A couple of posters have pointed out, correctly, that dealing the
first hand out of a freshly shuffled six-deck shoe is no better or
worse than dealing the second, or fifty-third, or whatever, since the
hand given to the player is a function of all the combinations
available in 312 cards whether or not those cards are truly in play
(as they would not be in a conventional shoe). I misstated my
argument, sacrifcing clarity for the sake of brevity. Here's what I
SHOULD have said:
In any negative-expectation game, the only way a player can hope to
get the advantage is to experience a burst of luck in the "short term"
(and then leave, presumably). Negative expectation games that have
volatile results and high payouts tend to have higher house advantages
than non-volatile, even-money-payout games. This is because is it
harder to "get lucky" at a BJ or baccarat table where it takes several
wins in a row, parlaying, or an unusual preponderance of wins in a
session to book a winner. Contrast this with slots, VP, or Keno.
Now, the house DOESN'T want heavily skewed results in any of the
low-volatily, even-money games. The house would ideally like to
subtract .5% (or whatever) from everybody's bet without even dealing
the cards, and do that over and over until everyone's broke (since
this is the identical effect of actually dealing the cards). In other
words, the "flatter" the results curve, the safer it is for the house.
Now, imagine a blackjack game where the shoe fluctuated back and forth
between: Players win 90% of the time, then House wins 90% of the time.
The casino would get CRUSHED in such a game, even with a healthy
inherent house advantage, because gamblers tend to bet more when
they're winning. A player's winning streak is usually deadlier to the
house than a house winning streak is to the player, for the simple
reaon that the house CAN'T QUIT when the player is hot; the player CAN
quit when the house is hot. Therefore the house doesn't WANT the game
of BJ to be volatile and streaky, this being the primary way it can
lose money fast.
The effect of autoshufflers is to make it impossible to reach a
"positive" deck condition, which while classically benefiting the card
counter, also benefits the average joe (though not as much since he
fails to adjust his strategy). That it also makes it impossible to
reach a "negative" deck condition is not as important, for the reasons
stated above.
So the insidiousness of the autoshufflers is actually that of
"smoothing out" the play of the game so that the house can grind away
at its customers without as much danger of skewed results.
(Try this analogy: At the craps table, 3 out of 36 rolls are a ten:
5-5, 6-4, 4-6. In 360 rolls, then, the ten comes up 30 times. Which do
you think the house would rather have happen during these 360 rolls:
The ten comes up every twelfth roll or so, or sometime during the 360
rolls it comes up 30 times in a row??)