Best,

Lately I went to the local Casino and noticed they are using 6 deck shufflemasters for cardshuffling. This to me makes cardcounting and shuffletracking near impossible. How do you handle this? Would this be the end of the cardcounting age? It suprised me a little bit that the dealers didn't actually shuffled the cards and dealt from the shoe.

How can you cheat a shufflemaster with 300 shuffle programs?

Kind regards

It depends on how frequently the cards are fed into the machine. If it's every 1 or 2 rounds, it's a continuous shuffling machine which makes counting utterly useless. If the cards are set aside until the end of the shoe, it's just an automatic shuffling machine which counting can still apply.

Shuffle tracking is still very possible if you have knowledge of the internal shuffling algorithm of the machine, or any of it's flaws.

If enough people refuse to play the CSM games, the casino will have no choice but to revert back to an ASM game or hand shuffle the decks. Unfortunately there's a healthy population of ploppies willing to play these games.

For the record, neither shuffle tracking or card counting is a form of cheating.

Note too that casinos run a constant balancing act in order to maximize profit.
Every hand not played represents money lost to the casino.
"Advanced" security measures by their very nature eventually substitute for actual hands played.

The casino may stand to loose more money from lack of hands played than it does from nascent card counters.

Combined with the apparent fact that truly experienced players (and therefore those more inclined to play at higher limits) refuse to sit down at these tables, and you're left with the balancing act pointed out above.

Like most casino game protection methods, the law of diminishing returns eventually enters the equation.

People are stupid, they accept everything and nothing. If you ask me, yes, that's the end of card counting because the majority of people goes to a casino merely for having fun, thus, they don't give a *** if cards are shuffled continuously or not.

How many times I've heard people saying things like "yesterday I was at the Marina, I had fun, I lost like $100 playing BlackJack but it's a nice game, you can have fun for one hour or two and it's not that expensive". They would be unable to tell you how many decks are used at the table or whether the guy was dealing from a shoe or not! They have no idea about edges, card counting, betting patterns. And they don't care.

When card counting got some publicity a few decades ago, casinos used tough versions of BlackJack. But as people left the tables, they had to go back to former versions. I'm not sure it's gonna happen that time. Again, people are stupid, what they mainly want is having fun, thus playing many hands. If the pace is fast, they are delighted.

I'm gonna give you a anecdote. My stuff is amateur private games/tourneys, leagues, etc. Poker, not BlackJack . You wouldn't believe me if I told you how many times we have players not wanting to shuffle the deck! It wastes time, they want to play! Guys paid $100, $200 buy-in? They don't mind! Deal, deal, mate. Astonishing.

People accepting automatic shufflers amaze me. With a real dealer, you still can have a visual check. And casinos have cameras, etc. Once in a while you can read on newspapers or watch on the telly they caught a crooked dealer. But with automatic shufflers, how the hell do you know if the game is fair? How can you control or check the shuffling algorithms in use? Geez, with an invisible marking system on the back of the cards and some "crooked" algorithms, it shouldn't be very hard to code shuffling procedures giving staggering edges to the casino!

@Nicholas

If I had to cheat with CSM games, I think I'd try to install MY algorithms instead .

Didn't you say something like bottom deals are useless because everyone uses a cut card nowadays? And now you're claiming you play with people who say shuffling just wastes time? You must play with really strange people.

Yes, I play in places where, sometimes, people don't want to shuffle the deck (or go with such a fast and basic one that it has no use) because they want to play more hands and don't want to "waste" time. I haven't said all of them. I say some of them. And it happens more often than someone may think at first. But we sill use cut cards. It's ages I haven't seen a game without a cut card.

Have you ever played in a brick and mortar place? It's not Internet Poker you know... Sometimes we have drunk people, sometimes we have sexy women, sometimes we have suckers, sometimes we have very good players, sometimes we have people wanting a new deck every 10 hands or because a fly touched one card, sometimes we could use a Fournier marked pack and no one would notice, sometimes we see people getting nuts for £10, sometimes they don't give a *** for £100, sometimes we have paranoid doing 8 riffles during the shuffling procedure and sometimes weirdos complaining shuffling takes too much time. They are human beings, that's real life. That's my world. I don't play in £5,000 or £20,000 buy-in games and my context is far, very far from all you see in the movies. Not to mention TV Poker! I don't cheat for a living (even if it helped me sometimes) and I don't live in Vegas (yes, it's possible to play Poker outside USA, amazing no?). Now, with me dealing, be assured you would find difficulties to win the game. And with one partner, you can kiss your money bye bye. With or without a cut card*.

So, if I understand well, your main concern in the Gambling Spot is to bother me, leaving acid comments and ****ing me off? Have a good time boy.

*I strictly recommend you to use one, though.

You can count a six deck shoe. Counters have words for this stuff and they track what they call "penetration" into the shoe and try to sit at tables where the casinos and the dealers will let you get deeper before they reshuffle. do a google search for "black jack penetration casino review" and you'll find all sorts of reviews and reports about different places having better or worse penetration, along with a record of the blackjack pay out rate, the number of decks, how many tables, how many hands played at a typical table, etc.

I don't think anybody in this thread has said you can't count a six deck shoe.

