Open Archive 7
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Gifts to Greeks
Posted by Cyrus on 3 December 2000, at 10:41 a.m., in response to Thanks, posted by Scummie on 2 December 2000, at 4:52 p.m.
"It seams like every authority I have received an email from or met has mentioned using the HiLo."
Single-deck and double-deck games are becoming more rare and are virtually non-existent outside the U.S. In multi-deck games, HiLo combines what's important (ie betting correlation) with ease of use (thus leaving the player's mind free to keep an eye on other things).
"What do you think of shuffle tracking or the study of shuffle techniques, especially for one and two deck games?"
Tracking shoes can be systematically studied and explored. In games with 1 or 2 decks, this is more of an empirical matter. However, having tracking information in pitched games can be devastating to the house!
But I stick with tracking shoes.
Patterson has gone the way of the snake oil salesmen. He used to sell a crap system, going by the acronym TARGET *. The line was that casinos employ shuffles which create house-biased clumping.
I have seen them but I have nothing else to say on this.
As DD' says, "If they don't bar you, you don't play aggressively enough to win"! Of course, getting the shaft after one minute of play is ridiculous, so getting the measure of the environment you're playing in is essential. Some houses need only from you not to be too greedy; others ban every wining player, counter or civilian. In any case, it is always better to err on the side of aggressiveness - provided you have many options where to spread your action.
"I know that Jerry Patterson ad Eddie Olsen lays great store in this factor. But they tend to be talking to the shoe players. They claim that with the rules changes over the years and countermeasures, a good player needs to track the shuffle."
Ignore Patterson!
"There are [machines] that shuffle the deck while the dealers deal the other, waiting until the end of the deck minus the burned cards to deal swap decks. Have you seen them, what do you think?"
"Finally, what about banning? I haven't seen this done so I wonder if I am paranoid with a cover bet off the top, keeping the spread to 1 to 5, etc."
* : TARGET. (aka Target 21, aka T.A.R.G.E.T.)
Acronym for Table Research, Grading And Evaluation Technique. An alternative system, originally formulated by Eddie Olsen and Jerry Patterson, to beat multideck Blackjack. TARGET's basic premise is that casino shuffling routines are non-random and tend to create biases in shoes, sometimes favoring the player (5% of the time) but mostly favoring the house (70%). The player must therefore identify and play in tables that show evidence of excess players' wins while avoiding tables which are "dealer-biased". A set of table-selection rules is provided, which focus on signs of players crowding the table (a lot of cigarette butts in the ashtrays, etc), for specific card sequences ("clumping") observed, etc. The system has been convincingly refuted and shown to be pure snake oil, by a number of blackjack authors, through computer simulations, statistical analysis & logical arguments.
[References:
See Break the Dealer 1986 and BJ: A Winner's Handbook 1990, both by J. Patterson, for the system's presentation.
See Blackjack Forum magazine, issues Fall 1983, Summer 1984 and especially Spring 1990 ("Ruffled by the Shuffle") for the system's debunking.
See the comprehensive sims on biased shoes in Blackjack Essays by Mason Malmuth, 1987.
See Abdul Jalib's analysis of biases in his "In Search of Clumping" post archived in www.bjmath.com.
See Professional Blackjack by Stanford Wong 1994, for simulations and exhaustive analysis of streakiness & bias resulting from various shuffling procedures.]
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