this game. You can underbet your possible advantage while a counter is fully betting his real advantage. I'd rather be the counter.

When used with a half decent shuffle, ST provides a far higher advantage than counting. However, over betting is a far higher risk to the ST than the CC. That is why you take necessary precautions and scale back slightly, always airing on the side of conservatism.

When I attack a shuffle, it's with the understanding that I'm already familiar with the shuffle and the dealer is going to do what s/he is supposed to do. If the dealer happens to do something different, this changes everything (or maybe not) and I have to be able to compensate or abort.

And to compensate, you have to have good visual skills. No doubt you should be familiar with the shuffle before hand and knowing the specific dealer weaknesses is never a bad thing, but you are right - playing without the necessary visual accuity in this situation would be a very weak technique.

You miss the point. If the cards aren't where they're supposed to be, it makes no difference why. You lose. This isn't about my ego; when I'm playing BJ I'm not interested in showing my skills or proving a point because there is no one there who will appreciate it and all I'm interested in is getting my EV in and making enough money to stick a needle in my arm with something in it that night. :joker: That's why I assume everything that can go wrong, will, and minimize risk where possible.

You're right your advantage is blown. But someone who's actually ready to shuffle track will only ever lose the advantage to bad variance, never to their own inablity to follow a packet. If you are interested in getting your EV you should practice to the point where you are capible of getting it. Everything else is just a poor excuse.

Again you miss the point. You have created a religion for yourself where you and your abilities are considered infallible. My faith is reserved for God and when it comes to blackjack, I'll trust what I see come out of the shoe before I trust my own opinions about myself and my abilities. For I make mistakes all the time.

Yet you trust that you make few enough errors to play a counting game successfully? I know that it would take a lot more errors to lose the edge at counting, but you must at least trust that you don't make that many errors otherwise you wouldn't play. Since that is the case, i have to assume that you've gained that faith in yourself through testing yourself to see how good you are? What's the difference between testing yourself to see if you are a successful counter and testing yourself to see if you are a successful shuffle tracker?

That's true. So why shuffle track at all? With backcounting you can assure that every hand you play will be at a theoretical advantage. Backcounting and shuffle tracking are not a good mix because the latter involves spending a lot of time watching tables in unplayable counts waiting for the shuffle. When I see a bunch of high cards come out in the first round, this is now a negative shoe and I have no more interest in it.

For one i'm provided with more lucrative advantages than this shuffle, but secondly if they come out in the first round i can come back in 5 or 10 minutes time if i haven't found another worthwhile advantage and know exactly where they are. And as a tracked packet is likely to provide me with a higher advantage than most counts, that's something i would be inclined to do.

Variance defines what proportion of your bankroll you can assign to any bet at a given advantage. There are games that I have an option to play that have an advantage higher than BJ but that I usually eschew, because the variance is so much higher as to make it not a worthwhile bet in the real world.

Point taken, but surely you wouldn't argue that your standard deviation would be over come far more quickly playing a higher advantage game? That being the case, as long as you've taken account of risk surely you're better playing the higher advantage?

You never know where the cards are. There's always some uncertainty, it's greater than the uncertainty of counting and this may be hard for you to hear, but it's built into the shuffle itself. Good as Arnold's ST book is, the casino people have all read it too and adjusted their procedures, thus it is very rare to find a shuffle that alone is more vulnerable than a straight backcounting attack.

Advantages exist everywhere, hence why people are still using these techniques. I have never once claimed that the shuffle we have discussed is an ideal shuffle for this form of technique. My point is simply that you can still gain an advantage over it. If you're really serious about shuffle tracking and are prepared to put the effort into learning the techniques then surely you are prepared to put the time into finding worthwhile opportunities?



RJT.

 

[Automatic Monkey]

Fair doos Sonny, but i feel i still had a few valid points there.

• Critiquing spelling and grammer in another's posts is a sure sign of a failing argument. It shows a lack of anything constructive to add
• Condescending to someone only makes you look foolish. Referring to someone by terms like "Kid" only show that you can't gain the upper hand through reasoned argument and have to try to belittle the person to improve your standing.
• Making statements like "I can't fully fault you for the bad counsel you are under, but please divest yourself from the pep talk and sales pitch" can never be construed as polite dicourse. Simply demeaning - as in trying to take responsibility away from someone not capable of it - and as i stated earlier a fairly obvious veiled insult.

I doubt that you can disagree with any of that.

RJT.

