how valuable?

Hi All:

A few months ago on business travel to an eastern European country I was entertaining some 'clients/VIPs' by playing blackjack with them at a small casino.

The casino had a simple shuffle. Bury pack into center, split in half, shuffle by piles, and repeat once. Ordinarily this sort of thing doesn't interest me on more than an academic level.

One dealer in particular caught my interest. He had HUGE clumps of unmixed cards in his shuffle. Were talking multiple 12-15 card un-shuffled clumps. He was a pretty clumsy dealer all told. One oddity was the shortness of this dealer's shift on the table. It did make me wonder if perhaps he was a temp replacement or something.

Anyhow, the max bet was roughly 100 USD and the min bet was tiny.

Anyways how much do you guys think this situation is worth in the right hands? I figure there is a potential for a significant advantage with this information, although the low max bet limits the total expect value somewhat. I was thinking about it on my flight home and I guessed that the info is worth about 1-2 max bets per hour. I have no ST experience personally - I was a proficient but not expert counter once before switching to poker.

On a personal note I was unable to take advantage of the situation. I hadn't played for 3-4 years and had also never played ENHC so some of the surrender and split plays weren't automatic at the time. I did play a basic KO game with an aggressive bet spread and felt pretty comfortable. The ST play here would be even more comfortable due to the difficulty of identifying ST players vs straight card counters.

Before anyone asks me: I was unable to write down the dealer's first name and it was a name that as an English speaker I found very complicated. I will be in the area again in a month or so and I will keep an eye out for him.

I'd like to see if playing this game for pure card sequencing would be much more valuable EV wise than playing a straight CC game with a 1-12 spread on a six deck shoe. Penetration was not great for this particular country in my experience: 4.5/6.

Sorry for the rambling and meandering post - I just landed after a long flight and wanted to put some thoughts on paper. Please ignore any spelling errors (Don and others).

Thanks for any info!

The long flight was not related to the casino trip in question. Just to avoid any confusion.

it's not very valuable. One dealer who could get hit by a car tomorrow. Low mins. Americans are immediately suspect in foreign casinos.

That low max bet is not really a low bet, for some players.

I am certainly aware that this isn't valuable to most posters here. I wasn't hoping to gift or sell the info.

I'm wondering if I should spend any time drilling on the IRC equation instead of playing a straight counting game next time I am in the area.

At this point in my life, having the low minimums (min bet is less than $2 USD!) and low maximums is OK with me. The goal is to have some fun for free at the expense of the casinos. I have to be in the area anyways for one week a month. I do get to spend the weekends traveling around Europe which is nice, but on weekdays there isn't much to do after dinner. It doesn't feel like a job to me anymore, and its fun to play along and know that you have an easy advantage over the house.

I'm thinking that I'll figure out the initial running count equation (never ST-ed before) and see if I can give it a shot next time I'm in the area.

There used to be a POM or sidebar on the IRC equation...does anyone have a link for me with this info? I may end up just buying the green chip membership again to go through the old POMs.

My gut instinct is that for this particular case the shuffle tracking has a higher EV than the counting. At the very least with some practice it will be fun to try something new (new to me at least).