Back to The Blackjack Page
The Blackjack Page Archive
The Future of Blackjack

While visiting some of the local, friendly casinos in the St. Louis area recently, I saw quite a few devices called "Continuous Shuffle Machines" (CSMs) in use at two of the three largest operations here. Harrah's has bought Players Island Casino and created one big operation from that, thus eliminating their # 1 competitor and their other primary competitor, Station Casino St. Charles, is being bought out by a management team. Both Station and Harrah's have installed CSMs and the third operation in this equation, the Casino Queen over in Illinois, has offered unbeatable Blackjack games since they opened.

CSMs are mechanical devices that replace the "shoe" in a multi-deck game and it basically eliminates the need for the dealer to stop occasionally and shuffle the decks that are used in the game. Instead, s/he just puts the cards used for the last "round" of play into a hopper and they get mixed in with the all the other cards, except (presumably) those which are going to be used for the next round of play. Add it all up and, in a six-deck game, only about a half-deck is 'outside' at any given time, so you can see that the penetration for such a game is now maybe 10% whereas it used to be 66% or more. This does not affect the play of the average gambler, but it appears to eliminate all advantage-play which is based upon counting cards, shuffle-tracking and key-card tracking. I say "appears" because they may have weaknesses which can be exploited, though I doubt it.

The casinos' top-level management must love these devices because there is no longer any time wasted while the dealer is shuffling, card counters are no longer a "threat" and the opportunities for cheating through false shuffles, "coolers" (stacked decks) and other nefarious schemes are all but eliminated. I'm not so sure that the dealers like them, because that shuffle used to bring them a little break from adding up hands, making change, etc. and if I was a game supervisor or "floor person" who monitors four or five tables, I'd be a little worried about my continued usefulness. Sure, even with these CSMs, someone still has to watch change being made, keep track of bets for comps and resolve disputed hands but the job is heading more in the direction of clerk than in the direction of "pitboss".

So, it's probably fair to say that these devices will continue to spread at least for a while. But here's a bold prediction: They won't get far. Yes, I know these articles are archived here and I'll have to live with my mistake for a long time if I'm wrong, but it's not just a wild guess. The amazing thing about the gambling industry is that those who study the games usually know more about them than those who offer the games. When it comes to Blackjack, the engineers and math professors and computer scientists were the people who calculated the casinos' advantages on the game and were the first to determine that it could be beaten. Casinos, for the most part, react to change but they seldom create change themselves. One could argue that CSMs are "change", but I believe that it's a reaction to the proliferation of legitimate "systems" like counting cards and the other techniques of advantage-play. However, that's not the point here. What the casinos are forgetting is that card-counting makes them $$$, and does not cost them $$$.

I used to teach a four-lesson course in how to play winning Blackjack and actually learned how to play the game myself from such a 'school'. Our lessons can teach you all the theory of winning, but it cannot guarantee that you'll actually win. Playing at unbeatable games or over-betting the bankroll leads a long, long list of what can go wrong. Using the incorrect strategy for the rules offered, making mistakes due to fatigue, not getting the 'top' bet out due to scrutiny from the "pit critters" and a dozen other player mistakes chip away at the edge one can attain under ideal conditions while that ol' devil, variance, sits in the background. We 'experts' call it variance but you know it as luck. The only way to actually realize the potential of card counting is to have enough $$$ and enough time to play the large number of hands needed to allow your edge to "kick in". For a typical 6-deck, double on any first two cards, das, h17 game with 75% penetration being attacked with a 1-12 betting spread, it may take over 140,000 hands for that to happen!! At a rate of 75 hands an hour, a player (whose edge is only about 0.75% in this game) may be in a loss situation for 1800 hours of play. This will actually happen to 1 player in six regardless of how well they play the game and the others may run along at varying degrees of loss for quite a while before they move into the profit zone.

Now don't get me wrong, here. Card counting definitely works and I'd never recommend playing any game where the long-term edge to be gained is less than a solid 1%, but a lot of people who call themselves card-counters do and most of them lose. If you've followed our lessons here, you know that this type of game needs to be "wonged" (enter the game when the count is up and leave when it's down) but a lot of casinos already restrict 'mid-shoe' entry so that's no longer the tool it used to be. Now, with CSMs on the scene, these "counters" will stop trying to beat the game and, while they won't make any $$$, they won't lose any, either. My little hypothesis may go astray if the efficiencies gained from these machines offset some of these losses, but I don't think they will. A large part of the Blackjack-playing public believes in such things as the "order of the cards" and the "flow" and other nonsense like that and the CSMs are going to take all that away from the game. So, I believe, not only will the losing "counter" be chased away, but so will the gambler who thinks his or her success is wrapped up in how the cards are ordered. If you don't believe me, split a pair of 10s at a table sometime and see how many people complain about how your stupid move will cause them to lose.

Good rules and games for the intelligent player come about primarily due to competition. As the competition in this market has shrunk, the casinos' edge on their games has gone up. Great games are rare at brick-and-mortar casinos in the United States but there are a lot of them on the Internet. That, of course, introduces its own set of problems: Are the games fair? Will I ever see my money? And so forth. But it is competition and those who cannot get a good game locally can usually find something better on the 'Net. At least for the moment, anyway because now the United States Federal Government is trying to eliminate that option for all of us. The "Internet Gambling Prohibition Act" was defeated on the floor of the House of Representatives recently by a narrow margin, but it was more because of the procedures used to get it to a vote in the first place, than opposition to the content of the bill. The Republican behind this in the House is Rep. Bob Goodlatte (VA) who was recently named the most Internet-friendly member of Congress by Yahoo! Internet Life magazine and he is pressing to get it reintroduced as soon as the first week of September, 2000. Now you just know that the brick-and-mortar casino industry is in favor of this and it appears that the White House doesn't give a damn either way, so it's going to take those who believe in good, old-fashioned competition to stop this. I think that's you and me, so e-mail your U.S. Representative and let them know your opinion on the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act of 1999 (H.R. 3125). Just go here: http://www.house.gov/ And if you want to get really upset, go here to read the "talking points" of this bill: http://www.house.gov/goodlatte/hr3125talk.htm/

It's damn near insulting. As an Internet user, I can get the opinions of almost any racist, hate group on the Web, learn how to make a bomb, see the most incredibly extreme forms of pornography, hire a prostitute, learn how to hack into private conversations and a ton of other extra-legal things, but I can't play a game of Blackjack? Is that what they're trying to tell me? Yet, I can drive ten minutes and play a game at my local, friendly casino. Of course, it isn't the good game it used to be, because decreasing competition has had its effect. The amazing thing about this law is that it might ultimately kill the entry of the Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Tunica guys into the market. So, they're in favor of it now, but that will come back and bite them some day.

So, where do we go from here? For those of you who are non-U.S. citizens, you'll probably be just fine, unless you live in Canada or Australia, since both of those countries appear to hate Internet gambling as much as the U.S. However, I'm an optimist and I think competition will ultimately bring back good games. It'll just be easier if there is a lot of competition and that includes the Internet.

See you here next time.

RETURN TO THE CURRENT BLACKJACK ARTICLES