I can't believe they're getting away with this:......
SINGLE-DECK GAME WITH 6-5 PAYOUT ON BLACKJACK: 1.5-1.7% HOUSE
ADVANTAGE (depending on rules)
I agree that the 6:5 blackjack games are an abomination that
shouldn't even be called blackjack to begin with. The existence of
these games proves several points:
1. Some people will play any game that's put in front of them, no
matter how bad.
2. Most people don't make even a minimum effort to understand the
casino games and the effect of rule changes.
3. There is no end to casino greed.
The lure of this particular game is that it is a single deck game
(although I've heard that 6:5 is actually starting to spread to
double deck in one or two places), and most people have heard
somewhere that "single deck is better". However, the tiny
improvement in expectation that a single deck game provides compared
to multi-decks is no match for the walloping that the player gets
from the decrease in blackjack payoffs. It's like giving someone a
penny and taking back a quarter. I hope that these 6:5 games and
other goofy variants of blackjack will die off as players become
better educated and insist on decent games, but I'm not holding my
breath.
Now, I must correct some points you make in the next section,
although I do agree with your overall tone.
Equally evil are the autoshuffler games where the used cards are put
back in the shuffler AFTER EVERY HAND. The effect of this is
insidious:
The more decks in play, the greater the advantage for the house.
This stems primarily from the fact that blackjacks become less
common as the number of decks in play increases.
So far, this is fine. Given an identical set of rules, the more
decks in use, the greater the casino advantage. A slight reduction
in blackjack frequency is one reason, but there are several others -
all related to the diminishing effects of card removal to the overall
deck composition as more decks are used.
Now, in a conventionally dealt
six-deck shoe game, the house advantage DECREASES as the shoe is
dealt out; halfway through the shoe, for example, the game is being
dealt, in effect, from a three-deck shoe. If the cut card is at 1/3
depth, i.e., the last two decks are not dealt, then a six-deck game is
actually a four-deck game on the AVERAGE (i.e., there are somewhere
between six and two decks in play). The effect of the autoshufflers
is to ensure that there are always the maximum number of decks in
play!!.........
Here's where you get off track. The AVERAGE house advantage stays
the same as a shoe is dealt out. The average advantage of a six deck
shoe will be the same whether we are at the beginning of the shoe or
toward the end. Think of it like this. We take six decks, shuffle
them together, then cut the top 5 decks out of play, leaving one deck
remaining. What is our advantage? It's the same as if we were
dealing the first few cards out of the six deck shoe. As we deal
through the pack, we are simply picking subsets out of the shoe. The
physical position of these subsets within the shoe does not change
our advantage in any way. You can't turn a six deck game into a
single deck game by just picking out 52 random cards.
But one thing you can do is somehow keep track of the actual cards
used up as the shoe is dealt out, which does effect the expectation
of the remaining cards. Remember that I said the AVERAGE advantage
stays the same? The actual advantage varies up and down depending on
which specific cards have already been played. But the only way a
player can take advantage of this fact is by using some sort of
system to keep track of the cards that have already been played.
This is, of course, the essence of card counting. With continuous
shuffle machines, we are in effect always playing at or very near the
beginning of the shoe, meaning that there is nothing for a card
counter to count! This makes the game a total waste of time for a
card counter.
These machines also hurt the regular players, but not in the manner
that you have suggested. They hurt regular players mainly because
the game goes faster, since there is no "down time" while the dealer
shuffles. Just like in video poker, if you play blackjack at a
disadvantage, then faster play will cost you more money. Dealers
hate these machines since they don't get the natural break every few
minutes that shuffling offers. I also think that these machines can
hurt players in a another - long term - way. If the continuous
shuffle tables become popular, the casino bosses will likely
think "boy, if people will play this game, they'll play ANYTHING" -
and they'll have yet another justification to offer worse and worse
games.
I urge everyone to boycott casinos that have either of these two
blackjack games, even if they do not play blackjack themselves. It
never seemed to me that the casinos were going broke; increasing the
house edge at the single most popular table game by 500 percent (or
more) seems a little bit unjustified. Don't support ripoff joints!!
I agree 100% with this.
EE
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--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "mkl54321" <mkl54321@y...> wrote: