A friend of mine from out of town came to visit and i took him to the local indian casino (Harrah's in Valley City, CA for those of you who know it). They were using CSMs on the blackjack table which we normally don't play on, but we were bored so we gave it a shot.
Here's the interesting thing. Even though CSMs make counting impossible, we counted just for fun. We found an interesting phenomenon.
Using Hi-Lo (without dividing by the number of decks, for obvious reasons), we were getting ridiculous counts. After less than an hour of play, the count was at +55.
I've never seen counts that high. The cards on the table were confirming it. The dealer was dealing out 4 or 5 times as many low cards than high. We rarely saw a 10. And the dealer was dealing himself 5 and 6 cards to make 21. He was rarely busting. People at the table started hitting on 17 and 18s against a dealer's face card because they knew they'd get 3s and 4s. And they were right.
So that leaves us two possibilities:
1) The CSM was filled with only partial decks...many of the face cards were removed...
or 2) The CSM was preferentially shuffling so that low cards came out more than face cards.
Have you guys ever heard anything like this? We were playing perfect basic strategy and losing 8 and 9 hands out of 10. It was the weirdest thing i've ever seen.
edit: bolded sections people seem to not read.
Here's the interesting thing. Even though CSMs make counting impossible, we counted just for fun. We found an interesting phenomenon.
Using Hi-Lo (without dividing by the number of decks, for obvious reasons), we were getting ridiculous counts. After less than an hour of play, the count was at +55.
I've never seen counts that high. The cards on the table were confirming it. The dealer was dealing out 4 or 5 times as many low cards than high. We rarely saw a 10. And the dealer was dealing himself 5 and 6 cards to make 21. He was rarely busting. People at the table started hitting on 17 and 18s against a dealer's face card because they knew they'd get 3s and 4s. And they were right.
So that leaves us two possibilities:
1) The CSM was filled with only partial decks...many of the face cards were removed...
or 2) The CSM was preferentially shuffling so that low cards came out more than face cards.
Have you guys ever heard anything like this? We were playing perfect basic strategy and losing 8 and 9 hands out of 10. It was the weirdest thing i've ever seen.
edit: bolded sections people seem to not read.