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Shuffle tracking technique
This is a fairly new technique that has
not been publicized very much. The best definition I
have seen is this one: "'Shuffle-tracking' is the
science of following specific cards through the
shuffling process for the purpose of either keeping them
in play or cutting them out of play." The concept of
Shuffle tracking appears to have resulted from bored
mathematician's research and computer simulation of
shuffling cards.
Of course, just because someone shuffles
a deck (or decks) of cards does not mean that the cards
are "randomized". The methods mentioned in the two
previous sections (Basic Strategy and Card Counting)
assume a random order of cards. (According to some
authors, a single deck of cards must be shuffled twenty
to thirty times to ensure a truly random dispersion. If
a Casino is using a 6 deck shoe, that's 120 to 180
shuffles!) As in the Card Counting section, I am going
to restrict the discussion to the basics of shuffle
tracking as the combination of references listed at the
end of this section provide a complete discourse of the
topic.
A beneficial (to the player) shuffle for
a one deck game is executed by dividing the deck equally
into 26 cards and shuffling them together a minimum of
three times. This allows the cards to be sufficiently
intermixed to yield a fairly random distribution. An
adverse shuffle prevents the cards from mixing
completely.
The simplest example is the Unbalanced
Shuffle. As its name implies, the dealer breaks the deck
into two unequal stacks. As an example, let's say you
are playing two hands head on with the dealer and the
last 10 cards in the deck are dealt. The result of the
hand was that both your hands lost to the dealer
primarily due to the high percentage of low value cards
in the clump. Note that if you were counting, you would
have bet a single unit since the deck was unfavorable.
The dealer is now ready to shuffle the deck, and
separates the deck into 31 cards in one stack and 21 in
the other stack. The dealer shuffles the two stacks. If
the shuffle is done from the bottom of each stack on up,
the top ten cards of the larger stack will remain intact
without mixing with any of the other cards. Those ten
cards can remain in the order they were just dealt
throughout the shuffle if the process of bottom to top
shuffling is not altered. You are now asked to cut the
deck. If you don't cut the deck, the 10 cards that were
dealt last hand will be dealt as your first two hands.
The result will be the same as your last and you will
lose the two hands. However, if you cut the deck exactly
at the end of those ten cards, you have just altered the
future to your benefit. Those cards will now be placed
at the bottom of the deck. Should the dealer shuffle up
early, you will avoid them altogether. In addition, if
you were keeping count, you would know that the deck was
favorable during the first 3-4 hands since there would
be an abundance of tens in the portion of the deck that
will be played. You would accordingly increase you bet
size to maximize your winnings.
Some dealers will unknowingly split the
deck into unequal stacks. However, more often than not,
they are required to split the deck into unequal stacks.
If they are required to do this, they are performing the
House Shuffle. The casino has trained the dealer to
shuffle a particular way... on purpose! Why? In the long
run, the house will benefit from this because most
players will not cut any bad clumps out of play. If you
have played BlackJack in a casino, how much did you pay
attention to the way they shuffled? Like most people you
were probably oblivious to it.
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