The gambling industry usually enjoys great success, thanks to the numerous recreational players who relish risking money and testing their luck on various games. If you have spent some time researching how this sector works, you have probably learnt that the casino always wins in the grand scheme of things.
The house is always the long-term winner because of the advantage it has over players. This edge is achieved by reducing payouts or altering certain rules of casino games. As casinos tend to win in the long run, players have long been curious about developing strategies to regain some advantage and tilt the balance in their favour.
While some casino games are based purely on luck and there is not much you can do to affect the outcome, other options involve an element of decision-making. Making optimal moves in such games can significantly affect your chances of winning in the long run.
One popular strategy developed mainly by blackjack players is card counting. However, because this system has proved to be very successful, it has been forbidden in many brick-and-mortar casinos. While there is a risk of being kicked out of almost any casino if you are caught counting cards, many players still attempt to implement this strategy while playing blackjack.
As it may take a while before casino staff notice card counters, casinos have adopted additional measures to prevent such practices. One tool that makes card counting particularly difficult is the continuous shuffling machine (CSM). Because this device hinders card counting, many players are searching for ways to beat it.
How Casinos Use CSM to Prevent Card Counting
As you probably know, card counting requires players to keep track of the cards that remain in the deck. However, because casinos are well aware of this strategy, they have added several decks to the game, making the player’s task of counting the cards in the shoe a bit more difficult. That said, card counters have developed an improved system that can still be very effective, even when the game uses a shoe with multiple decks of cards.
Although multiple decks have not been a huge obstacle for professional card counters, if the cards are continuously shuffled it becomes very difficult to keep track of what remains in the shoe. Because dealers cannot continuously reshuffle the decks and deal cards at the same time, casinos have installed CSMs at their blackjack tables.
A CSM is a device that shuffles the cards in the shoe so the dealer can conduct the game without stopping after every hand. If you join a blackjack table that uses a CSM, you will notice that the dealer draws the cards directly from the device. Once the cards are played, the dealer places them into a discard tray. When roughly one deck from the shoe has been dealt, the dealer takes the cards from the discard tray and returns them to the CSM.
The device contains small slots into which the cards are placed, ensuring a randomised shuffle. Once the CSM has finished shuffling, the cards are placed on top of the shoe. All of this happens while the dealer continues to handle cards and play against the players at the table.
In addition to hindering card counting, CSMs also boost the play rate by about 20%, as the dealer does not pause the game to shuffle the cards. This allows the casino to enjoy greater profits from recreational blackjack players as well.
How CSMs Ruin Card Counting for Blackjack Players
One of the key factors for successful card counting is deck penetration. To achieve meaningful penetration, most of the shoe needs to be dealt. With CSMs, at best a quarter of the shoe is discarded, with three-quarters of the cards still remaining when the device reshuffles.
There are still casinos that use hand shuffling, requiring the dealer to shuffle the cards once the cut card is reached in the shoe. Some casinos may also use a random shuffling machine that automatically shuffles the cards once a larger portion of the shoe has been discarded. Such methods give card counters a huge advantage, as they can achieve decent deck penetration and gather enough information about the remaining cards.
In addition to making card counting much easier, hand shuffling also forces the dealer to pause the game, ultimately reducing the number of hands played. When the shoe is automatically shuffled by the CSM, the dealer does not need to stop, and the increased number of hands guarantees the casino more long-term wins.
Can Card Counters Beat CSMs While Playing Blackjack
Many obstacles have been introduced to stop blackjack players from using card counting. However, advantage players have often found ways to overcome these barriers. That is why numerous blackjack fans are searching for methods to beat CSMs and still gain an edge over the house. Unfortunately, because these devices do not allow sufficient deck penetration, it is impossible to gain enough advantage through card counting.
Assume that a quarter of the shoe has been dealt and you are running a positive count. You cannot risk drastically increasing your stake when many decks still remain in the shoe. To justify boosting your bet size, you need to achieve deck penetration of at least 75%. As mentioned earlier, such a rate is impossible when a CSM is used.
You may encounter a different card counting system online that claims you can still gain an advantage even when the blackjack table uses a CSM. According to this model, you should allow a buffer of about 16 cards in the shoe. If the dealer has not returned the discarded cards to the CSM, you simply keep a running count of the last 16 cards that have been placed into the shuffling device.
The aforementioned system recommends using the standard hi-lo count, where cards from 2 to 6 are given a value of +1, while 10 through Ace are assigned -1. If the dealer collects a large number of discarded cards and returns them to the CSM, you should use the count of the entire batch of discarded cards.
