Continuous Shuffle Machine Play

I met a friend who counts 4 deck CSM ShuffleMaster One2Six and is winning greatly after 1 year or play. Apparently he has a unique way of counting. I thought CSMs cannot really be counted with great results. Any thoughts?

Rules: BJ pays 1.5/1, double on 9-11 2 cards only, any splits to 3 hands, double after splits, no surrender, insurance, dealer stands on soft 17. Multi action, 2 additional players per box, only front has to split or double.

I hear there are 16 cards in the channel, ready to deal before the discards have a chance to be shuffled and contaminate, but don't know if this is what he is using.

He also plays with friends so that when he can split, because you can have up to 2 additional bettors behind the front bettor who is the decision maker, he asks the front guy to split, but he does not follow suit. For example on 8-8 against a 9 he improves by the front guy splitting (the front guy has a small bet which he splits, but the big bet behind is not split). By splitting the cards, 8 against a nine is better than two big bets of each at 8 ag 9. Is this play correct? Is there a strategy for splitting the front bet (sacrificing it) when you can improve the back big bet?

Further, can I simulate this?

deazii,

In fact, it has already been done! See the link below (Green Chip access is required).

Hope this helps!

Dog Hand

I met a friend who counts 4 deck CSM ShuffleMaster One2Six and is winning greatly after 1 year or play. Apparently he has a unique way of counting. I thought CSMs cannot really be counted with great results. Any thoughts?

One year is a rather vague indication.For a result to be meaningful, it should be backed by at least 1000 hours of play.
It's not impossible to get the advantagbe against CSMs but there must be outstanding conditions.

Rules: BJ pays 1.5/1, double on 9-11 2 cards only, any splits to 3 hands, double after splits, no surrender, insurance, dealer stands on soft 17. Multi action, 2 additional players per box, only front has to split or double.

These rules give the house an edge of roughly 0.5 which is not very good.Certainly not worth playing with CSMs.

I hear there are 16 cards in the channel, ready to deal before the discards have a chance to be shuffled and contaminate, but don't know if this is what he is using.

It's true that one can safely assume that cards that have just been played and recycled will not be back on the next round.
Having said that we notice that a running count of +6 is required
just to break even (1TC=0.5%). At a count of +10 which is a rather rare occurrence, we have only 0.4% advantage. Chances are better if cards are not refeeded after every round.

He also plays with friends so that when he can split, because you can have up to 2 additional bettors behind the front bettor who is the decision maker, he asks the front guy to split, but he does not follow suit. For example on 8-8 against a 9 he improves by the front guy splitting (the front guy has a small bet which he splits, but the big bet behind is not split). By splitting the cards, 8 against a nine is better than two big bets of each at 8 ag 9. Is this play correct? Is there a strategy for splitting the front bet (sacrificing it) when you can improve the back big bet?

This technique is known as the caller-rider-method.I studied this a long time ago. With a maximum spread between caller and rider (say 1:40) you can squeeze out an additional 0.1% which would bring you to -0.4%. My Casino tests with a friend (team play) didn't prove efficient because a) these defensive split situations are too rare and b) the whole thing creates too much heat.
There is of course a BS for this, for instance you have to split the threes against the ten.

Francis Salmon