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Blackjack Strategy - Blackjack Shuffle tracking
Online Blackjack
Blackjack Shuffle tracking is a fairly new technique and has not been publicized much
yet. The best definition offered is: "'Blackjack 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
Blackjack Shuffle tracking appears to have resulted from
experienced mathematician's research and computer simulation of shuffling card
decks.
Just because someone shuffles a deck of cards does not mean that the cards are "randomized". The methods mentioned in the two previous sections 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
Blackjack Shuffle tracking as the combination of references listed at the end of this section provide a complete discourse of the topic.
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 live online casinos 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
had the chance to play Blackjack in an
online casino, how much did you pay attention to the way they shuffled? Like most people you were probably oblivious to it.
Good Luck
From the Online Casinos USA team
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