The Shuffle-up and Hiding Cards

The cornerstone of casino counter tactics is to shuffle the deck whenever the player would have an advantage on the next hand.

However, it is unfairly uncommon nowadays to find a dealer who routinely deals to the last card. Virtually none deal the very last card. Many casinos instruct their dealers never to deal through the deck.

This precaution is taken in case an expert should happen to be at the table; it deprives him of the highly lucrative deck compositions that often exist when only a few cards remain.

However, most of a deck usually will be dealt before it is shuffled. This is adequate to provide the expert with enough favorable compositions to win, though not so rapidly as if the entire deck were routinely used.

If a player is recognized as an expert, or perhaps merely suspected by casino personnel who cannot reliably detect expert play, more frequent shuffling may commence.

Casinos and individual personnel vary greatly in how soon they will spot good play and in how long they will tolerate it before commencing to shuffle up. Whether the player is winning, and how much, definitely exerts an influence.

The prosperity and general policy of the individual casino is a factor. Usually, the whole thing is a bit unpredictable; at time, one have played a certain game profitably and relatively unimpeded for hours, whereas at others, shuffling began quite soon.

But after so long a time, especially if you are winning steadily, a pit boss will tell the dealer to shuffle very frequently. One jargonized term for this instruction is 'break the deck'.

Many have seen pit bosses go so far as to tell dealers to break the deck after every hand.

This is not too common; for one thing, it annoys the other customers at the table. But in some cases, at least, the dealer does not have to continue the practice long; therefore one should take it as a not-too-subtle invitation to leave--- and do so.

At times, it is not the dealer's competence that is involved, but that of the pit boss. Some of the most satisfying sessions a Twenty-One player have played have occurred when a dealer blindly followed instructions to break the deck every time he increased his bet.

This literally allowed the player to control the game.

On hiding cards, frequent shuffling alone, of course, does not preclude successful play--- unless after every hand. The practice merely reduces effectiveness. Combined with other counter tactics, it makes winning even more difficult.

The second most important of these, in terms of commonness and effectiveness, is the dealer's hiding of cards. Hiding of cards simply involves the dealer's going out of his way to avoid exposing the player's hole cards when bets are settled.

There is, actually, a casino on the Strip that instructs its dealers routinely to follow this practice at every opportunity. It trains its apprentices ('break-in dealers) to hide every possible card. Elsewhere, you will merely encounter the technique sporadically.