Have a question dealer checking for Ace

[DD11]

Three's response in another thread made a question pop in my head that I have never gave a lot of thought to before. When I was first turned 21 and just gambled I remember asking the dealer when she checked for an Ace with a face card showing. "Hey so you know what card it is right even if its not an Ace?" she replied "no, I only know if it is an Ace". I thought that seemed odd at the time but never thought much more about it because if the dealer can in fact know what card it is and signal me to what it was that would be cheating and eventually prison time. Well fast forward to three weeks ago I am playing a local store and dealer shows a 10 and I have a 19 so I tuck my cards and the next lady says "hmmm what to do" she shows her cards and its A,7. Which BS says to hit but she doesn't know that. The dealer replied "you need to hit because 18 wont beat me this time" and trust me when I say he wasn't saying it has in "you have assume I always have a 10 underneath" He meant it as 18 will not beat the 20 that I know I have. She stayed and sure enough he has a 20. I can also remember a few times dealers telling people to stay on 14-16 while showing a 10 as they said "maybe ill bust". So can they or can they not see it?? I have always assumed it was just mirrors so therefore why wouldn't they be able to tell?

[ZenMaster_Flash]

If the dealer has an Ace up they place their cards horizontally under the "reader"
and if they have a Face they place the cards under the reader vertically.
The corners of the faces and Aces have black marks which the mirrored reader
can pick up ONLY if there is indeed a blackjack.

[DD11]

Oh cool. well there ya have it. That is the answer I was looking for.

[ZeeBabar]

"I can also remember a few times dealers telling people to stay on 14-16 while showing a 10 as they said "maybe ill bust". So can they or can they not see it?? I have always assumed it was just mirrors so therefore why wouldn't they be able to tell?"

Say the dealer is himself a card counter, knows the deck is negative, or he follows the Tarzan Count or t3's and knows that there are few 7-9 left.

[hypercube]

you need to pay attention exactly to how the dealer checks, where I am from most dealers are very sloppy: checking the card with the mirror in both directions, sometimes peeking first then checking with the mirror, sometimes checking with the mirror then peaking to confirm out of habit. audible and visual tales take place often. I had one dealer who would check with mirror offer insurance i would go about my motion of placing insurance and she would recheck by peeking and lecture me on how you should never take insurance if she didnt have it, if she did have it she would allow my insurance bet. She did this everytime and never noticed, loved that dealer! Some dealers try to effect your play, and they will peek to determine if they should slightly help you to hit or stand, some want to beat you, others want to help you. Figure out which it is and if they are peeking, its a nice +EV!

Also there are some dealer that count while they deal, although id say maybe 1/10 in my area. and they will often give hints based on their own feel/count of the cards, you will know how accurate they are based on your own count. usually the ones that just cant help to share are usually right and just cant help to show how smart they are by trying to call the next card