Question on Shuffle quality and impact on Card Counting Strategies

[bev005]

Folks I'm relatively new to this very interesting game as Black Jack and the more deeper I go more interesting it becomes.

Try to read a lot of material about theory of Card Counting Systems. Very interesting , lots of interesting ideas etc.

But in a nutshell all of the Card Counting Strategies more effective less effective , complex or simple like Hi Lo oriented to determine the single thing: when ration of high value cards is greater than low value cards (10s and Aces vs low nominal)

And if this is a case then I started to think what can impact that ratio and came to conclusion that the must have for this ratio to grow or decline are clusters of high low cards in the shoe.

What I'm trying to say is that I have a theory that if the shoe shuffled such a way that it conforms to uniform distribution of the cards then no matter how you calc RC it will never go high or low enough for player to have advantage

TC will fluctuate between -2 +2 so to say

Indeed so far happens on all computer games that utilize PRNG and insure Uniform Distribution by using good algorithms.

I have not made yet simulator to prove this statistically. I will.

As a matter of fact I have noticed that I win more unites when count is zero and any time i raisw the bet i lose more higher unit bets than win.

If that hypothesis is true then no matter the score of the strategy ,if the shoe is shuffled to uniform distribution you will play flat bet Basic Strategy anyway.

Then what's the point of all these counting systems?

Have anyone done analysis on this subject?

What do you folks think?

[BackCounter]

A uniform distribution is not random, it is very contrived. Randomness will produce variation in the distribution of high and low cards that is more or less seen in real life.

[Sidecount]

You "noticing" that you win more at zero is meaningless. It isnt an immediate correlation. Thst is short term variance and also some self-confirmation bias with your brain. Stop trying to prove things. Learn more from what the experts have already proven. You aren't going to re-invent this for find something that others didn't know. People much smarter than you or me have already figured this stuff out.

[bev005]

You "noticing" that you win more at zero is meaningless. It isnt an immediate correlation. Thst is short term variance and also some self-confirmation bias with your brain. Stop trying to prove things. Learn more from what the experts have already proven. You aren't going to re-invent this for find something that others didn't know. People much smarter than you or me have already figured this stuff out.

We would be in a stone edge if everybody would be doing what you suggest

I have curious mind man.

And as a matter of fact working on AI Model to see what strategy it would create

You can't stop progress

So with all respect to founding fathers I will question everything I read and see for improvements.

Thank you

[bev005]

A uniform distribution is not random, it is very contrived. Randomness will produce variation in the distribution of high and low cards that is more or less seen in real life.

Yeaah that exactly was I looking for to prove or disprove. was wondering if someone already done some Analysis and can point me to them. Cause in all materials I read so far no one provides the analysis on this variance thing you ention which I think caused by inperffect shuffling firs place

Again it is just a thought I have no prove either way but would like to have some quantitative analysis.

[bev005]

You "noticing" that you win more at zero is meaningless. It isnt an immediate correlation. Thst is short term variance and also some self-confirmation bias with your brain. Stop trying to prove things. Learn more from what the experts have already proven. You aren't going to re-invent this for find something that others didn't know. People much smarter than you or me have already figured this stuff out.

Very much might be . Though I'm looking to see how I ca prove it is self-confirmation bias or not.

[G Man]

LOL, have fun !

[Gronbog]

bev005, you are making the mistake of assuming that the use of a uniformly random process to shuffle the cards results in a card stream uniformly distributed with respect to the running count. That is, that the running count will not vary much if a uniformly random RNG is used to shuffle the cards. Others have suggested to you that this is not true, and they are correct. All that "uniformly random" means is that, at any given time, all possible outcomes have the same probability of occurring. However, the "random" part is that you still don't know which outcome will actually occur. It is this randomness that leads to variation in the uniformity of the actual results.

Consider flipping a fair coin. It is a uniformly random process. At any given time, heads and tails both have the same 50% probability of occurring no matter how many time you have already flipped the coin and with what results. Yet, streaks happen and are in fact a necessary part of the results being random. While long streaks are less likely than short ones, the probability of them happening is not zero and can be calculated. Over time, they will occur at the predicted rate. Think of the rising and falling running count as "streaks" of high and low cards. They do occur and will occur at the predicted rate.

You suggest writing a simulator to test your ideas and I encourage you to do just that. That's exactly what I did when I started on this journey and needed a way to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to published information. This is not a new idea and there are hundreds of simulators out there, some commercial but most written by individuals for their own needs. All of us who have performed this exercise will tell you in advance that the true count does indeed rise and fall enough to result in significant advantage and disadvantage even when using a uniformly distributed RNG to shuffle the cards. We can also confirm with you what the expected true count frequencies and advantages are among other things.

