Interesting...the casinos are offering better odds and they are doing it by offering CSM dealt game...hummmm Not enough AP's to warrent this...also far too many truely dumb players ...must simply be the more hands per hour... I still dont trust the numbers that say CSM offer better odds by dealing from a infinite deck...just not computin for me...
Cut-Card Effect When I first saw this thread I thought it must be a reference to the cut-card effect. After I read the Wizard's words I thought it must be something else. But it seems I was right to begin with, I just didn't understand the nature of the cut-card effect as well as I thought I did. The following links are quite helpful - Update on Continuous Shuffling Machines, by Henry Tamburin Blackjack Insider - Issue 8 (This seems to be a full write-up of his findings by the Wizard.) A few key points - CSMs don't replicate an infinite deck, they replicate shuffling the given number of decks after every round (just like on the internet, and just like when calculating the standard EV for Basic Strategy) Therefore, it is not the case that CSMs give less of a house edge than the usually quoted figures, rather it is that cut-card games give slightly more of a house edge than the usually quoted figures. If you play a fixed number of rounds between shuffles (whether that be one or several) then you get the well-known figures for the house edge for a particular set of rules / number of decks, but the cut-card changes that by introducing an occasional 'extra' round with a negative count. With a fixed number of rounds, the number of high-valued cards to come out of the deck is higher than the distribution of such cards in the deck because of the nature of how the game is played; when low cards come out you tend to want to hit your hand more, meaning that more hits occur when the deck is rich in tens than when it is not. (I'm not totally sure I've entirely got my head around the details of this last point; it may not be telling us anything new, just saying things differently.)
Colin, you've almost got it worked out, but your last description of the cut card effect might need more explaining... The cut card effect is caused by using a "shuffle-up" card, whether in one deck or 8 decks. Use of the cut card means that a set number of cards will be dealt before it comes out, and after that round is completed, the dealer will shuffle. Let's say the dealer consistently places the cut card at 50% in a two deck game, cutting 52 cards out of play. If you are playing heads up, you'll probably get about 9 or 10 hands per shuffle. If the early hands in a shuffle have a lot of pat 20s and blackjacks, then few cards are used, and you are more likely to get 10 or 11 rounds in before the shuffle. That also means that the extra hands you'll play are probably in a negative count. That's the cut card effect, and it costs you (very slightly) when you play any game dealt to a specific number of cards. With a CSM, there's only one hand dealt from a fresh shuffle each time, and this effect doesn't occur. Of course, you should still hate CSMs.
Thanks Ken Yeah, that was my understanding of the situation. It's just hard to sum it up in a few words. One of the articles I linked to also makes the point that the reverse effect works against the player too - if lots of small cards come out then you get less rounds before the cut card appears and it arrives just when the deck is full of all those lovely high cards that you want to see. It was all the talk about the increased frequency of high-valued cards with a CSM that confused me and made me think that something new (and inexplicable) was being discussed, whereas it really is just the cut card effect (or lack of it) in action.
