Continuous shuffle vs. shoe

'Some clever people figured out how to beat the SMK machine due to the way it distributed the cards'.

How profitable compared to CCing would you think this is? I'm sure many (most of the few who attempt) people do this to prove that it can be done, and not because it brings a better edge. Still, it's nice to know that no matter what techniques the casino implements, there's a way around it.

Eventually some smart SOB will come out with x-ray vision contact lenses.

This is like bettting red & black at roulette. If you bet on just one at a time you will lose at the expected rate over the long hall. If you put equal bets on both red and black you will lose at the expected rate with much less variance. Things will equal out much quicker.

With the CSM you will sometimes have the abnormal number of small cards near the front. Sometimes there will be the abnormal number of big ones. In a standard shoe the inequality will balance in the same shoe. With a CSM it will balance over the mean of many shoes. It makes no net difference. It makes a difference to the counter because we keep track of these inequalities and bet big when it favors us. The quick and predictable equatilization of hi-lo card distributions makes no difference to the non-counter.

that I'm talking about the variance of the true count distribution and not unit variance per hand of bj, which is likely unchanged.

The more decks in the shoe, the smaller the effect of removing a single card from the shoe. Think of it this way...

Say I shuffle one deck. I deal the first card to you, and it's an ace. What are the odds that the next card is a 10-value card, giving you a BJ? The answer is 16/51, or 31.4%.

Now, let's say I shuffle a 6-deck shoe. I deal the first card to you, and it's an ace. What are the odds that the next card is a 10-value card, giving you a BJ? The answer is 96/311, or 30.7%.

Of course, you don't get dealt the first 2 cards off the deck in a real BJ game, but the above example should serve to illustrate the math of diminishing card removal effect.

It's possible to count and to not understand the principles and mathematics behind it. I learnt to count off a computer game. I learnt advanced BS of the net. I'm not saying I don't understand the principles (I do), I've just never bothered with the mathematical side of counting (gambling for that matter).

I know how to count efficiently. I know when to divert from BS. I know how much to bet when. I know I have an edge that will be realised the more I play.

I was only asking a question. Maths has never interested me and I'd prefer not to touch it whenever possible.

Now languages. There's something that interests me.

Well, if you want to keep your head buried in the mathematical sand, that's your choice and I understand it.

But those @#$%ed SMK machines *do* behave the way I described and, IMHO, anyone armed with that knowledge who did not take advantage of one of the "favorable" periods where the effective count is very high and *stays* very high for many hands -- well, that person must either hate money or love losing or both.

It *IS* card counting!

It just has to be done differently due to the nature of the SMK machine.

remember, we are talking about non-counters here. We are not talking about advantage, we are talking about disadvantage. I'm not buying your argument about why the CSM may be more disadvantageous. I have no opinion on your methods of extracting an edge out of them.

"of the "favorable" periods where the effective count is very high and *stays* very high for many hands -- well, that person must either hate money or love losing or both."

This is not a favorable period. Against a CSM you want the count to keep getting very negative not positive. This means face cards and aces keep coming out. Maybe there are a couple of csms in the country that go out of whack once in a while,but I'm certainly not going to waste my time and money looking for them.

Not to the fellow who posted the question.

> I'm not buying your argument about
> why the CSM may be more disadvantageous.

IMHO, as a PRACTICAL matter, CSMs are more disadvantageous to the basic strategy player because neither his play nor his bankroll (which is typically waaaay too small) is sufficient to survive one of the extended "bad" streaks.

> Against a CSM you want the count to keep
> getting very negative not positive.

What you said is true, but you're not looking at it the right way. You're still thinking in terms of a "normal" shuffle, and you have to think outside of that box. Remember, with a CSM (and I'm specifically talking about the ShuffleMaster King machine here) the cards fed into the machine do not go to the bottom of the shoe, but are randomly (and therefore evenly, on average) inserted into the remaining, undealt portion of the shoe. Thus some of the cards just played can and will appear in the very next round

I have to assume you did not read my earlier post; so let me go through it again (using simple numbers and an extreme case to illustrate the point):

Assume: cards are fed into the machine 26 at a time.

Assume: The true count for the back deck of the 4D shoe is -6 and the true count for the front three decks is +2.

OK, the first 26 cards are dealt at an effective count of +2. This leaves the back deck in the shoe still at -6 and the front 2� decks at +2.

Now the 26 cards are fed into the machine. 2/7ths of them (on average) will go to the back and 5/7ths of them (on average) will go to the front. This causes the back, negative portion, to become slightly less negative and to become larger (by 2/7ths of 26 cards), but the front portion, which increases in size by 5/7ths of 26 cards, of the shoe REMAINS AT PLUS TWO!

Now the back portion of the shoe is 52 + 26 * 2/7 is ~59 cards in size, and the rich front portion is now ~149 cards in size. IOW, the lean back portion gainss ~7 cards, and the rich front portion loses ~7 cards.

Now another 26 cards are dealt and subsequently fed into the machine. Now the back portion is larger; so it will receive a larger proportion of these cards. Now it will increase in size to 59 + 26 * 59/182 = ~68 cards; and the front portion, which will REMAIN AT PLUS TWO, will be ~140 cards in size.

And so it goes. In this admittedly extreme situation, you could easily have 30 or 35 or even more (depending on the number of players at the table) consecutive rounds at an effective count of +2.

Thus your initial statement about the count dropping is true, but it has to be utilized in a different way to tell you what's really going on inside that infernal machine.

Without variance the side without the edge could never win. Variance gets in the way of the side playing with the edge. I don't recall seeing any study showing that long losing streaks at CSMs were more likely than at normal hand shuffled games anyway.

In any case, at a normal shoe game when tons of small cards come out near the start of a shoe and the players are getting killed, the ploppy generally changes tables. This is lucky for us as they often become good card eaters for us and then leave us alone with the rich shoe.

I still wouldn't encourage the CSMs. The more popular they get, the less shoe games we will find. As it is with all the CSMs around it's getting harder to sit down at a shoe on a crowded night.