SHUFFLE TRACKING 101 The basics of Shuffle Tracking and how it can help almost any player improve their skill level. I offer this as information only and is not intended to be advice on how to play. It is offered as help in understand the principles of Shuffle Tracking and how relatively easy it is to apply to and augment your current playing strategy. There is probably not 2% of the people reading this that thinks they are capable of shuffle tracking, the fact is that many of you have the basic skills to apply this information to improve your game. You should be an advanced player with a grasp of basic strategy, able to keep the count and capable of assigning a visual count to a stack of cards within a reasonable error factor (5-8 cards). The closer you are, the better. The rest can be learned. The principle idea of what you are trying to do is this: You are playing at the tables and you look around and see that almost everyone has 20 or 21 ( a lot of high cards ), you'd like to know where these cards are going to be in the next shoe. This is where your visual count skill is used, look at the discards and apply a count to them. Another method may be to actually count the discards as they are placed in the shoe. Keeping a card count of the discards is without doubt the best way but may preclude you from keeping a running count. Casino Shuffle Definitions : Casino definitions very widely from casino to casino but all are made up of three basic functions, Grab, Riffle and Strip. What we are concerned with is the dealer Grabs, for this is what we are going to track. Once that dealer grabs a clump of cards, that clump can be projected into the next shoe. For example, A casino shuffle may include the action of "Grab 26 cards from pile 1, grab 26 cards from pile 2, riffle them and put them on pile 3". The dealer grab size (26 in this case) is the key. Those grabs (or clumps or sometimes referred to as segments) can be tracked ( or mapped) into the next shoe. Here is an actual definition of a Las Vegas casino shuffle and how anyone can learn to track it. Place the undealt discards (cutoffs) on top of the discard pile. (Grab) Break the deck (half) to the right. (Grab) Cut and restack the right pile in half. (Riffle) Grab 26 cards from left pile, 26 from right pile Riffle them twice and put them in the middle. Repeat the Riffle until the cards are all on the middle. Offer the cards for cut. Creating a map of a shuffle: Picture 2 piles, the pile on the left is the discards, the pile on the right is the cards after the shuffle. Segment the pile on the left by dealer grabs (26 in this case). So you have 12 segments of 26 cards for a 6 deck game. Number them 1 to 12 bottom to top. Segment the right side in decks (52 cards) and letter them A to F top to bottom. This is the map for the above shuffle : -----------A--- 12 1 and 10 ---- 11 -----------B--- 10 2 and 11 ---- 9 -----------C--- 8 3 and 12 ---- 7 -----------D--- 6 4 and 7 ---- 5 -----------E--- 4 5 and 8 ---- 3 -----------F--- 2 6 and 9 ---- 1 --------------- >From the map above, create your Mapping Key. Your Mapping Key is the only thing that you need to remember. This is the Mapping Key for the above shuffle. 1A 2B 3C 4D 5E 6F 7D 8E 9F 10A 11B 12C Segment 1 went to Deck A Segment 2 went to Deck B etc. A very easy way to mentally map segments as you are playing against this shuffle is to remember : ABCDEF DEF ABC As each segment is discarded, say to yourself.. that went to deck A, That went to deck B, that went to deck C... When you get to the hand of high cards, you know exactly where they will be. There are shuffles that I would not attempt to track. My suggestion is simply play somewhere else, there are a lot of very simple shuffles to play against. And of course, if you need an excellent software tool to help you map these casino shuffles, I recommend Shuffle Trak. Dealer Effect On Card Placement Dealer Effect On Card Placement (With regards to Shuffle Tracking or a more accurate term Clump Tracking) How accurate or inaccurate a dealer is in shuffling the cards has little (or minor) effect on the projected placement. (The projected placement being the location of all cards in a perfect shuffle). We first need to define what are the acceptable variances and what expectations we are actually striving for and what expectations are unreasonable. Expectation (or goal) : The goal is to isolate and predict with a reasonable variance the location of a clump of high cards. We are not trying to spot individual cards. Tracking individual cards is not a reasonable expectation for the average player. Comparing expectations of counting with the expectations of clump tracking, they are exactly the same. We are trying to predict where a clump of high cards are. Variance (or dealer influence) : For the purpose of clarification, we will use a Single Pass R&R shuffle as an example. The dealer cuts the 6 decks to the right and cuts the right pile in half, riffles 26 from the left with 26 from the right, then re-riffles the 52 and stacks it in the middle until the two piles are depleted and restacked in the middle. For this example, lets say that the clump of high cards that you want to track is in the top 26 cards on the left pile after the initial break to the right. That clump is going to married to and diluted or enhanced by the top 26 cards from the right pile. Your clump of high cards are going to be in the bottom deck (52) cards after the shuffle. As you can see the only influence the dealer has on your clump is his/her accuracy in their grabs, the riffle interleaving has no effect. The dealer can riffle and re-riffle as many times as they wish, your clump is still going to be in the bottom deck married to the top 26 from the right pile. The only influencing factor here is the dealer's accuracy in the grabs. If the definition of the shuffle says to grab 26 cards and the dealer's accuracy is in the area of +-4 (22 to 30, a range of 8 cards), that means that 85% to 100% of your cards are going to be in the bottom deck. The only mudding is in the margins of the segments. Actual (Real World) Test Results : I defined this shuffle in Shuffle Trak. On the Play-Back Analysis Screen, I set the grab roughness to plus or minus 6 (a variation of 12 cards), I set the interleaving roughness to 3 and highlighted and tracked different segments through the shuffle in 27 shoes. In every shuffle, 85%-100% of the cards in the target segment appeared in their projected deck, with an average of 92% of the cards being in the deck they were projected to be in. In many of the shuffles, 100% of the cards appeared in the projected deck. It is important not to lose sight of the basic idea of clump tracking, it is no different than counting, you want to know where a clump of high cards are, individual card position is not important and not a factor. When someone says that shuffle tracking is very difficult and should not be attempted by the average player, I'm sure they mean well and are referring to individual card tracking and placement, and I have to agree that this should be left to the very advanced players. But if you want to start incorporating a little clump tracking into your arsenal then I say go for it, it's not as hard as some others would have you believe. It's not something you have to switch to, it's something that you can add to your current play strategy. It certainly would not hurt to know where those clumps of high cards are going. Cut card placement You must have some knowledge of the casino's shuffle that you are playing against in order to cut the cards intelegently. Casinos do not and cannot manipulate the high cards. Clumps of high cards will always end up in the same place depending only on their location in the discard pile. For example, in one casino, the first 26 cards discarded will always end up in the top deck after the shuffle, but in another casino they end up in the bottom deck, it all depends on the shuffle definittion. If the definittion dictates that the first 26 cards discarded end up in the top deck then they will always end up in the top deck IN THAT CASINO. If you have no knowledge of clump mapping of the shuffle you are playing against, then where you place the cust card is purly a random move and one place is just as good as any other. If you know nothing about the clump mapping of the shuffle you are playing against and another player is suggestiing a spot to cut, perhaps you should listen to them, maybe they do have the mapping. Dennis Suggs Owner, Developer Mesa Verde Software Systems Custom Software Development Shuffle Trak : Baccarat Buster