Thread: Inside the Edge - Blackjack Documentary. Show Printable Version;, 10:08 AM #1. View Profile View Forum Posts. When you play this standard form of blackjack the house edge is pretty small. Most standard blackjack games carry a house edge of 0.5% to 1%. This can be adjusted with basic blackjack strategy. Compare this house edge with slot machines which often have a 5% house edge or more. This means that you can expect to lose $5 for every $100 you bet. Inside the Edge: A Professional Blackjack Adventure. The documentary film, 'Inside the Edge', features the world's elite professional blackjack players who take on casinos for millions while trying to evade casino surveillance and local law enforcement. I haven't seen a documentary or movie on blackjack that I liked and thought was realistic until Inside the edge. I call what KC did, the 'slash and burn' style of play. It came about in the early.mid 2000;s when new casinos and jurisdiction were exploding's here in the US. Inside The Edge: A Professional Blackjack Adventure December 20, 2019 Available now for free with Amazon Prime.

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Inside The Edge Blackjack Documentary

Inside The Edge Blackjack Trailer

For those who don't understand what you're asking, there are new machines that take the blackjack discards and place them randomly back in the deck after each hand. If you are using basic strategy, then the shufflers actually lower the house edge slightly, due to the omission of the cut card effect. It is my understanding that they do provide an honest random shuffle. However, the shuffling machine allows the dealer to waste less time shuffling and spend more time dealing. This means you will spend more time playing, and thus more hands for the house edge to grind you down.
For more information on the mathematical effect of continuous shufflers, please see my blackjack appendix 10.

Most online casinos shuffle after every hand. Others shuffle at random times but do not indicate exactly when to the player. I have noticed Microgaming casinos flash the word 'shuffling' about one hand in four.
However, if you track the cards between these announcements you will sometimes see the same card twice, which is impossible in a single-deck game, assuming you believe them about when they shuffle. As far as I know, they actually shuffle after every hand, but for reasons I do not understand, only indicate a shuffle occasionally. If I remember correctly, Cryptologic casinos do indeed indicate when they are shuffling their eight-deck shoe.

I know that one software company randomly picks two cards in the deck and reverses them, and repeats this numerous times. Since learning of this technique, that is also how I shuffle in my random simulation programs. As long as any method of shuffling is done enough times the deck should be properly randomized.
Manual shuffling is more vulnerable to a biased shuffle and consequently some players try to exploit this by shuffle tracking and card clumping. There are numerous ways an online casino might cheat, but a bad shuffle I don't think is one of them.

I first addressed this topic in my December 1, 2000, newsletter. For those who missed it I just added blackjack appendix 10 to my site, which explains the effect on the house edge under both a cut card and continuous shuffler game. To answer your question, no, the basic strategy does not change. Basic strategy is always developed based on a freshly shuffled shoe, which is always the case when playing against a continuous shuffler.

You’re right, the discards are not mixed among all the cards but can not be placed close to the top of the shoe. I don’t know the exact size of this buffer but it is about 10-20 cards I think. As a card counter it would probably be safe to use a true count from just the last hand played and off the top of a shoe. When converting to the true count you will rarely get anything far from +/-1. If you’re any kind of counter at all I would forget about playing against a CSM, it isn’t worth the bother.

The exact numbers would be difficult to calculate and I won’t get into that. However your speculation is right that the odds favor the dealer if he leaves a lot of high cards in the discard rack yet will put back into play a lot of small cards. This would be the same kind of thing as preferential shuffling, in which the dealer of a hand held game shuffles when the count is good but deals another round on a bad count. Preferential shuffling is something that definitely does happen here in Las Vegas so what you describe would not surprise me either.

I don’t know when they shuffle but I would speculate after every hand. From my blackjack appendix 10 you will learn that the player’s odds improve slightly if the dealer plays exactly n hands between shuffles (including one) rather than playing to cut card, finishing the hand, and then shuffling.

I would say about 1/3 to 1/2 of players would at least initially decline to cut. However if everyone initially declines somebody has to rise to the occasion and do it. Sometimes when players who refuse to cut will say something like 'I don’t want the blame for a bad shoe' or 'I’m unlucky.' I’ve never seen it put into words but there does seem to be a superstition that the cut is critical to the flow of the shoe, and thus the act should only be done by a competent cutter. Of course this is nonsense. For recreational play it doesn’t make any difference whom cuts or where they cut.

For the beneit of other readers, my blackjack appendix 10 explains, the house edge in a five-deck game is 0.028% less if a continuous shuffler is used, as opposed to a hand shuffle. The difference between five decks and two decks, all other rules being equal, is 0.18%. So the two-deck game without a shuffler would be much better. Let’s compare a 5-deck continuous shuffler game to a 4-deck hand shuffled game. As my blackjack calculator show difference in house edge between four decks and five decks is 0.0329%. So the benefit of a continuous shuffler is worth less than removing a single deck.

I don’t believe it. Dealers are not the most skeptical group, often believing all the usual gambling myths. Usually the term 'house shuffle' refers to the way the dealers are supposed to shuffle. For example, shuffle twice, riffle, and shuffle again. In this context, she seems to be saying she could alter the shuffle to the player’s disadvantage, which I doubt.

Assuming this King was the bottom card and was left in the shuffler, it would have been in play in this first shoe (the cut was in rear portion of the deck). How much of an additional advantage did the house gain on me with this mistake?

Thank you for the kind words. I’m going to assume the dealer hits a soft 17, and double after a split is allowed. According to table D17 in Blackjack Attack by Don Schlesinger, removing one ten per deck increases the house edge by 0.5512%. Dividing that by six, for the six-deck game, the effect is an increase in house edge of 0.09%.

In a non-cut-card game, the house advantage is always the same for the non-counter. Clumps of high or low cards are just as likely to appear at the beginning of the shoe, as the middle, as the end. Just because the count is zero at the top of the shoe doesn’t mean you’ll have an exact balance of high and low cards. You seem to be suggesting that the cards are more clumpy at the end of the deck. However, if that were true, then the odds would change if the dealer dealt the cards in reverse order. Surely that is a ridiculous notion.

Let’s say the basic strategy player has 16 against a 10 late in the shoe, and hits. If the count were high, standing would be the right play, resulting in what would look like an error to a counter who was watching. However, if the count were negative then hitting would be all the better. In the end, it averages out, for the basic strategy player.

Inside The Edge Blackjack Movie

For reasons I explain in my blackjack appendix 10, the basic strategy player should prefer a game with a continuous shuffler, if his goal is to minimize the house edge. Aside from that, the house edge is not affected by penetration. I should add that with a shallower penetration there will be more time spent shuffling, and thus a lower expected loss on an hourly basis.

A new documentary documenting the life of a professional card counter has been released, showing the highs and lows of the card counting lifestyle.

The movie is titled “Inside the Edge: A Professional Blackjack Adventure” and follows the exploits of card counter KC as he travels the United States in an RV. During this road trip, he visits as many casinos as he can, plays blackjack, wins big, and get out before casino security is on to him. Of course, not everything plays out exactly how KC wants each time, and viewers get to experience the stress that goes into being a professional card counter.

The film is a short hour and twelve-minute affair, but it offers an enticing look at the life of a real card counter, rather than the fiction of a film like 21. We should also mention that the film features a few segments with Mike Shackleford, also known as the Wizard of Odds. Mike is the namesake behind our sister site Wizard of Odds and Wizard of Vegas, and we’re glad to see him on the big screen.

You can purchase the film via most major outlets like Amazon and iTunes.

Source: IMDB

Inside The Edge Blackjack Trailer

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