What the OP did say was that you'd have a hard time counting a six deck ShuffleMaster shoe.

I agree with your observation, but not with your conclusion. It is pretty narrow minded to say that everyone who has different interests from yours is "stupid". Note that over 99% of the casino's clients couldn't care less about how often decks are shuffled and how many decks are in play. And they shouldn't: they just want to "have fun for an hour or so", and they're not even interested in trying to beat the game. And the reality is that that is the casino's business. Face it, people like you (and me) are just the roaches that come to spoil the party.

I may be narrow minded, but that's the way I feel about that particular case. I'm OK with people just wanting to have fun at casinos, but not taking care about the way they're gonna shear you, I find it stupid. I'm sorry but that's what I think about that. It has nothing to do with an interest different of mine, it has to do with how you take care (or not) of your money. Money is pretty hard to earn nowadays.

When you pay for amusement, entertainment, that money is lost, that's OK. But to me, the point is to get as much fun as possible for the money. If you pay attention to the games percentages, house edges, etc., your fun is gonna last longer compared to... when you don't care at all. That why I think such a behavior is stupid. Say I can last 1 hour with $200 in a casino when I'm "cautious" (even if the point is only to have fun, to have a nice moment) and say I'd last 45' if I just spill the money up. As I'm not a millionaire, I find the last way stupid.

My apologies if it hurts you.

I don't think being narrow minded has anything to do with what Arnold said.

Personally, I think it's pretty stupid to gamble in a casino without actively seeking an edge, or at least knowing in detail what your odds actually are for any given bet or play.

Although 95%+ of the clientele in any give casino might gamble "for fun" and have that fun by losing all their money, there's really no disputing that it remains a pretty stupid thing to do.

It also might be seen by some as pretty stupid to skydive, drop $1500.00 on booze to impress friends, free climb, and (metaphorically) spit on Superman's cape........but lots of people do it.

In other words, just because lots of people "do it", or "have barrels of fun" while doing it doesn't mean what they're doing isn't still pretty darn stupid.

Thanks for getting my point Silver.

PS: Can you send me a message? I'd like to talk to you.

exactly!

I beg to differ. To me "stupid" means considerably less intelligent than the average. Therefore 95% of the population (I'd say that's a very conservative guess by the way) can't be stupid by definition. Even if you assume that casino clientele represents a skewed sample of the population, I really object to calling all of them "stupid".

To most people going to casinos is entertainment; a night out. And they won't loose "all of their money". They have a budget for their night out, and sometimes they end up spending more than, say, going to a ball game or the theater, and sometimes less (that's the nature of casinos).

Bottom line. If you tell them they had to think about the game, pay attention to strategy etc. etc. that would take the fun out of their night out for 95% of those 95%. And no. Not wanting to think on their night/weekend out doesn't make them stupid. Just because we're the freaks that head straight for the poker and BJ tables, doesn't make the people at the roulette table stupid.

Free booze, entertainment, and the chance to win some cash - what more could a punter ask for? I see nothing wrong with this. Some people find it more entertaining to spend an evening with $200 on roulette than to spend $200 on tickets to some show.

It's only when people develop a gambling problem that I consider them stupid. Betting more than what they can afford to lose, or going to the casino in order to win money, without an edge, is a sad sight to see. I've seen people go down the road of gambling addiction and it was not pretty to watch.

I rarely gamble, but since I live in Las Vegas, I do go occasionally. Usually it's when a friend is in town that doesn't visit Vegas very often and they want the grand tour.

I'm often asked about gambling as entertainment. Most often, I ask people what they take away from an amusement park. Their typical answer is either "nothing" or "memories." That's how gambling (as entertainment) should be viewed. Instead of riding a physical roller coaster, you're riding an emotional one. At the end of the ride, you usually don't have anything to show for it and have paid a price for the ride. But that's exactly the way physical roller coasters and amusement park rides work.

It's all about the adrenaline rush. Some need hairpin turns and steep drops to get that. Others need skydiving or race car driving. Others enjoy having money riding on a game.

To each his own.

Jason

Enzo, you'll have to read my post more closely.

I didn't say the people were stupid, I said gambling without seeking an edge is stupid.......which it is.
(I suspect even Jason seeks an obscure edge when gambling for personal entertainment )

Gambling with 5%+ in favor of the house constantly pushing back at you is also stupid, and yet Roulette thrives.

Why does Roulette thrive?.........because having FUN, and doing something stupid at the same time aren't mutually exclusive...........but the act of "having fun" doesn't turn doing something stupid into doing something smart just because you're having a good time doing it

Casino gambling is, at it's core (for those who don't bother to seek an edge) really quite ridiculous when viewed with ones rose colored glasses removed.

Arnold, your PM's are turned off..........I'll turn mine on for a few days.

I get my rush by coming home and finding my dinner aint burnt !

Is it stupid to take your spouse to dinner and a movie? You have a 100% chance of losing a couple of hundred bucks. For people who enjoy non-serious gambling, it's enjoyable entertainment. AND they might come home with more money than they starting. Characterizing it as "stupid" because you, personally, view gambling as a potentially moneymaking proposition in which EV is the most important criterion is IMO extremely egocentric at best.