Shuffle Tracking Your Way to Success
The advantage of the blackjack players can be achieved by some techniques that are well established and proven to work. These will limit the house advantage to a point profit is much easier at the blackjack table than any other casino game.
Edward O. Thorp conceived these techniques that have their basis from the value of the players' cards and the cards of the casino. Most of the techniques are applicable in the multi-deck games which are also known as shoes. The use of shoes involves the tracking of the cards in groups. Also known as the clumps, packs and slugs, when playing with a shoe, following a shuffle, the players will play and bet accordingly when there are new cards that come into play during a round of blackjack.
The technique can be more difficult than just counting the cards straight out because this technique also requires great vision and excellent estimation, which makes for an advantage of somehow fooling the people from the casino who are watching and monitoring the actions of the players and those who are counting, because the shuffle tracker may at certain times play and bet to the opposing a straightforward card counter.
The magazine, Blackjack Forum was the first magazine to have articles written by Arnold Snyder to bring the public's attention to shuffle tracking. Snyder also wrote the book, The Shuffle Tracker's Cookbook. Snyder was the first author to analyze the edge of the player based on shuffle tracking, on the size of the slug being tracked.
Shuffle tracking is much more difficult for casinos to catch as it is the recognition of patterns and clumps rather than straight counting which has some tell tale signs.
There are a wide variety of techniques which are also legal ways in achieving the advantage as a blackjack player over the house. These techniques involve getting information regarding the hole-card of the dealer or what card will be next dealt.
Shuffle tracking however is very restricted when a casino employs a half-cut, or what is also commonly known inside the casino houses as 'The Big C'. This happens while the shoe is going to be cut halfway, which means that the only cards to be played are only half of the shoe.
Confused? Ok, let's take the example of a shoe with 8 decks then only the four decks will be the cards played and afterwards shuffled. The principles of elimination are the basis for the card tracking. The half-cut thus make it greatly impossible for the cards remaining in the hand to be eliminated. The shuffler machines also make it impossible to track the cards because a resulting non-stop shoe occurs, therefore it is another exception to the card tracking.