Kasi said:
Well I guess I need an education here on what all these people are alleging.
But, if your point SPX, is that hand-shuffled cards are not as "random" as computer sims, I think there's data that supports that. I'm not saying it would make a difference in actual results but I think after hand-shuffling the gap created where the same cards end up is smaller than it would be if completely random. I suppose that's what card-sequencers are relying on to a certain extent? At least I've seen this for single-deck shuffles. Don't ask me where lol.
What are you recording for your 10,000 hands anyway? Whatever it is, I like it lol.
It really comes down to a couple of things. For one, there's the question of whether or not "card clumping" exists in the hand dealt shoe game and can be used for the benefit of the player. A lot of pros either say it's a myth or so the effect is so miniscule as to be useless. There are a few others like Jerry Patterson who push the idea and he devotes a good bit of time to the subject in Blackjack: A Winner's Manual. Say what you will about Jerry Patterson but he's certainly put his time in.
There's also the issue of whether or not the shoe game runs streakier than single deck blackjack. It wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination to believe that this could very possibly be true, since there's the simple fact that there are more of each kind of card in a 6 deck shoe and at least from time to time groups of low cards and groups of 10s will get cozy with each other. (And so I suppose this ties back into card clumping.)
As far as my 10,000 hands . . . I'm probably at about 10,000 right now. I originally dealt out a hundred shoes and that probably took me 2 months or so, working pretty heavily. Now I'm working on my second batch and up to about Shoe # 34.
I hope ultimately to settle this debate once and for all, at least within my own head. I was reading through Walter Thomason's Twenty First Century Blackjack at one point and something struck me. The Foreword is written by Frank Scoblete, who got involved with Walter Thomason somewhere along the line, as did Fred Renzey. In his Foreword, Scoblete says:
"Several gaming writers told him that 5,000 hands does not a study make! . . . Blackjack expert Fred Renzey wanted him to do 100,000 hands. I wanted him to do 20,000. I think experts Henry Tamburin and John Grochowski wanted him to do something in between."
So I chose the highest number: 100,000, which would apparently satisfy all those guys. And if it's good enough for them, it would certainly be good enough for me.
So yes, somehow, some way, at one point I would like to settle the matter once and for all.