Shuffle Tracking: In-Depth

This article is a continuation from the previous article for those of you who are interested in developing their Shuffle Tracking technique.

This information is not intended to help you to improve at blackjack, you still need to master the rules and strategies. It is a technique that is designed to enhance your game play, but is not a substitute to learning the game.

There are many people who believe that Shuffle Tracking is too advanced a technique for the average person to become proficient at, however, with a little effort, practically anyone can learn.

You need to be a fairly good player, with a decent grasp of the rules, you need to be able to maintain a card count, estimate the number of cards in a stack via a visual evaluation (which needs to be accurate within at least 8 cards- the more precisely you can estimate this the better). Aside from these factors, anybody can learn the technique of Shuffle Tracking.

The aim of the technique is basically as follows:
When you are playing at a table and you observe that many of the adjacent players have around 20 or 21, then you know that there are high cards in play at that particular point, and you wish to estimate where these cards are going to be in the next round.

At this stage you need to be employing a visual count, observe the cards that have been discarded and apply to them a count. An alternative strategy is to count the cards while they are being placed in the shoe. The first strategy is the most efficient for this technique, but it will make keeping a running count more difficult, thus making your card count less likely to be accurate, you must only employ the second strategy if you are an expert at blackjack and card counting, or failing that a borderline genius.

The casino shuffle:
When it comes to shuffling, different casinos will employ different methods, but there are some basics that can be found universally. These basics are the Riffle, Grab and Strip. The focus in this section is on the croupier Grabs, because this is the aspect that you need to track as a Shuffle Tracker. Once the croupier has grabbed a selection of discards from the table then these cards will be carried through into the next shoe.

Taking as an example the following situation; A casino may require their croupiers to ‘Grab' 26 cards from one pile, 26 from another pile and then shuffle them together and place them on a third pile- the size the casino sets for the ‘Grab' is the most interesting factor for the Shuffle Tracker. These ‘Grabs' can be tracked into the next round of the game.

The following is a real-life definition of a Las Vegas shuffle, for which anybody can learn to track.

Put the un-dealt cut off's onto the top of the discard pile. (Grab). Cut the deck (in half) to the right. (Grab). Cut and restack the right pile in half, known as riffle, Grab 26 cards from the left and 26 from the right piles. Then Riffle them a further two times and place them in the middle, then repeat the Riffle stage until the cards are all in the middle.

Create a Shuffle Track:
Imagine in your minds eye two piles, the pile on the right is a pile of discards, the pile on the left are the cards after the shuffle.

Clump the pile on the right by the number in the croupier Grab, that is 30 in this example. Thus, you have 6 clumps of 26 cards for a 3 deck
game. Assign the numbers one to six for each clump, from the bottom up.
Clump the left side in decks and letter them A-C from the top to bottom.

This is the track for the above shuffle :
-----------A---
6 1 and 4
----
5
-----------B---
4 2 and 5
----
3
-----------C---
2 3 and 6
----
1

From the track above, construct your own Shuffle Track Key.
The Shuffle Track Key is the only thing of which you must be concerned.
This is the Shuffle Track Key for the example above.

1A 2B 3C 4A 5B 6C

Clump 1 was assigned to Deck A
Clump 2 was assigned to Deck B
...

An easy way of remembering how your shuffle is mentally mapped is to remember that: :
ABCCBA

When each clump is discarded remind yourself verbally that so and so clump went to deck A...

This way, when you get to the place where there are a lot of high cards you will know precisely where they.

Some shuffles are not worth the effort to track, if you encounter a situation where the track seems impossible then it probably is and your best bet is to find an alternative casino. There are many places where you can play games with simple shuffles, so stick to these.

There are some very good pieces of software that will help you to maintain a track of the shuffles, such as Shuffle Trak- these pieces of software, because you need a device to run them, such as a pc, then they are best for playing at online casinos which use direct or live dealers.

The effect the croupier has on card placement:

The accuracy or proficiency of the croupiers shuffling skills has little outcome on the result of Shuffle Tracking and the estimation of the projected placement (- the location of all cards in a perfect shuffle) of cards.

The first consideration is to define the variations in dealing and what you can reasonably expect and what is simply wishful thinking.

Aim:
The aim is to locate, single out and predict, with a reasonable margin of error, the location of a clump of cards that contains a vast number of high value cards.

The aim is not to track individual cards, which is simply wishful thinking for the average player, you would need to be an exceptional mnemonic or have a photographic memory.

Croupier effect:
To make it easier for you to understand, the example is going to use the Single Pass R&R shuffle.

The croupier cuts the six decks to the right, and the right pile is halved, he riffles 26 from the left and with 26 on the right then he again riffles the 52 and stacks it in the centre until both piles are depleted and then re-stacked in the middle.

In this example we are going to assume that the clump containing the most high value cards is in the top 26 of the left pile after the first break to the right. That particular clump is either going to be enhanced, diluted or kept around the same value, by the top 26 cards from the other pile on the right. The clump that you are tracking is going to be located at the bottom deck (of 52 cards that you need to be able to visually estimate) after the shuffle.

Therefore, as you have probably ascertained, the croupier only has an effect in reference to his accuracy at grabbing, the riffle has no effect whatsoever.
The croupier can perform as many riffles as he wants and your clump is still going to be located in the bottom of the deck and attached to the 26 top cards from the right pile.

So the only influence is the croupiers ‘Grab'; if the casinos definition of a shuffle dictates that the croupier ‘Grabs' 26 and the croupier is accurate by at least four on either side (i.e. 22-30 per Grab), this means that around ¾ are reasonably going to be found in the bottom deck.

Real life results of the technique:
The following is the definition that was used in the Shuffle Trak software. On the Play-Back Analysis Screen, the grab is roughness (i.e. margin of the croupiers error) is 6 on either side, so if the ‘Grab' is set at 26 then this gives the range of 20-32, the interleaving roughness to three, and several clumps were highlighted and tracked through the shuffle in 27 rounds. For each shuffle, between 80 and 100% of the cards in my allocated clumps appeared in the deck where they were estimated to be, the average was 90%.

One important thing to remember in Shuffle Tracking is that there is basically no difference between that and counting, you are interested in knowing where the high value cards are located, the individual position of the cards is not important, and you would have to be extremely gifted to be able to maintain a track of the key cards in a game which is using 6 decks.

Many people have argued that Shuffle Tracking is not a viable option for the average player, but I firmly believe that with a little dedication and effort it will become clear and begin to make sense, if this is your first read through and you think you'll never master it, read it again, or do more research. It can be done by most people, just because it is hard does not mean it is impossible, just that you need to put in some effort.
A bonus when it comes to learning the Shuffle Track is that it is added to your game play, you will not lose out on any of the other strategies that you incorporate in the game, unless you are a card counter. So you have nothing to lose by trying.

Card Cut Placements:
In order to pull off the Shuffle Tracking technique you need to be informed about the method the casino uses to shuffle its cards so that you can play an intelligent game.

Casinos are not allowed to fiddle the decks, so they have no way of manipulating the placements of the high value cards. The high cards will end up in their particular location depending on their placement in the discard pile.

If you do not have knowledge of clumping and how to map it by following the shuffle, then the place in which you place the cut card is simply random and one placement is as good as another. If this is the case and you are in a casino and one of your fellow opponents is requesting that the cut card be placed in a certain position, then maybe you should go along with them, they may know something you do not, i.e. the map!!!