Quote Originally Posted by angle_sh00ter View Post
Take a fresh deck of cards shuffle them up. Do the same thing with a second deck of cards. If the decks remain separate the chance of getting a blackjack are higher than if you mix the 2 decks together. Are you missing anything there?
No.
The simple act of going from 2 separate decks to one combined deck just changed the odds. No counting required.
Going from 2 1D's to 1 2D. No counting...

Yes, the odds of getting a natural do change, as there are more cards.

Do you know why that happened?
Because, there are more cards now?

Its extremely simple, it happened because you are now playing with more cards. That's it. Nothing more. No one can argue with that. Nothing else changed. Not even the composition of the cards. Just the total number in play.
The odds change precisely for that reason! The composition goes from [4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 16] to [8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 32]!

Now for some reason im meant to believe just by mixing the 2 decks together and then seperating them into 2 random 52 card decks that somehow that effect is negated? I cant see why or how it would be.
What makes you think that? What effect is negated? That the probability of drawing a natural changes? Yes, it is reduced as the number of decks increases. If you were to shuffle the 2D shoe and draw only 52 cards from it, the odds of getting a natural are the same for any shuffled DD game! The requisite 52 cards drawn are a red herring: they have no effect on the probability of drawing a natural! Just because you cut a DD shoe in half, does not mean that anything changes. You are still playing with a set of [8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 32] cards in DD! Regardless of if you chose the first 52, last 52, or some in between, you will still get the same EV on average. The only way to know that you have a change in EV is with counting.

I have to believe that on average playing a hand off the top from one of the random 52 slugs will be more advantageousus than shuffling them all back in together and playing a hand off the top from the 2 complete decks.
NO! You will still have the same HE if you shuffle 2 decks together and play any random 52 cards! Regardless! You can't simply look at one subset and suggest that ALL other subsets would behave the same! They do not! If that were the case, then counters would jump into a DD game, bet the MAX, then wong out after k cards have been drawn. Which is ludicrous!