OK, I'm sorry if you felt that I was demeaning or insulting you. That wasn't my intent, and "kid" isn't usually taken as an insult over here (but "boy" is, on several levels.)

You do acknowledge that I well understand the blackjack math, so if I criticize something you are doing, do you think it's possible that I'm doing it because I see a problem, and not just trying to bust your balls? The math has to come first, and if the numbers aren't there, all the personal skill in the world won't help you. Conversely if the numbers are there, you can work your personal talents around it to exploit it.

As I see it, the kind of tracking you are talking about has been tried by many people in the past, with minimal success and not because they aren't as good as you, but because there isn't enough of an hourly win rate in it due to the nature of the available shuffles. Not enough to make it worth breaking up an aggressive Wong-in/Wong-out game for. Now if you can incorporate some tracking information into your game to help control locations of cards, or use it as an indicator that whoever cut has caused high cards to be located behind the cut card thus you should walk away from this table, that's a great use of it. But my counting game does not allow me to continue playing after a lot of high cards have been dealt out for the sake of trying to tracking them through the shuffle, so instead I concentrate on manipulating packs of low cards, which when dealt out are consistent with remaining at a table.

 

[RJT]

OK, I'm sorry if you felt that I was demeaning or insulting you. That wasn't my intent, and "kid" isn't usually taken as an insult over here (but "boy" is, on several levels.)

You do acknowledge that I well understand the blackjack math, so if I criticize something you are doing, do you think it's possible that I'm doing it because I see a problem, and not just trying to bust your balls? The math has to come first, and if the numbers aren't there, all the personal skill in the world won't help you. Conversely if the numbers are there, you can work your personal talents around it to exploit it.

As I see it, the kind of tracking you are talking about has been tried by many people in the past, with minimal success and not because they aren't as good as you, but because there isn't enough of an hourly win rate in it due to the nature of the available shuffles. Not enough to make it worth breaking up an aggressive Wong-in/Wong-out game for. Now if you can incorporate some tracking information into your game to help control locations of cards, or use it as an indicator that whoever cut has caused high cards to be located behind the cut card thus you should walk away from this table, that's a great use of it. But my counting game does not allow me to continue playing after a lot of high cards have been dealt out for the sake of trying to tracking them through the shuffle, so instead I concentrate on manipulating packs of low cards, which when dealt out are consistent with remaining at a table.

Well i'll accept that. If you referred to someone as Kid where i come from, well we'll leave it in saying that you'd better be capable of backing up the challange you just laid down and i'll assume that this has just been a dialect related misunderstanding.
As to you seeing a problem in the numbers - i have no issue with that and am quite happy to discuss any aspect of my play or practice and justify the advice i've given. Up to a point of course. I certainly wouldn't give anything that would jepordise my play up to open discussion.
I agree that very few have had any real success with shuffle tracking as it has to be to play today's games (at least within the US). The 2 pass shuffle do in general make the game far weaker, but still not unbeatable. And again i would emphasize that much of playing a winning shuffle tracking game comes from game selection - far more so than counting. Scouting for the right conditions makes a big difference to the shuffle tracker.
However, the few people that have had success with this technique have had that success due to the extraordinary levels of practice that they have put in. They are so few and far between and so rarely heard of specifically because it is such a difficult skill to master - yet not unachivable.
I certainly don't claim to be the best, in fact i know better than me and personally i wouldn't track any shuffle that i wasn't 100% sure of myself on and there are more than a few that i'm not. But truthfully, it can be done and very successfully and that does come from personal experience. I have experienced what playing a sub-par shuffle tracking game results in, looked at my result and went back to the drawing boards, re-evalutating my play and backing off from using any tracking techniques until i was satisfied that i was doing what needed to be done. It's very easy to fool yourself into thinking you're better than you are when it comes to tracking. The key is to identify if and when you are doing that and adjust your game to compensate.
I wouldn't recommend any but the most extreemly serious players ever even attempt shuffle tracking in any live setting just because of the low tollerance for errors and the high level of practice it has, but neither would i have people believing that it's not possible, but those that do - unless they are in unusual circumstances or are prepared to travel to the opportunites - would be wise to use it as an addition not a replacement to counting.
As much as you may not like him - or even believe he is what he says - that is how Bojack's team and the other teams i am in contact with use all the advanced techniques. They are all opportunistic and should be used as 'bolt on' packages for more universal games. Hole carding being of course being the exception as i'm aware - although do not know directly - of teams that use it exclusively.

RJT.