These boards and the elimination of the cut-card effect
This despite all the negative comments on this board and other boards about how the blackjack-playing public will shun these continuous-shuffled games.
The contributions on these boards were not helpful. Mostly they served to advertise the fact that advantage players didn't like them, which is what the casinos wanted to hear.
I personally had a gripe about the comments emanating from talented individuals like Cacarulo & the wizard of odds which were repeated ad nauseam concerning the notion that the absence of a cut-card effect made these machines slightly better for the basic strategist.
In the first case, were it in fact true, this information should have never been disseminated, because it gave the impression they were a good deal for non-counters. In the second case, it simply is not accurate.
The mathematics outlined by Cacarulo and the Wiz is accurate if the machines in question recycled every card and made if immediately available for play. But the machines just don't behave that way. No source was provided justifying this speculation.
If you look at the patent for the shufflemaster CSM you see that the minimum latency associated with the device is just seven cards. That creates a massive cut-card effect, and this game is in fact significantly worse for the basic strategist.
Non-shufflemaster csm's are thin on the ground in the states, but it any case, the minimum latency with these devices is always much larger, so you get a cut-card effect roughly equivalent to that with a shoe and poor penetration.
I believe the machines were removed as a result of big scores against these devices perpetrated by visionary advantage player types determined to find a way to beat them. Some of the ideas were very powerful, some were downright silly and based on pseudo-science, but every time someone won big from one of these machines or suggested a means to do so, it put doubt in the minds of the bosses paying a usurous lease for the machines.
Credit must go to Persi Diaconis, our own alienated, Jack O'Spades and an anonymous team of female Australian card counters in particular, for ridding the casinos of these infernal devices. There are many others but they probably don't want their names mentioned.
