naughty naughty!!!
Canceler said:
grog-
What you're talking about is messing up the "flow" of the cards. This is a myth, often sarcastically referred to here as the "sacred flow".
If you do a search for
sacred flow you will get a fair number of hits, including this thread:
What flow?/ flow conspriacy
You forgot to capitize "Flow" in honor of the religious beliefs of ploppies worldwide.
What it all comes down to on a neutral deck is someone jumping in can help or hurt you evenly. You can not tell and over time it means nothing.
On a negative shoe, someone coming in will result in fewer hands being played in a situation where the casino has the edge, so in fact he may be helping you lose less. The problem here though is if the next shoe is positive you have an extra player at the table.
On a positive shoe, an extra player means fewer hands being dealt where you have the advantage and that will cost you money. Here you need to inject the religious beliefs of others and retain the current Mythical Mystical Sacred Flow of the cards, in order to get more hands for yourself. The pepper spray idea is one I have never used. Sometimes just asking someone to wait till after the shuffle will work, other times nothing works.
One note here: If the other players at the table are losing during this positive shoe, they will welcome a new player hoping to change The Flow and all you can do at that point is just mention how bad it has been, hope he will change it and many will decide not to risk their money because it has been good. On the other hand, if everyone at the table has been doing good, the other players will just about force the new guy not to play.
Then there seems to be a special situation if you are playing heads up with the dealer. I play heads up often and it is rare that another player will sit down and not ask if I mind if he joins in or not. When there are already a couple of people playing, people come in and out all the time, but heads up seems to get some kind of special respect or whatever.
ihate17