I've recently started coming back to read the boards on this site after about a year's hiatus. Back when I left, the casinos were making their big push to convert all BJ games to the CSM's, and there was a lot of talk here about it. Since coming back, I haven't read a single thing on continuous shuffle machines. Does this mean that casinos gave up on them?
I've recently started coming back to read the boards on this site after about a year's hiatus. Back when I left, the casinos were making their big push to convert all BJ games to the CSM's, and there was a lot of talk here about it. Since coming back, I haven't read a single thing on continuous shuffle machines. Does this mean that casinos gave up on them?
They didn't give up on them but the tide has turned against them.
This is due to a number of factors-resistance by casino personnel, resistance by ordinary players, "voodoo" theories circulating through the industry about the devices. To a certain extent these have always been the problem since csm's were introduced back in the early 90's.
The straw that broke the camel's back was the fact that a hardcore of underground advantage players were determined to find means of exploiting these machines, and developed many bizarre & fantastic methods for beating such games which were not dependent upon traditional card counting. This methods met with mixed success, but succeded in putting enough doubt in the minds of certain influential people within the industry.
The main threat to card counting now is not from csm's but from a cocktail of spanish 21, superfun21 and 6:5 "blackjack".
on your statement: "This methods met with mixed success, but succeeded in putting enough doubt in the minds of certain influential people within the industry".
1. Which part of the "mixed success" do you see to be the positive
element in the mix?
2. Which influential people's minds did this succeed in putting
doubt into?
Spok
1. Which part of the "mixed success" do you see to be the positive
Well, individuals, and it was individuals, came up with some ingenious ideas for beating these devices. I chronicled some of the more common in Get the Edge At Blackjack such as latency, warps, steering etc.
Some of the anti-csm techniques used were, in my opinion, downright stupid, but nonetheless effective. An Australian, largely female, team for example, simply observed that a casino was keeping cards out of the csm for a round so they could reconstruct a hand in the event of a dispute. The Oz team simply raised their bets from min to max whenever the count went positive. They won a ton of money. From a serious advantage player's perspective this was not a good idea since they were taking on so much risk. But the pit was scared to death and pulled the devices.
2. Which influential people's minds did this succeed in putting
doubt into?
A heap of semi-knowledgeable pit bosses and a few casino managers. I got a dozen letters or so from them asking me about the csm chapter in Get The Edge, usually after a drunken high-roller had got lucky against a shuffler in the casino in question. They offered me insultingly low consulting fees to "fix" the latency problem, (which I don't think is possible).
Griffin also played its part. Long-term Griffin watchers know they talk up potential new forms of advantage play to keep their client base paranoid and renewing their subscriptions. There are stories of "CSM Hackers" in the Griffin database. A cynic might suppose that without counters much of the reason for Griffin existing disappears. When csm's threatened to do away with counters Griffin may have found it difficult to be completely objective and truthful about the dangers advantage players may pose to csm's.
it says if it takes 3 rounds for the cards to come back you can beat the game.WHY??with 6 players thats about 1 deck penetration.that sucks.can you elaborate.
It is not comparable to a standard game with 1-deck penetration, because 3 rounds are out of play on each and every hand, so your bet is always made at the deepest penetration point.
Actually if that were a six-deck game it still wouldn't be that great. The example I used in the article was 4-deck, which is more representative than 6-deck because csm's struggle with too many decks. In the case of the 4-deck game one-decks worth of csm latency is roughly equivalent to a standard human-shuffled 4-deck game with a one and a half deck cutoff. If you add on the round's worth of cards the casinos tend to keep out of play its closer to a one-deck cutoff, which in the modern era is a very good game.
In addition, the absence of heat is a major advantage. You can use whatever bet spread you like. You can also eat cards quite aggressively-this is quite important. If you can spread to five hands on every positive count and cut back to one otherwise you could turn a marginal game into a good one.
When I first started to play at a professional level, there was a period where I lost a lot of money due to large positive counts.
What has kept me going is the "anti-counting" techniques that Casinos use: Such as CSMs, Spanish 21, Variance in Penetration, lack of low limit tables which are generally packed.
I should have questioned the theories and systems that the "experts" try and sell.
Instead, the casino declares that the game is beatable by using these "anti-counting" techniques.
Surely Casinos must realise that 90% of student (new) counters lose really big early in thier careers and consider leaving the game for good.
Casinos should realise that counters have made blackjack the world's favourate casino game.
I believe that it will be good for the Casino's perspective to leave Blackjack alone. This will decrease the number of new counters and re-create the mystery question: "Why do Casinos have Blackjack if the game is beatable?"
unfortunately for every new counter who is unlucky and loses his inadequate bankroll there are other new counters who will win way more than they are supposed to (bell curve works both ways). That is, for every counter who goes bust there will be another who wins big (and in fact will win more than the losers lose). These lucky counters are the ones who the casinos will have to fear down the road because they will now be adequately bankrolled.