Assume the above counting system is applied to a six-deck blackjack game that uses a CSM. The game rules are favourable, with blackjack paying 3 to 2, late surrender available, Aces allowed to be resplit up to three times, and doubling after a split permitted. Using a blackjack analysis tool, it can be concluded that the base EV (expected value) for this game is -0.445%. If the 16-card window is considered during card counting, it is found that when the window count exceeds 5, the subsequent hand from the CSM has a positive EV. The window count is 5 or more during about 8.2% of playing time.
The frequency of 16-card window counts in the example above can be seen in the table below:
| Running window count | Frequency | Approximate EV |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 11.50% | -0.44% |
| 1 | 10.80% | -0.34% |
| 2 | 9.36% | -0.24% |
| 3 | 7.46% | -0.16% |
| 4 | 5.46% | -0.05% |
| 5 | 3.67% | 0.04% |
| 6 | 2.25% | 0.14% |
| 7 | 1.25% | 0.22% |
| 8 | 0.63% | 0.29% |
| 9 | 0.28% | 0.43% |
| 10 | 0.11% | 0.49% |
You can indeed beat the game against a CSM using the card counting system described above. However, the counts you obtain are never very high, as at most one deck’s worth of cards is played before being returned to the shuffling machine. Even when you do reach higher counts, they occur infrequently.
To illustrate how insignificant the EV is when trying to beat a CSM using the recommended system, consider the same bet spread applied to a regular six-deck blackjack game where four and a half decks are dealt before the shoe is shuffled. In that case, a £5 to £500 bet spread would be worth about £150 per hour. As you can see, card counting in games that use CSMs is simply not worthwhile, as the EV is far too small.
Can CSMs Turn Blackjack Players off Card Counting
One thing is certain: card counters will try to avoid CSMs at all costs, as these devices render card counting almost useless. Moreover, casual players often avoid tables with CSMs, because their use means more hands are played, causing some people to go through their bankrolls more quickly. While the use of CSMs does not change the house edge, players might feel as though they are losing more, when in fact they are simply playing more hands than they normally would.
Many casinos would like to use CSMs at their blackjack tables to force advantage players to give up counting cards. However, if every blackjack game used a CSM, interest in the game could decline significantly, leading to lower participation.
Although it is still possible to gain a slight advantage by counting cards in a blackjack variant with a CSM, many players simply avoid such tables. Unfortunately, while casinos can effectively deter expert counters, this type of machine can also discourage many recreational players. For this reason, plenty of brick-and-mortar casinos continue to rely on hand shuffling or random shuffling machines.
At present, card counting remains a very common technique among blackjack players worldwide. Although CSMs can deter it, not every casino is willing to use such devices. Therefore, while CSMs may reduce the number of card-counting attempts, the technique is far from extinct.
Are CSMs Widely Used by Brick-and-Mortar Casinos
Because CSMs can bring casinos greater profits, many land-based gambling facilities use them for all of their card games. You can find these devices on almost every casino floor in Macau, with Monte Carlo being the second-largest casino hub to implement CSMs on most table games.
Despite being two of the biggest casino hotspots in the world, Macau and Monte Carlo are definitely not among card counters’ favourite destinations. Meanwhile, CSMs are not as popular in casinos located in other gambling hubs across the globe.
In many casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno, Laughlin and in several European countries, dealers still shuffle the cards by hand. These venues are ideal for card counters who are willing to take the risk and employ this strategy while playing blackjack.
Even though CSMs are not installed in every land-based casino around the world, remember that not all tables will use hand shuffling. This is particularly true of tables with lower bet limits.
Closing Thoughts
With players continually trying to gain an advantage over the casino, some have devised strategies such as card counting. Proven to be very successful, card counting is one of the main skills many blackjack players seek to master. Because card counting is so effective, casinos are constantly looking for ways to prevent this form of advantage play.
In addition to taking various preventive measures, some land-based casinos have introduced continuous shuffling machines. These devices allow the cards in the shoe to be reshuffled continually, enabling the dealer to keep dealing while the rest of the shoe is automatically shuffled. Because CSMs allow very little deck penetration, card counting becomes highly ineffective, giving players only a negligible edge.
Even though there is still a way to beat CSMs through card counting, players who rely on this method will probably avoid blackjack tables that use such devices. Even if you do beat a CSM, the EV is so low that it is not worth the time spent counting cards and the risk of being ejected from the casino.
