Anthony: Blackjack folk-lore

[Anthony]

I'm looking forward to my trip to LV next month and I appreciated Parker's clear, concise answers to my four questions. I have just one more. Perhaps there are some here who may be able to comment sensibly on this (for me - happy,) puzzle.

I'm a mostly green better, and occasionally black. My black-chip times usually coordinate when only a certain situation occurs, which is not often. In the 10 years since a friend told me about this, I reckon I am ahead around 500 black chips, from this play alone. I guess that works out at only 50 black chips per year on average, but I am very happy with that, because these shoes are not common, and beware the pit. What I do, I am sure many experts would call voodoo, but I don't care what they call it, for me it works. About 65% of the times that it occurs, that is. Here goes.

I am sitting at a hand-dealt 6 or 8-deck shoe game. There are say, 5 players, and this shoe has been a real bastard, lancing most of us bad. But I stay, flatbetting through the negative count, taking a green loss on this shoe, but which also ensures I'm there for the next shoe. I did not walk because of my belief, founded on a good black-chip profit, over a long period. My belief is that this mongrel of a heavy dealer-favourable shoe will find its near-opposite in the next shoe, or perhaps the one after that. This has been my (65%) experience. LOL if you want, but does anyone know something math-wise about this?

Back to my next shoe, (or the one after). As soon as TC rises in my favour, I am betting black, with a spread as wide as I think the pit can take, without banning or restricting me to minimum-bets (Australian casino practice).

Both these examples of extreme shoes are not rare, but they are not common either, and I certainly have learned to pay attention when I notice one. And capitalise. If such a situation occurs at my green table in Vegas and I get out my blacks when TC swings in my favour, what spread could I realistically get away without heat burning me?

In all the BJ reading I did, the experts have all said the same thing, "the cards/dice/balls, have no memory." So therefore, from a scientific viewpoint, of course that is the case, after all, they all agree with each other. In the meantime, I will be happily counting waiting for such an opportunity to present, and if it does, and the count goes to my favour, here comes my voodoo, folk-lore thing again! Out come the blacks baby!

I will continue to use this, for so long as I keep getting great results. My curiosity got the better of me and I would like to see if someone has a scientific or math answer.

[Don Schlesinger]

Your entire post comes down this to this: When you encounter a very positive shoe, you bet big, and your experience has been to win more often than you lose! Welcome to the club! :-)

The only thing about your post that makes no sense is that you attribute the ultra-positive shoe to a previous, ultra-negative one, for which there is no basis in fact. Why must the previous shoe be horrible for you to whip out your black chips? What if the wonderful plus shoe that you describe is followed by yet another super-plus shoe? Do you NOT bet that one? If not, why not? Because it was not preceded by a bad shoe? What sense does that make?

Bottom line: You seem to be waiting for some sort of "signal" that it's all right to bet heavily on a positive shoe, instead of betting that way every time one comes along, and that approach is just plain foolish. The wonderful results you have obtained come from the fundamental principle of card counting: betting heavily in positive shoes. That you impose a silly "but the shoe must be preceded by a horribly negative shoe for me to bet" stipulation on your scheme is just irrational superstition on your part and, obviously, is costing you lots of money from the many advantageous opportunities that you must be missing.

Don

[SOTSOG]

If the count is positive you bet, if it is negative you don't. If you get 10 positive shoes in a row, bet them all the same. I agree.

However:
> The only thing about your post that makes no sense is
> that you attribute the ultra-positive shoe to a
> previous, ultra-negative one, for which there is no
> basis in fact.

There could be a very good explanation for what the Original Poster has observed. In order for a shoe to be ultra-negative, there must be a huge slug of positive cards behind the cut card. Depending on the shuffle procedures and a normal cut, this positive slug could be regularly being brought to the front of the next shoe, causing the "ultra-positvie" shoe to appear after the "ultra-negative" one.

[Don Schlesinger]

> There could be a very good explanation for what the
> Original Poster has observed.

No, there isn't.

> In order for a shoe to
> be ultra-negative, there must be a huge slug of
> positive cards behind the cut card. Depending on the
> shuffle procedures and a normal cut, this positive
> slug could be regularly being brought to the front of
> the next shoe, causing the "ultra-positvie"
> shoe to appear after the "ultra-negative"
> one.

"Regularly brought"? You're assuming that our writer has played all his blackjack in the same casino, with the same, unusual, non-random shuffle procedure? I won't speak for him, but I don't think that that was what he was implying in his post.

