I agree.

Let's face it. You are not going to hit the jack pot, make a million dollars, and retire at 35 by playing blackjack....no matter what strategy or betting system you use.

The interest that is shown in looking at it suggests that it is for the intellectual satisfaction of finding that ever elusive edge, albeit short term.

Now if you want to play a long time and have fun, choose a strategy that has a small variance. One comes to mind is playing mulitple hands, e.g sitting in a table and play 3 hands. This will give a smaller variance than playing one hand.

If you want to WIN quickly, count on your luck and leave in 30 min or less, play the random high-low betting system.

Of course, with CSM, you cannot do any better than using the Basic Strategy.just

Here is the fundamental flaw in your reasoning. Clusters of high and low cards are not in and of themselves evidence that card distribution is not random. Clusters of high and low cards are to be expected at times in a random shuffle, just as streaks of heads or tails are to be expected in a series of random coin tosses. Unless you can show, by carefully kept records, with a large sample size, that such clumps occur at a significantly greater frequency than would be predicted by chance, you have nothing, except a misunderstanding of what "random" really means.

I believe you. Mainly because this is a well-accepted fact and is not an original idea. The Wizard of Odds stated this years ago.

For the basic strategy player with a given set of rules, single deck > shoe game > infinite/CSM

The basic strategy player will have a lower playing efficiency playing single deck, which has wild and frequent swings in the true count, but is still better off playing single deck.

Assuming a CSM is functionally equivalent to infinite decks, the basic player will achieve a near perfect playing efficiency but will still be slightly worse off than playing a shoe game with 6 or 8 decks.

The main reason a CSM is worse than a shoe game is that you get dealt more hands per hour due to a lack of shuffling. If you have an edge you want as many hands per hour as you can get. If you don't have an edge you want as little action as possible per hour while getting full credit for comps.

I read something about the edge shifting in a BJ Attack article. I'm too lazy to dig it up, or even get the book. But it focuses on a similar idea. How the edge in a deck playing BS which has 1 deck out of 6 left to deal is not the same as it was when there were 6 of 6.

I remember reading somewhere that Shufflemaster, the leading manufacturer of both regular and continuous shuffling machines, does not sell their machines, but only leases them. I read this several years ago, so possibly it is no longer true. I also believe that they only lease to licensed casinos. If this is true, the only way to actually get access to a CSM would probably be to steal one, which would be nearly impossible.

If your goal is to win X or lose Y, I'm not convinced that your random 'high-low' does that most efficiently.

Agree with the 30 mins rules if you want to make money , if you want to have fun then its another story OR if you know how to count card and being slick about it. I knew a friend of a friend that was making money like this he stopped before getting caught tho.

Actually, in positive counts, you have an advantage even if you don't deviate from basic strategy. You can increase your edge by changing your strategy. In a negative count, you have in increased disadvantage even if you change your strategy. You have less disadvantage in a negative count if you change your strategy correctly.

Most of the advantage when counting comes from betting more when you have an advantage and betting less (or not at all) when you have a disadvantage.

You are probably correct that the continuous shuffler is slightly better for the basic strategy player, but it's probably a very small difference between a continuous shuffler and a shoe shuffled near the bottom.

While we are talking about tiny differences between the theoretical loss per hand of a CSM vs various points in a shoe when playing basic strategy, the point I want to stress is that the increased number of hands per hour one gets from a CSM table dwarfs all other factors. Also important is playing at a full table. Playing a CSM heads up versus playing a shoe game at a full table with a slow dealer could mean the difference between a theoretical loss of $100/hour and a theoretical loss of $25/hour. You are very likely to get the same level of comps in either scenario.

The main lesson - avoid CSMs whoever you are!

sorry to hijack this thread... but is there any information someone can offer on the EV or probability of player using BS winning in a given count (true count, I guess).

Basically what I'd like to see is the probability of winning a given hand with BS vs. true count.

I mean theoretically, given the bankroll, wouldn't it be the highest EV to bet max with any advantage and min with none? I guess that could draw attention, but theoretically speaking... I guess it's just a classic case of game theory optimal vs. practically optimal.

If by a "given hand" you mean holding a 5-5 vs a dealers 6 with a true count of +5, there are a lot of tables you can find. If you mean, before the cards are dealt, what are your chances of winning on a true +5, then you need to define "winning", do you mean winning the hand, or winning money on the hand? You never have an advantage to win the hand. You often have hands that are +EV.

That would be optimal, but you'd be lucky to get 20% penetration on the next shoe -- assuming they didn't just ask you to leave.

I mean random hands, cards arent dealt vs true count. The EV of that. To try to create a good progressive system to pwn.

You can look those tables up in Blackjack Attack, which are generated from a software program called CVCX. For a betting system you'll want to pick a Kelly fraction you're comfortable with - 1/2 Kelly is pretty standard and 1/4 Kelly is common for very large bankrolls.