Do Automatic Shufflers Deal More Blackjacks Than Hand-Shuffling?

When I play casinos with automatic shufflers, it seems like there are more blackjacks than with the conventional shuffled decks. When a player gets a blackjack, the dealer pays the additional percentage to one person. When the dealer gets a blackjack, they get 100% of every player’s bet. I played yesterday in two casinos, one with conventional shuffled decks and one with automatic shuffle machines. In the two hours I spent in each casino, at the one with the automatic shuffler, the dealer got eight blackjacks in the two hours. In the conventionally shuffled decks, the dealer got three blackjacks in the two hours. Is this a pattern that is normal?

[Editor's Note: This answer is written by Andrew Uyal, floor manager at the Cromwell, ex-advantage player, and author of our upcoming book Blackjack Insiders.]

While it may seem like there's a pattern and it’s certainly easy to follow your train of thought, I’m afraid it’s simply a circumstance of variance. It’s quite possible that if you’d sat at the hand-shuffled table for five more minutes, you’d have seen three more blackjacks.

This is something I’ve heard a lot of over the years: “Don’t trust the machines.” It’s easy to think that machines are becoming more and more prevalent, because the casinos use them to help them win. The reality is the casinos don’t need the machines’ help. The games are designed to beat you anyway. The machines allow for far more hands per hour dealt than hand-shuffled games. That’s where the additional edge comes from -- not from the machine magically steering advantageous cards away from you and into the dealer’s hand.

In the two hours you sat at the auto-shuffler game, you likely saw a far greater number of hands than the two hours at the hand-shuffled game. That certainly increases your odds of seeing more blackjacks.

Then there’s the variance factor that I mentioned before. I’ve sat at auto-shuffle shoe games and not seen a blackjack for an unbearable amount of time. I’ve also sat at a hand-shuffle double-deck game (which was deep in a negative count, by the way) and gotten four blackjacks in a row. Four! In a row! Variance accounts for situations like that.

When it comes to the machines themselves, I’ll give you a little info from behind the curtain here. The shuffle machines you see on most blackjack tables, where the unshuffled deck goes down on one side and comes out shuffled on the other side, do not have card reading or sorting capabilities. They just shuffle.

The machines on games like Three Card Poker and Ultimate Texas Hold 'em do have card-reading and card-sorting abilities. What they do not have is card-steering abilities. What that means is the machine reads the cards as they go into and come out of the machine. It also has the capacity of sorting a shuffled deck back into its original sequential order. What it can not do is put good cards in the dealer's hand. It only sees the cards on the way in and out. It doesn’t know where it’s putting them or who’s getting them.

I'll concede that technology is advancing quickly and there are now many different types of shufflers. They're designed to save time and motion, not to alter the play of the game. I’m confident in reassuring you that the machines themselves are not what’s making it harder for you to win. The games do that all on their own.

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Comments

Kevin Lewis Nov-18-2018

There's this assumption...

That just because the casino already has an advantage, that they wouldn't screw with the game or do unethical things to increase that advantage--like they already have an advantage at VP, so "why would they cheat." I find this argument hilarious. I'm absolutely certain that there are already autoshufflers in existence that can "steer," as you say, good cards to the dealer and away from players. It would be, for instance, trivial to set up a deal where the players would get double downs and splits and receive terrible cards. Would the casinos do such a thing??? Oh, no! They've shown themselves to be utterly scrupulous and ethical in the past!

Stewart Ethier Nov-18-2018

Math of shuffling machines

See the article https://arxiv.org/pdf/1107.2961.pdf.

Roy Furukawa Nov-18-2018

Not worth losing your gaming license over

I have to disagree with @Kevin Lewis, it's not worth casinos to lose their gaming license over trying to get a favorable hand when the odds are already in their favor. These corporations are solely in the business of gaming and can't afford to lose their license or worse, have to sell because their company is barred fom the gaming business altogether. Same goes for the manufacturers of the equipment.

Andrew Uyal Nov-18-2018

About that assumption

Kevin, there's reasons people make that assumption. One of those reasons was perfectly explained by Roy. 

Another reason, which I can dive deeper into another time, is the sheer impossibility of a shuffle machine to predict how many people will be at the table, how many hands they will play, people coming in and out of the shoe, and of course, people's playing strategy. Even if a machine could set up the perfect shoe, all of those variables would be necessary in order to steer advantageous hands to the dealer.

Kevin Lewis Nov-18-2018

Uh uh, sorry

Roy's faulty premise was that cheating would actually place a casino's license at risk. But no Nevada casino has ever lost its license because of cheating, despite myriad accusations. Does anybody really think that ALL of those accusations were unfounded? Casinos can cheat with impunity--and many have.

Insofar as how a cheating shuffling machine would precisely work, I don't pretend to know the exact details. I'm sure it would be child's play to arrange a sequence of cards so that whether there were one, two, three, or more players, the dealer would always win. Ir wouldn't have to be that blatant anyway. Just steering more high value cards to the dealer would be enough, and it would be trivial to tell the machine how many hands were going to be dealt.

Kevin Lewis Nov-18-2018

One way would be...

The cards are arranged in this sequence: 5, 4, 10, 10. 9. 10. 8 (or something similar). Now the first two players get stiffs. The dealer always gets a high upcard, no matter how many players there are. If it's heads up, both the dealer and the player get stiffs but the dealer will be showing a 10. The key is the first card dealt always goes to the player. Usually the second card as well, unless it's heads up. Just make those cards small cards and all other cards high. Certain winner for the house. But the argument really is not whether it's possible to cheat, but rather whether the casino would do so with the flaming-sword-wielding Gaming Control Board scowling over its shoulder. It's more along the lines of a tranquilized snail rather than an avenging angel, though.

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