the error of my thought process?

I gave up on BJ years ago. My thought was that all the math assumed a complete deck. When the casino went to multideck games and dealt only 60%, they were in effect removing/adding cards and thus the actual make up of the deck was unknown. Of course this is a random event and maybe balances out, but is that a leap in faith to assume such?

Can someone explain the error of my thinking or lead me to a source that can. Btw the last books I read on BJ were by Peter Griffin and the math theory was a bit over my head.

I would be happy to answer your question if I understood it.

Could you please re ask it and be a precise as possible.

Thanks

--Mayor

By not dealing to the last card doesn't then the make up of the deck become unknown? ie. all sixes could in effect be removed and basic strategy would not be relevent.

Just because you don't know every card doesn't mean that the respective probabilities are changed. Sure the 6's could be in the remainder, or they could be anywhere else, and in the long run, they are in all possible positions equally often (more or less), that is, uniformly distributed. There are good and bad shoes, and shoes where you get a super high count that continues to go up till the last card (hence lots of faces/aces in the remainder), but none of that matters in the long run.

So I ask again, what is your question? Here is the question you actually ask:

>
>By not dealing to the last card doesn't then the make up of the deck >become unknown?
>

Do you want to ask if the shoe is beatable? Is the deck unknown, of course not. We know exactly how many of each card there are, 24. After that, what do you need?

Please clarify your question.

Thanks.

--The Mayor

I gave up on blackjack when Revere was out dated. It is probably evident to most why I did, a math deficit.

If I take two decks, shuffle them, cut them in half, I end up with a deck of cards that is totally random in make up and unknown. I could not make any assumptions in video poker with such a deck. How can it be done in Black Jack?

If I take two decks, shuffle them, cut them in half, I end up with a deck of cards that is totally random in make up and unknown. I could not make any assumptions in video poker with such a deck.

Sure you could. It's not totally random. You didn't pick 52 cards from an infinite number of decks, you picked them from two decks. If you see five aces, you know there can be no more than three left. On average, you will see just under 1.5 in the remaining 47 cards. If instead you see none in the first five cards, you will see just under 4, on average, in the remaining 47 cards.

Suppose your blackjack game has 6 decks and the dealer only deals 4.5 of them. If you've seen no aces after 4.0 decks, you know there must bet 24 in the remaining 2 decks. In the remaining 0.5 decks that you will see, you can expect 6 aces on average.

Counters use these probabilities to determine when they will, on average, win more than they lose.