Don

[SOTSOG]

> No, there isn't.

> "Regularly brought"? You're assuming that
> our writer has played all his blackjack in the same
> casino, with the same, unusual, non-random shuffle
> procedure? I won't speak for him, but I don't think
> that that was what he was implying in his post.

> Don

Yes, I assume this is the same Australian poster that didn't know what a "hole card" was in blackjack, since all his playing had been done at the local ENHC casinos.

Considering distances down under, then the majority of his play would have been at the closest local casino, where this particular observation could have been formed. Most casinos do have a standard shuffle procedure (some more "non-random" than others ).

I think there is a whole field of advantage play that is based on exploting non-random casino shuffles, they are not that unusual. A shuffle procedure that brings the undealt slug to the front of the next shoe with a consistent cut card placement occuring at a casino somewhere is not really stretching the realm of possibility.

[David Spence]

[SOTSOG]

> Maybe not...but even if the slug with all the high
> cards were routinely brought to the front, this would
> create a shoe with a very negative count early on. The
> fact that this shoe is, at least initially, favorable
> to the player would be unknown to a card counter, even
> one well versed in "blackjack folk-lore" :-)

We are talking about a positive shoe being followed by a negative shoe. The negative shoe would have a slug of undealt low cards.

If the undealt portion is being brought to the front of the next shoe, then when an 'ultra-negative' shoe is encountered, the low card slug is brought to the front, and the next shoe will become 'ultra-positive'.

It could also occur if the shuffle is just generally overall poor, allowing 'clumping' to take place (voodoo alert - not clumping in the bad sense, but just a poor shuffle that restricts movement of cards between shuffle 'zones').

Once a shoe becomes 'clumped' or 'grouped' in this sense, applying a poor shuffle will keep this grouping. A shoe with large extremely negative groups would be offset with extremely positive groups, and depending on which group shows first, shoes could alternate very positive/very negative for a period of time.

Sprinkle in some observer bias, and a new folk-tale is born!

[David Spence]

> We are talking about a positive shoe being followed by
> a negative shoe. The negative shoe would have a slug
> of undealt low cards.

It sure would. I didn't delete my post quickly enough--you're too fast on the draw :-)

[Don Schlesinger]

> It sure would. I didn't delete my post quickly
> enough--you're too fast on the draw :-)

I'll leave you guys to "clumping" discussions. To me, it's all voodoo and has no basis in reality. Never has.

Don

[Parker]

There isn't much I can add to Don's excellent answer, except to point out that that the mind is a funny thing. There is something called selective memory, in which you tend to remember the times that reinforce your theory and forget about those that contradict it. Also, unless you have been playing many hours every day for the past 10 years, your sample size is too small.

In other words, your 65% figure is meaningless.

Also, playing through a negative shoe so you can play the next (hopefully) positive shoe is just a bad idea, expecially in Las Vegas, where your time will be limited, and you have an abundance of tables. If the count is in the tank and you are more than a couple of decks into the shoe, leave the table!

[AutomaticMonkey]

> We are talking about a positive shoe being followed by
> a negative shoe. The negative shoe would have a slug
> of undealt low cards.

> If the undealt portion is being brought to the front
> of the next shoe, then when an 'ultra-negative' shoe
> is encountered, the low card slug is brought to the
> front, and the next shoe will become 'ultra-positive'.

> It could also occur if the shuffle is just generally
> overall poor, allowing 'clumping' to take place
> (voodoo alert - not clumping in the bad sense, but
> just a poor shuffle that restricts movement of cards
> between shuffle 'zones').

> Once a shoe becomes 'clumped' or 'grouped' in this
> sense, applying a poor shuffle will keep this
> grouping. A shoe with large extremely negative groups
> would be offset with extremely positive groups, and
> depending on which group shows first, shoes could
> alternate very positive/very negative for a period of
> time.

> Sprinkle in some observer bias, and a new folk-tale is
> born!

Most shuffles do have some preservation of a non-random distribution that carries from shoe to shoe, but it isn't a very strong effect and it isn't straightforward to exploit.

First of all, whenever low and high cards are segregated in a shoe, which cards you see are fully dependent on where the cut card is inserted, and being this is usually going to be done by a civilian, we can consider it random. Therefore whether the non-random distribution results in observing a high count or a low count is random.