You don't need to believe everything you are told on faith but please, do not simply dismiss the advice and opinions of those of us who have been on this journey for years and even decades. The math and the software needed to do this are not rocket science and, while you are encouraged to embark on this journey, please understand that most of us have already asked the same questions and are already well ahead of you.

[Gramazeka]

Yeaah that exactly was I looking for to prove or disprove. was wondering if someone already done some Analysis and can point me to them. Cause in all materials I read so far no one provides the analysis on this variance thing you ention which I think caused by inperffect shuffling firs place

Again it is just a thought I have no prove either way but would like to have some quantitative analysis.

Help for you-

https://qfit.com/orders.htm

[DSchles]

Consider flipping a fair coin. It is a uniformly random process. At any given time, heads and tails both have the same 50% probability of occurring no matter how many time you have already flipped the coin and with what results. Yet, streaks happen and are in fact a necessary part of the results being random. While long streaks are less likely than short ones, the probability of them happening is not zero and can be calculated. Over time, they will occur at the predicted rate. Think of the rising and falling running count as "streaks" of high and low cards. They do occur and will occur at the predicted rate.

You probably already know this, but, if you ask a human to simply contrive, say, 100 tosses of a coin, by writing H or T, each time, it is always possible, with almost 100% certainty, for a computer to tell whether a human created the sequence or whether it was done by a RNG--in this case, 0 or 1. Why? Because, invariably, the human never creates streaks as long as the RNG does, nor with the same frequencies!

Don

[Freightman]

needed a way to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to published information

Same principle as “separating the milches from the fleishiks” which is why Jewish women wear 2 piece bathing suits - simply an observation.

[Sidecount]

You probably already know this, but, if you ask a human to simply contrive, say, 100 tosses of a coin, by writing H or T, each time, it is always possible, with almost 100% certainty, for a computer to tell whether a human created the sequence or whether it was done by a RNG--in this case, 0 or 1. Why? Because, invariably, the human never creates streaks as long as the RNG does, nor with the same frequencies!

Don

This is a good point and also one that I enjoy very much. What humans instinctively THINK is random actually isn't how randomization works. 7 in a row can and will happen sometimes. But most humans would never think to include that if they had to draw up something that looks random. Essentially, the humans' efforts would have too many 2-3 in a row sequences and if the longest is 4 that would be unusually short.

Another one I read about somewhere is an 80/20 experiment. Green button is 80% reward and 20% punishment. Red button is 20% reward and 80% punishment (electric shock or whatever).

The rats quickly figured out that the green button gave them more rewards than the red button so they kept hitting that repeatedly.

The humans would try to solve it or time it. They would hit the other button when it felt like maybe that one would hit. And thus they performed worse.

80% success is the best you can do. And that's what the rats quickly ended up gravitating towards after some early missteps. The humans tricked themselves and ended up performing worse than the rats and ended up at 65% success or something. The humans were stupider than the rats in this experiment.

Humans are creatures who thrive on identifying patterns. But that can be their downfall when it comes to blackjack. Their pattern recognition or ability to predict the flow of the buttons or the cards or whatever simply isn't as good as they think it is. Their instincts on what is a pattern and what is random are generally not strong.

[bev005]

bev005, you are making the mistake of assuming that the use of a uniformly random process to shuffle the cards results in a card stream uniformly distributed with respect to the running count. That is, that the running count will not vary much if a uniformly random RNG is used to shuffle the cards. Others have suggested to you that this is not true, and they are correct. All that "uniformly random" means is that, at any given time, all possible outcomes have the same probability of occurring. However, the "random" part is that you still don't know which outcome will actually occur. It is this randomness that leads to variation in the uniformity of the actual results.
u.

I see thanks yeah I get the difference now. uniformity means each card has equal probability 1/N to be in any position in the shoe doesn't really negate the possibility to create clusters of low high cards. I get that now. makes sense.

But still the question remains how often such clusters occur and for how long in order to tc rise and stay reasonably high so someone could really get advantage of that.

I do understand that I have no statistical data , but learning CAC2 what I did I just had very thoroughly shuffled by me shoe (like 2-3 times different patterns etc) and plyaed already about 60 games writing down all hands etc.

Out of 60 shoes very few generated the conditions when I had hands with x2 x3 units bets and 90% of those due to our famous sd been lost. Even in those that I had positive outcomes majority won hands ben while RC/TC were <=0.

I don't even speak of occurrences to apply deviations - for 60 shoes the number i applied deviations was 4 2 of which generated winnning situation 1 neutral and 1 negative.

So I started to ask myself is it worth all the effort?

Then tried to play on a casino app with PNRG shoes. Same result. As a matter of fact I could easily just use flat betting Basic Strategy with almost same if not better result.

Hence I started to think into has anyone done any statistical analysis on this.

I read BJ Attack SCORE win rates etc no need to knock my face into that I just don't see it so far working in a real life tests.