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Did you know that a single deck of cards has to be shuffled between
twenty and thirty times for a truly random dispersion of cards?
Now apply that number to a casino where they’re using six-deck shoes,
and you’ve got a mind-blowing 120-180 shuffles! I only point this out
because some people are under the impression that shuffling a deck of
cards once randomizes that deck, while the truth is it takes
a lot more shuffling than that. As a kid playing Go Fish, Crazy Eights,
War or Solitaire, you doubtless saw shuffling as something that had
to be done before you could start playing the next round of cards, and
you patiently waited it out, or perhaps enjoyed the spectacle of your
mother or father showing off that fancy bridge they knew how to do.
But in the high-stakes game of Blackjack, the shuffling itself has much
to do with who wins and who loses. The term given to the process of
watching where specific cards end up during and after the shuffling
process – with an eye towards either playing these cards or cutting
them out of play – is “Shuffle-tracking,” and it’s one you’ll be hearing
more and more of.
Shuffles that are good for the player are shuffles which allow the
cards to be mixed very well. For instance, in a one deck game, that
deck should be divided equally into 26 cards and shuffled together at
least three times. Shuffles that are bad for the player are those
that stop the cards from being well mixed.
What’s a “bad” shuffle? The Unbalanced Shuffle, for one. This is when
the dealer divides the deck into two unequal stacks, say 31 in one stack
and 21 in the other. Why does he do this? Well, if he does the shuffle
from the bottom of the stack up, then the top ten cards in the stack
of 31 will remain just as they are – unmixed with any of the other cards.
Now, these ten cards are the same cards that caused the player to lose
to the dealer before – because there was a clump of low cards in them.
If the player allows these cards to stay unmixed, he will get them again
– they will be his first two hands, and he will lose again. But if he
is paying close attention, he can turn this “unbalanced shuffle” to
his advantage. When he is asked to cut the deck, as he will be, he can
do so at the end of those ten cards, and they will now be put at the
bottom of the deck. At this point, he can avoid them altogether and
utilize his knowledge that the first 3-4 hands – abundant with tens
in the part of the deck that will be used – will be good for him, and
he can increase his bet size in accordance.
The Unbalanced Shuffle can also be known as the House Shuffle since
frequently dealers are required by their casinos to use it. They do
so because they know that most players are not watching so carefully
and will not see how to cut the bad clumps out of play – a distinct
advantage for the casino.
There are other shuffle methods too – the Strip Shuffle, for instance,
and the Stutter Shuffle – but perhaps the most common shuffle method,
used only in multiple-deck or “shoe” games, is called the Zone Shuffle.
Depending on just how many decks are being used, the shoe is split into
between 4 and 8 piles. Each pair of half-deck sized stacks is shuffled
periodically, with prescribed picks from each pile being done in a quite
methodical manner.
The point of all this is to regroup the cards in
basically the same part of the shoe they occupied previously, effectively
allowing clumps of cards to remain unmixed. The dealer of course will
continue in this manner if he sees that it is working to his advantage
(i.e., he’s won 40 hands and the player’s won 20), and it will go on
like this until the player has no money left. If the player has a hefty
bankroll, it is conceivable that after so many games and so many shufflings,
the unfavorable bias disappears or perhaps reverses, and then the Zone
Shuffle starts working towards the player’s advantage.
The dealer will be watching carefully and if by some chance he sees
that things are working in the opposite way (i.e., he’s won 20 and the
player’s won 40), he will be quick to do whatever he can to reverse
this trend. He may shuffle in a different way, a way that will allow
him to randomize the cards. Another way he can shake things up is by “stripping” the deck, meaning
he’ll take off one card at a time from the shoe, dropping them on the
table and letting them fall on top of one another. In this manner he
reverses the order of the cards and gets rid of any clumping (a bunch
of tens clumped together, for instance) that might be working to the
player’s advantage.
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