A book by David McDowell
Foreword by Michael Dalton
Cover art by Abigail Kamelhair
[Excerpt] Table of Contents
Tables and Figures. 10
Acknowledgments. 12
About the Cover Art 14
Foreword by Michael Dalton. 15
CHAPTER 1 Ace Prediction. 17
Doing Shuffle Analyses. 19
Doing Computer Simulations. 20
Using the Expectation Formula. 21
Other Books. 22
Published References. 23
"How I Invented Ace Prediction" -- Ed Thorp. 30
CHAPTER 2 Non-Random Shuffling. 32
Permutations by Cutting and Shuffling. 32
Thorp's Non-Random Shuffling Analysis. 34
Epstein's Analysis of the Imperfect Shuffle. 37
Casino Card Shuffles: How Random Are They?. 39
Information Loss in Card Shuffling. 41
A Man of Mystery: Charles T. Jordan. 43
CHAPTER 3 Analyzing Shuffles. 45
Applying Thorp's Shuffling Analysis. 45
Broken Sequences. 54
Counting the Breaks. 55
Probability of Broken Sequences. 59
Broken Sequences by Computer. 60
Effect of Plugs, Strips and Box Cuts. 61
An Uncut Diamond. 64
CHAPTER 4 Exploiting Shuffles. 66
Applying Hannum's Shuffling Analysis. 66
Simple Tests for Randomness. 69
Mapping Shuffle Weaknesses. 72
How Reliable Are the Weaknesses?. 74
Predicting Exact Positions of Cards. 76
The Gambler King. 78
CHAPTER 5 Locating Aces. 80
Ace Location. 80
Ace Slugs. 81
A Stepladder Shuffle. 84
A Two-Pass Combo Shuffle. 86
The Greek Syndicate. 88
CHAPTER 6 Predicting Aces. 90
Card Prediction. 90
Applying Epstein's Prediction Theorem.. 93
The Prediction Problem Solved. 95
A Prediction Rule. 97
How to Memorize Key Cards. 98
Steering the Aces. 99
False Key Cards. 100
Pointer Cards. 102
Putting It All Together. 105
The Curse of Wang. 107
CHAPTER 7 Mathematical Expectation. 109
Beat the Dealer. 109
Value of an Ace as First Card. 109
How Often Does the Ace "Hit the Money"?. 112
Skilled versus Unskilled Predictors. 113
When the Dealer Gets the Ace. 114
Mathematical Expectation. 114
Predictability of Casino Shuffles. 116
The Count of Ciampino. 117
CHAPTER 8 How Much to Bet 119
Expected Return. 119
Risk. 121
Optimal Bet Size. 125
"Do Not Forget". 127
Appendices. 129
Appendix A: Shuffling Terminology. 130
Appendix B: Card Movements in Perfect Shuffles. 131
Appendix C: Mean of Di 133
Appendix D: c2 Test 135
Appendix E: Kendall's Concordance Coefficient 136
Appendix F: Kruskal-Wallis Test 137
Index. 138
References. 145
Return to Catalog
Copyright © 2004-2017 Spur of the Moment Publishing - All Rights Reserved
.