Not convinced that hand shuffling a deck is random

Although I don't shuffle track, I find myself believing that hand shuffling doesn't randomize the cards very well. For example, in 1 deck there's a Ace of Hearts on top of the pile. You then do a bridge shuffle mixing in the bottom and top halves together. Then you do a regular shuffle which just reverses the other of the cards. The algorithm is always the same. It's always either reversing the decks order or just mixing bottom and top cards which doesn't do anything profound. Anybody see what I'm saying? Probably not. I just have obcessive compulsive disorder or something.

I think most here would agree that there is no such thing as a random shuffle.
Because I was very interested in card tricks,I learned this as a child. The non-randomness of shuffling (and in some cases, cutting) is the basis for many card tricks.
To point, I can shuffle and cut a single deck all day long and retain the same couple of cards on the top or bottom the whole time. Most folks into card tricks can do so as well.
I am wondering if you aren't selling yourself short by not trying your hand at tracking. After reading your post, you might have the necessary compulsive disorder....er..I mean aptitude for tracking.
@^D
Take care,
@^)
Cyclops

I totally forgot about the whole magic scene.

Anyway, do you think you have OCD? I'm pretty good at math earning at least B's in college Calc for Engineers 1-3. However sometimes I question for example, whether 3 + 8 is 11 while card counting. I mean I know it right off the top of my head that it's 11 but then I take the split second thinking it over just to make sure. I think I'm fucked up. It's like I don't trust the laws of mathematics and have to assure myself that what I've learned throughout my academic career is true!

There is a chart regarding 'deck randomization' with regards to hand shuffling in 'Professional Blackjack'. You may find it to be an interesting read. But please note that reliable, edge-producing ace tracking is hard as hell to master and even harder to implement in the modern casino environment. Just because a shuffle is not completely random does not mean you can just jump in and start tracking aces like a pro. This is especially the case if you find yourself breaking out your elementary number theory texts everytime the count changes so that you can prove addition to yourself again, because proving the existence of a card which is both 1 and 11 and then proving that those values have meaning might just blow your mind!

Principea Mathematica by Betrand Russell. It does prove it, but the only practical value that came out of it is the use of some of the symbols, such as the symbol used for wave functions (AKA exclusion matrices).

But please note that reliable, edge-producing ace tracking is hard as hell to master and even harder to implement in the modern casino environment.

This is true, another factor is that little development of location techniques has taken place. Most locators use exactly the same simple method Thorp recommended in the original Faro paper (which first mentioned the concept of ace location with regard to casino blackjack).
The method remains rather crude and difficult to execute. A pity, since the risk/reward ceiling on hypothetically perfect location techniques is virtually unlimited, by contrast with card counting where the ceiling is quite low.

Any hole card prediction will have less variance than any composition based prediction. See my post below to ETF, "Thankyou...still a little rude."

I posted on the other board that casinos will change the shuffle pattern if the table is paying out to much(dumping). What do you guys think of this practice and how many casinos do this.

It�s funny, my first class of math at University strated like this. "How much is 1+1" - "eh, 2" - "No! First you must ask me how I define the +, so if I define plus as multiplication, 1+1 could be 1".

It's not a case of how one defines +! For the sign + is already defined before you can use the system for getting logical anwers within the parameters of the process. Changing the #####es of a contract invalidates the contract itself. Mind games may promote flexibility of ones thinking if not so recognized.

....the old saw about a craps table that is "dumping" a lot of money, and the PB goes over and turns the cash paddle around and then puts it back into the slot!
Its nonsense.
You can file it with superstitions like:
- a new player "messing up the order of the cards", or someone claiming that a "money management" system will be profitable against a negative expectation game. Just nonsense.
If the house wants to subscribe to superstition, let them, but there is no mathematical or physical evidence to even remotely suggest that doing so would change the outcome one bit.

Take care,
@^)
Cyclops

The degree to which you studied the nature of the shuffle had me thinking that maybe you ought to give tracking a try.
But then again, anyone who questions that 3 + 8 is 11.....
@^S
BTW, tracking is not much about math, but more about what I call Joe 6-pack physics.
@^D
I am pretty lousy at math.
Take care,
@^)
Cyclops

for those who conventionalize when you try to point out that hole card play involves an uncertain, but predicted hole card, and how it needs to be studied and simulated.

A knowledge of QM comes in handy there. But the usual conventionalizing responses make one want to go quantum.

(The energy contained in a cubic centimeter of vacuum, as zero point energy, is 10^58 ergs [by one new calculation], or enough to not only blow away the earth, but to have enough mass-energy to build about 2000 new ones. Those wishing to have fun with that might try placing a stack of Copper Yttrium oxide, Lanthium [used in pressure testing concrete as little disks] and soft iron [such as the material inside a transformer], at a temperature of ~80 dgrees Kelvin, and apply a pulse of about .5939 Hz [the gravity antenna frequency error noted by Wheeler in his gravity wave antenna experiments and in the range of the quantum frequency of several fine line constants.] The usual gang might give this a try, and the cost is less than $45 total. See 73 magazine article from 1989 on magnetic cooling abnormalitys in La, and amasci.com several articles on the Tampiere experiment, and a Scientific American website posting on alternative strategies in shock cooling to Einstein/Bose matter condensate temperatures. Possible results might be comparable to the worries about a DeSitter space-time fluctuation occuring when the Long Island heavy ion accelerator was first fired up, or the worries about catalysis reactions of carbon 14 when the first a-bomb was tested, if you get the apparatus right?? err wrong??? err very very right/wrong!! You can possibly get runaway cooling feedback from the known temperature magnetic saturation and flux curves of CuYtO and La, leading to massive Einstein/Bose condensate formation and one hell of a zero point energy blip, err blast, errr you will never know if it worked or not!!!)

That might not be such a good idea!!!

Remember this is BLACKJACK.

Thankfully never perfected. The Long Island accelerator didn't suck the earth into a blackhole cuzz the worried folks neglected Hawking radiation excerpting a pressure effect, limiting accretion! The carbon 14 atmospheric catalysis worry was overblown and there is a famous paper written about it by Openheimer!

(NT)

The postings of Tom Flanderin and the Scientific American post that was taken down on the speed of gravity postulate that longitutinal waves, incorrectly labeled "scalar waves," by most, may be evidence of gravity propogating quatrature waves infinitely fast, and also indicating that quantum foam speculation really relates to an aether that does create gravity as a geometric effect, but may never the less be "unizzippable."

If so pumping at the Wheeler error frequency may produce other effects.

Very dangerous as in "nukes for all," type stuff.

But at least you could have fun by maybe making the hole card flip itself?????