on a 10 value card when the dealer looks at the face down card through the little window or whatever it is, why is it that sometimes they take 1 sec to look at it and sometimes why does it take like ~1.5 seconds ( I don't know the time difference but the delay is perceptible to me). Why are they confused enough to take those extra milliseconds? I have my own thoughts but no empirical evidence. Anybody been behind the shoe with some insight?

a 4 looks kindof like an ace

Yes he's, right the 4 does look like an ace, but I usually do it just to play around with the player if it's a fun table, other than that I try and let you know if I have blackjack right away.

that read I already knew, what exactly are they seeing in the window? Sometimes it's real fast, and they know they don't have a BJ. Other day I surrendered an 18 because everytime the dealer insta looked it was 20. Besides the 4 looking like an Ace what other cards would cause the dealer to have a closer look

this is just silly.. i am sure there are many more here that know more than i do.. but i am pretty sure ONLY the ace has a little line that indicates blackjack. otherwise they can not tell the difference between a 12 and a 20, so keep guessing buddy!

There is no way to tell using the windows. Dealers check one way (vertically) for an ace and one way (horizontally) for a face card, because that is how the lines marking the cards works.

You are being needlessly superstitious.

uh, because they want to make REALLY sure they have it right instead of accidentally flipping a non blackjack hand and voiding all of the action and subsequently getting fired.

what is so hard to understand about this?

You are being way to superstitious, I deal blackjack sometimes (mostly craps) and when you look in the window you either see an A or you don't see anything, its the way the card are. Sometimes your sleeve might block the light and it may look funny for an extra second so you look a little bit more carefully.

The whole idea of both the prism type viewers and the gadgets with the lights and the magnetic strips on the 10's and A's is that the dealer can't see what the card is unless it's a blackjack. What the dealer doesn't know he can't reveal to the players. "Dealer tells" used to be a technique of advantage play, when the dealer just peaked under 10's and A's.

Yes, definitely. Some shops still have this.

I remember a few years back when Turning Stone was switching there blackjack tables to electronic with shufflers and automatic blackjack readers... for about 6 months then had NO windows what so ever, so the dealer had to manually check and like bend the cards back.. It was fun because the poker player in me would come out while I was playing.. tried to get Zach and some others to just cheat for me but it never panned out.

This has no bearing on the tables using the window peak style. There is an A icon in that corner of the card they put into the peeker. It's the only card in the deck with an icon in the corner in that style. The faces and 10's are different. When a dealer looks down with 10 showing, they either see the A or the see nothing but white. That's why the dealer has to turn them sideways when the A is up. There are little K,Q.J, 10 icons on the cards that are only readable in the prism if the card is on the side.

Of course, lots of places have moved to the electronic readers and these things malfunction more than they should. When I last used them in 04, they miss-read 4's as Aces and Aces as 4's quite often.

Yes. The whole idea behind the reader is that the dealer doesn't know what he has unless it's a blackjack. They insert the cards one way for 10 up, rotated 90 degrees for ace up. What the dealer doesn't know he can't communicate to players, whether through deliberate cheating or involuntary tells. Supposedly, if they don't change the cards often enough, the cards can develop creases so that you can identify, aces, 10s and others. I have never observed this or tried to take advantage of it.

Manually peeking used to be the standard way to check for blackjack. There was even a cheating technique called "spooking" where players would play at tables on opposite sides of the pit, so that one could see the card from behind the dealer when the dealer peeked and signal it to the other.