Oh, technologically it's entirely possible. Rig the shuffler with a radio receiver. Carry a transmitter in your pocket so you can input your seat number so you can even compensate for missing players, push the button and it fixes the deck to deal you quads and villain a boat. To be more evil, have the ability to choose the victim, e.g. the big stack. Push the button and wahlah, you rich.

But that would take casino employees as co-conspirators, and what would motivate them to do that? You could never win enough to be able to pay them to take that risk. The slot machine cheats of legend won millions, you could only get a fraction of that.

Gotta swipe and tell the shuffler who you are to be eligible for promo's. When you get up you get logged out. It doesn't know where the button is and would have to be told what game you are playing.
The only random part of the shuffle is the dealers hands cut, wash, combining the muck.
If the shuffler can read, the random part as a protection is in theory gone. The fact that the perception of the "volume" being turned up to put suited cards or sets in what will become the top of the deck makes good convo. The players should get their say for sure.

This is not logically valid.

You, a human, can read the cards. You can sort and suit a deck. You can shuffle randomly by mixing up the cards with riffles and washes without looking at the cards, making the shuffle random.

So can the shuffler.

That the machine CAN suit the deck does not mean the sorting logic is implemented on normal shuffles.

Machines can't do anything random except break. They can draw from a vast pool of calculations but not random.

This will end up getting metaphysical, but TRNG in computers/machines is possible by measuring physical phenomena like radioactive noise.

https://www.random.org/randomness/

I contend that nothing is actually random .... everything is subject to some sort of forces. However for our purposes things can be unpredictable and machines can do that.

Uh, machines breaking doesn't seem random to me. When/where/how machines break can be fairly accurately predicted in a lot of cases.

As far as we can tell, quantum phenomena are truly random. A radioactive nucleus has a percent chance to spontaneously decay each second based on only its half life, and not any outside forces.

If you want to continue the discussion about quantum phenomena and trng and prng please take it over to SMP. Otherwise I'm going to have to start randomly deleting posts.

Let's get back to the real issue of shuffling machines being programmed to make me lose. I hate when that happens.

Dealers can learn to stack a deck too. It looks like a real shuffle and everything. And they always know where the button is. I'm as concerned about a shuffle machine cheating me as i am a real live dealer.


I'm not concerned about a live dealer cheating me by the way.

Not really.
Watch a well trained dealer gather the cards, square up the deck, shuffle, and then cut.
Doesn't look anything like when a dealer stacks the deck.

Err, yeah really. People who are exceptionally skilled at sleight of hand type maneuvers can do crazy stuff. Some of they stuff they do is hard to detect if you are looking directly at their hands trying to spot something, let alone at a poker room/casino with a bunch of other distractions surrounding you at all times. Granted this takes extreme skill. My neighbor of mine is a "magician". He can execute the type of stuff that I'm talking about. He's banned from my local casino because of it.

This video was posted a while back...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H860qYDwkuE

I started playing casino poker around 1975.
Self dealt Lowball.
Up to $20 ($90 in today's dollars) limit.

The guy in the video would have lasted one deal at the Oaks Club. And might have needed a trip to the ER.

Again, compare what he does to what a casino dealer does. Night and day.

Home game with trusting "friends", guy might get away with it. Not with a table full of guys who know the proper techniques of gather/shuffle/cut/deal.

I have also seen a few small market casinos where this sort of cheater could go undetected because they do not provide adequate training and supervision for the dealers.

I guess they don't allow jokes/alcohol/cocktail waitresses/etc... at the club you used to play at... either that or all the players sit and relentless watch the dealers hands to prevent cheating. Not saying someone trying to stack a deck can't get caught, but I am saying that if you really think that people out there aren't both doing it and getting away with it, then well, to each his own I guess. The deck only has to be stacked once or twice for someone to get robbed of thousands.

That is why i don't usually play BBJ qualifying games/tables.

Can you guys tell me where you play poker so I can move there? I don't think I've sat at a poker table in my life where there wouldn't be 2 people having aneurysms if a dealer came close to handling the deck the way it's handled in that video.

A table full of blind players maybe? But I think there are a few easier ways to cheat there...

Florida

if a dealer picked the deck up off the table, anytime after sorting the deck, that would be time to leave. Cutting with two hands is also time to get a reshuffle at least.

Wha?

In case this is not a rhetorical question, the answer is yes (above certain levels).

When the BBJ hit some crazy level in AC (Nugget IIRC) a couple of years ago (maybe $250k or $500k or something) the tables were full of quad-farming nits from opening to shutting daily until it was hit.

So then you complete the thought in the context i was asking the question ..... It was presented to me that a casino doesn;t gain by rigging the jackpot to not hit.

A large jackpot drives business therefore a casino could stand to profit by rigging the game so that the jackpot doesn't hit ... thereby building up to a level that causes an increase in business.

I've made posts in this forum about dealers who couldn't do things as simple as burning a card without flashing it, where I marveled at how I was the only player who seemed to notice. I even posted once about a dealer who needed to shuffle an exposed card back into the deck. He placed it on top of the stub; dropped the stub onto the table and washed it a little (the whole time, keeping one finger on the exposed card); squared up the deck with the exposed card still on top; riffled a couple of times, keeping the exposed card on top; gave it one last sloppy riffle that put the exposed card near the middle, but did not completely square up the deck; easily cut the deck one-handed to bring the exposed card back to the top.

"Do not burn," said the floorman, "and put out the next card."

While the table ooh'd and ah'd about the card randomly returning, I cracked, "That was the worst false shuffle I've ever seen." I wasn't in the hand, so I didn't care. I was more amused than upset, as this guy (who I knew was a brand-new dealer) would cheat not for larcenous reasons, but to avoid taking heat for screwing up a hand by putting out a card too soon. The dealer heard me, turned beet red, and when he was out of the box later, came over to me to whisper thanks for not blowing the whistle on him.

My point is, yeah, in 1975 this act would not fly. It did back in ~2005. I didn't watch the video linked above, but whatever it is, I'd bet it would have a *great* chance of escaping the notice of everyone in 2015. Remember, this idiot I'm describing pulled this "move" while the entire tableand the floorman was actually watching! It was the only shuffle of the night that these folks actually watched. Even players not in the hand (like me) were watching, because a mid-hand shuffle is so unusual.