So instead of talking about high or low counts, I'm going to talk about RMS counts. RMS is used in electronics to describe the power delivered by an AC voltage source with an average value of zero. The average voltage across the terminals of an electrical outlet and across a block of wood are both zero, but there's a slightly different sensation when you touch them. Likewise even though the count of a shoe begins at zero and ends at zero, how much of a fluctuation exists in between determines how much "power" we can get out of the shoe.

There's a coefficient between 0 and 1 that is a constant of each particular shuffle. 1 would correspond to no shuffle at all, where the cards would come out on the next shoe just like they did on the last shoe, and 0 would correspond to a "perfectly random" (yes I know there is probably no such thing) shuffle. Numbers between that correspond to what portion of the RMS value of the counts in one shoe you can expect to see, on the average, preserved in the next shoe. Of the shuffles I've analyzed the highest coefficient I've seen is around 0.2, and with shuffles you would ever realistically see used it's around 0.4.

This information so far isn't terribly useful, but it's useful enough such that if I play out a shoe and there are no major deviations from a balanced count, I'm probably not going to be there for the next shoe. Conversely, if I get a very high count or quickly Wong out of a shoe, the odds are better than average that the next shoe at that table will show me a non-random distribution that will allow me to either play a high count or walk away from a low one. Consider this not a substitute for counting or standard counting practices, just a very low-risk way to increase your probability of seeing valuable counts. It's also a lot different than the belief that a high count will follow a low one- I think I know what you're getting at but there's a lot more to it than that.

[Anthony]

> Your entire post comes down this to this: When you
> encounter a very positive shoe, you bet big, and your
> experience has been to win more often than you lose!
> Welcome to the club! :-)

> The only thing about your post that makes no sense is
> that you attribute the ultra-positive shoe to a
> previous, ultra-negative one, for which there is no
> basis in fact. Why must the previous shoe be horrible
> for you to whip out your black chips? What if the
> wonderful plus shoe that you describe is followed by
> yet another super-plus shoe? Do you NOT bet that one?
> If not, why not? Because it was not preceded by a bad
> shoe? What sense does that make?

> Bottom line: You seem to be waiting for some sort of
> "signal" that it's all right to bet heavily
> on a positive shoe, instead of betting that way every
> time one comes along, and that approach is just plain
> foolish. The wonderful results you have obtained come
> from the fundamental principle of card counting:
> betting heavily in positive shoes. That you impose a
> silly "but the shoe must be preceded by a
> horribly negative shoe for me to bet" stipulation
> on your scheme is just irrational superstition on your
> part and, obviously, is costing you lots of money from
> the many advantageous opportunities that you must be
> missing.

> Don

Thanks Don (and others) for your replies. I enjoy reading quality stuff! I've played BJ in 9 of the 13 Australian casinos, and all at hand-shuffled shoes, of course, which incidentally, have become increasingly harder to find. Fortunately, the HR rooms continue to help us in this regard,so far so good. Dealers here generally shuffle twice before beginning the next shoe. Does that help the clumping theory?

I obviously wasn't as clear as I might have been when I described my experience. I'm what I consider a 'normal', (if somewhat conservative) green-playing counter and I have not, so far, been banned or even restricted in Australian casinos. (Just lucky I guess, maybe they'll get me in LV!) As for my play, I simply play each shoe as it unfolds, without any idea about how it 'should' go. But if it becomes a beauty, my blacks are out there, every time.

I count, I bet, according to TC, just as described in the good book. And so it goes. EXCEPT, when I notice an extreme-bad shoe,(and I stay, because there are far fewer tables here), I am on alert regarding the next shoe, or
the one after. This is when I expect there may be a strong possibility of its near-opposite - adjustment. (the cards have memory?)(My superstition, right Don?) Of course, I'm there for the next shoe after that as it may also be a whale.

So, your bottom line seems to be with the other scientists who say 'the cards have no memory', and my little folklore thing is just pure superstition, and my good results over a decade, are my own deluded superstition! In the end, I've
put my blacks out when conditions favoured me, that's all...
.Hmmm. Give me a moment while I try to get over the idea that the fairies were somehow helping me!

"If it weren't for luck, I'd have won all my hands!" Cheers K

[Parker]

> So, your bottom line seems to be with the other
> scientists who say 'the cards have no memory', and my
> little folklore thing is just pure superstition, and
> my good results over a decade, are my own deluded
> superstition! In the end, I've
> put my blacks out when conditions favoured me, that's
> all...

Now you've got it.

Think about this: Had you not been following this little superstition of yours, your lifetime winnings would almost certainly be significantly higher.