In the CBJN the "sc" designation is used to refer to a shuffle card. So what? What am I missing here? There must be some significance to the designation but what is it?
winterhawk,
For handheld games, some casinos use a shuffle card to determine penetration. At casinos without SC's, the dealer generally deals a fixed number of rounds between shuffles. The "fixed rounds" game is better for the players, due to the dreaded "cut card effect".
For example, in single deck games without SC's, the casino may deal Rule of Six (abbreviated RO6), which means that with one player's hand you'll see five rounds between shuffles, or two player hands will get four rounds, or three rounds of three, two rounds of four: in short, RO6 means that:
(# of player hands) + (number of rounds) = 6.
Thus, in a head's up RO6 game, the dealer will deal on average 27 cards before shuffling: that's
(2.7 cards/hand)*(2 hands/round)*(5 rounds) = 27 cards.
Thus, the average penetration is around 50% (actually 52%). However, that's only the average: if instead a ton of small cards come out in the first two rounds, those hands will use a lot more than 2.7 cards each and the count will be astronomical. Thus, the last three rounds will all be dealt at high counts, and the dealer will probably use more than 27 cards.
Now contrast that with the case where the dealer uses a SC with the penetration set at 50%. Now if the ton of small cards come out in the first two rounds, the dealer will get to the SC long before beginning to deal that precious fifth round, or maybe even before the fourth round, thus depriving the player of one or two high-count rounds. If instead the high cards pour out at the top of the deck, so that every hand is pat, the count will plummet AND the dealer will actually deal seven (low-count) rounds before shuffling.
That's the "cut card effect".
Hope this helps!
Dog Hand
Dog hand:
That was a great explanation. I'll pay more attention to trying to find non Shuffle Card games. Clearly there are a lot of factors when evaluating a game; penetration, rules, #decks, table minimum, shuffle-card, etc. One more thing to consider now!
I agree with Dog Hand's observations regarding single deck games, other than that I would not play a single deck with only five rounds. Intead, play two hands to get four rounds to each, which is a much better game than five rounds to one hand.
The only Nevada single deck I know that uses a shuffle card is at the Four Queens, which essentially makes the game unplayable. But that sweatshop isn't any great loss.
In double deck games, the downside of the LACK of a shuffle card is that preferential shuffling is less obvious, such as is done at Stardust.
