Newspaper Column Excerpt

Gollehon On Gaming

Blackjack player suspicious of shuffling machines

Dear Mr. Gollehon: My friend is quite a blackjack player and says I should not play the game in any casino that uses automatic shuffle machines. I don’t understand what difference this could make. Most of the casinos I go to have these machines.
—Heidi, Chicago, IL.

Dear Heidi: There are actually two kinds of shuffling machines that you’re likely to find at a blackjack table. One is called a “batch” shuffler, which shuffles six or eight decks of cards kept separate from the cards in play. Think of the shuffler as preparing a fresh set of cards, ready to go when the set in play is exhausted (reaches the cut-card). The batch shuffler only serves to hasten the game by eliminating the downtime of dealer shuffling. There is no negative impact on the players.
    The same cannot be said for “continuous” shufflers, however. Instead of two separate sets of cards, there is only one, always in play, receiving played cards from the table after each hand and adding these cards to the mix. Simply put, there is no point in counting the cards at a game using a continuous shuffler. Every deal is supposedly a random deal, thwarting a players chances to gain an edge by detecting an anomaly in the unplayed cards.
    Card-counting, in case you are not really into it, is a method of keeping track of the cards played, in order to gain information about card values that remain to be played. Small cards help the dealer; 10-value cards and aces help the player. Knowing what’s left makes a difference!
    But if you’re not counting the cards, then it really doesn’t make much difference which shuffler you use. Still, you should know that card-counting is key to recognizing the few times when the percentages move in your favor. You should at least give card-counting a try, but only on a batch shuffler. And you can identify which is which, even from a distance, as you walk by the tables. A continuous shuffler usually sits directly on the table; a batch shuffler generally sits back from the table on a platform.
    Incidentally, there are far more continuous shufflers in casinos, as you might expect.

Write Mr. Gollehon at _____________.The author regrets that he cannot answer all queries. His casino books are available in stores or from his website gollehonbooks.com