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B&M card shufflers - how random?
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altima_boy_2001
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07-21-2007, 10:09 PM
Post subject: B&M card shufflers - how random?
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#1 (permalink)
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Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 7
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How random are the card shufflers used at a casino? I know people are inclined to find patterns even where they don't exist, but sometimes it's just hard to ignore.
Both of the small places I play cash games at regularly seem to show runs of certain patterns either in hole cards or board cards. Last night it was 2's and hearts on the board. I and everyone else played every hand that had a 2 or suited hearts and almost always won because of it.
Most other times I know within the first 45 minutes what kind of hole cards I'll get the rest of the night (either all bad or all good, but some nights it's average). A few weeks ago I didn't get dealt any face card in the first hour (~ 30 hands). Not one. I nearly left, but decided to sit there, pay the blinds, and fold until I got a face card and it wasn't until nearly an hour and a half later that I finally got a queen. Another time I was dealt pocket Q's 7 times in 2 hours including once back to back (from alternating decks) and half the time I'd hit a set on the flop.
It's not uncommon at these places for someone to request a seat change to the seat where a winning player has just left and I've even seen 2 guys get into an argument about who gets it when they both asked immediately after the other player announced they were leaving.
I'm trying to exploit these patterns I believe I'm seeing and so far it's working out to be winning money for me. Also, is it ok to bring a pencil and paper to the table at a casino? I'd like a written record of some of the stuff I'm seeing to get a better analysis, but I fear the staff will kick me out or other players will object too much.
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Xianti
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biondino
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Oh for heaven's sake. The shuffling live might be flawed, especially when it's just some dude mussing up the cards on the table, but even when this is the case please explain to me ANY theories you have of a player or a seat or even a table being consistently favoured (beyond a skilled dealer actively cheating, which I don't think you're suggesting). The mixture of the deal and the cut alone does a great job of randomising the cards.
Oh, and if you see people fighting over a lucky seat, remember them - they're the donkeys who put failure and success down to luck and will play accordingly badly.
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Mr. Pink
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07-23-2007, 08:53 PM
Post subject: Re: B&M card shufflers - how random?
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#4 (permalink)
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: USA
Posts: 1
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by altima_boy_2001
How random are the card shufflers used at a casino?
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I actually had the opportunity (on 2 occasions) to take apart a ShuffleMaster machine and play around with the inner mechanism. The machine I took apart is the ShffleMaster "one2six" machine that is usually used on BJ tables. But I assume the poker shuffler must work on a similar principle.
First of all, there is a small switch that disables the mechanism when the machine is opened up. It is kind of like the the switch the automatically turn on the light in your fridge, when you open the door. But, there is also a way to still enable the machine, even if the cover is off.
The mechanics of the machine are actually easy to understand. There is a wheel that looks somewhat similar to the wheel of a watermill. The wheel in the ShuffleMaster machine has small pockets all around (I didn't count how many). So, the dealer placed the cards on top of the machine, then the machine sucks up small packs of cards (I guess sometime even single cards) and sends them to the wheel. The wheel turns around and the cards are being inserted into the small pockets, around the wheel. However, the wheel itself seems to be turning around randomly, so the cards get inserted into random placed around the wheel. I am sure this part is controlled by a simple RNG, just like any slot machine. Once all the cards are exhausted, the deck (or multiple decks) is split-up into small packets of cards all around the wheel. Now, to spit the cards out the process is reversed. The wheel, again, turns around and stops in seemingly random positions, and small packets of cards get spit out from individual pockets until a pack of cards get assembled in the nested tray.
Can you exploit that?
Well, I guess it is possible that the machine could randomly pull a small packet of (let's say) 4 cards and put those into one of the pockets. Naturally, this small packet of cards would get spit out unmixed. But the real question is, would you be willing to bet your house on this outcome?
How would you know where this small packet of cards is located inside the wheel? And how would you know where exactly it will get spit out? Let's say that you remembered a sequence of cards to be 2H-5S-KD-QS. Now let's say that the flop comes 2H-5S-KD and you have pocket queens. Does this mean that the burn card will be the QS? Or does it mean that the QS was placed into a different pocket around the wheel when the machine sucked the cards in, for the initial mix?
Quote:
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Originally Posted by altima_boy_2001
...is it ok to bring a pencil and paper to the table at a casino?
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You can bring a pencil an paper to a game of baccarat. You cannot bring a pencil an paper to a game of blackjack. I don't think most casinos would have immediate objections to seeing a pencil and paper in a game of poker, but I think it would raise some eyebrows if you were logging sequences of cards.
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ChezJ
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Full House
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Washington, D.C.
Posts: 1,456
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at my last home game, the board seemed to pair up with 7's and T's on every hand. the week before that, it was clubs and 6's. we shuffle by hand. it's called randomness. even random number sequences have short runs where related numbers come out in some kind of perceived order. if they didn't include "ordered" sequences as well as "unordered" ones, then they wouldn't truly be random.
the perception of patterns (aka "luck") in totally random sequences is what keeps suckers coming back to games of chance that they can't beat. it's what pays for the chandeliers at the bellagio and what keeps my bankroll growing.
ChezJ
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j8ofclubs
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Minnesota
Posts: 6
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+1
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