Well that’s what I think anyway. I just watched that History Channel 2 hour special about a group of MIT students (and their financial backers) who seriously studied, practiced and mastered blackjack strategy. Even though they used a counting strategy at the casinos, it wasn’t evident because 1 or more people would play (and count) with low bets and then a new player (an associate) would take over and always place large bets because the count was now in his favor. Needless to say, the casinos finally realized something was going on and eventually most of the players were “made” and so on.
Rather than go through all of this, why doesn’t a casino just change the blackjack rules? I think the blackjack rules had already been changed to discourage counters. At one time, blackjack was played with one deck, allowing “counters” to win really big money. So, then they decided to play with multiple decks which reduced the opportunities when the player could really take advantage of the house. So, why don’t they play with a 6 deck “shoe” and reshuffle after about 150 cards have been dealt? This would defeat all counting strategies (I think).
In some casinos they reshuffle about half-way (or less) through the shoe. Even without reshuffling, the advantage of counting is so slim that they aren’t losing a significant amount of money unless it’s being done by super-high-rollers.
Reshuffling and the extra hassles of large shoes takes time. Time is in casinos. The more hands dealt/hour, the more for the casino.
Casinos love not-so-bright players with “systems”. Presumably, the large number of card counters who don’t actually no how to do it right provide a significant amount of $.
wolf_meister: You should really read the book! As you might remember, the TV special was based on the first MIT team, while the book - that they plugged endlessly in adverstising back when this first aired… in May? - was all about the second team. Aside from being a really great, fast read, the book goes into a lot of detail about what some of the folks are saying here - like why Vegas loves an idiot with a system and why they didn’t shuffle more than they did. It’s a really good read.
There was an extensive thread on this very recently. The consensus answer was that casinos do very well out of the tempting thought that one can win at blackjack. Meanwhile, it is sufficiently hard to actually do so that the casinos make more money out of those that think they can count than they lose to those who can.
In the book (*Bringing Down the House * by Ben Mezrich), the team takes “credit” for destroying their own profitability at Mohegan Sun by inducing the casino to reshuffle after only 3 decks (before the count starts to help), and whenever a new player sat down (clearing the count). Perhaps the Vegas casinos they preferred thought it was cheaper to engage the security agency instead.
I’ve seen those, too (stone cold sober) – last year, Treasure Island IIRC. You put 6 decks in the hopper, and it’s continuously shuffling. Spits out 50 or so cards, and the dealer deals. After the hand the cards go back in the hopper and another set of 50 comes out.
These make counting obsolete, and don’t slow down the pace. I’m surprised they aren’t wide-spread.
jsc1953
As others have said, maybe shuffling machines would discourage the system players - especially since the majority of system players aren’t that good and the Casinos could lose revenue from this niche of players.
But I do agree with you. In ALL other casino games, there are NO winning sytems for the player - the house always wins. The only way to win at these games is outright cheating. Yet, the casinos still have no trouble packing people in. I’d imagine that mechanical shuffling machines would barely put a dent in casino revenues by discouraging “counters”.
As I said in another thread, in the early 1950’s, a clever person figured out how to “rhythm” a slot machine - pulling the lever with just the right amount of force, depending on which displays turned up, etc. He even taught his method to some people who went on to do the same thing. It was NOT cheating. Basically, the machines were not sufficiently randomized. The casinos learned about this rather quickly and added another part (a variator I think) to their slot machines which essentially “randomized the randomizer”. That’s why I was surprised that casinos were NOT that quick to eliminate ALL possibilities of using a counting system for blackjack. If casinos employ those shuffling machines, counting as you say will become “obsolete”.