Originally Posted by
kewlJ
Ok, so I just watched this podcast. Initially I had no real interest because I knew they were hacking a shuffle machine for purposes of Poker, which I don't play as opposed to blackjack which I do play. So, it wasn't going to be the same thing. They were going to need to manipulate the machine to either direct winning hands to certain players or at least have certain players have knowledge of what was coming which would provide the advantage. That is very different that the manipulation needed for blackjack for purposes of increasing the casino advantage.
But the main takeaway should be that these machines can be compromised and manipulated. Once you understand that, there are all kinds of possibilities. And the people that argue this whenever such a discussion comes up are either associated with the casino industry or the manufacturer of the machines (less likely). The perfect example is the guy that posts at WoV, who admittedly works for a casino who almost immediately denies this is happening every time this discussion comes up.
Now here at Dan Druff's troll forum, we have AinQ that continues to fight me on this. You CANNOT watch this video and not KNOW that this kind of manipulation is possible. AinQ isn't THAT stupid, so his agenda is a little different. He just wants to fight and troll me.
So anyway, back to this video, because they are manipulating the machine to benefit a winning poker player, rather than the house, in the case of blackjack, it is a much more complicated dynamic.
With blackjack, all any casino, or someone working on their behalf, need do is manipulate the machine to clump some groups of cards. Particularly a low clump and high clump. And actually they really wouldn't need to clump the low cards, just a clump of high cards. If you clumped a group of high cards, the remaining deck could be a somewhat natural mix of low and neutral cards. So all that is really needed is a clump of high cards and fewer aces that "normal" within that high card clump.
Pretty simple really. The end result will be fewer blackjack. Fewer for the player as well as the dealer. BUT because the player is paid at 3:2, just a slight reduction would elevate the house advantage from .5% (standard 6 deck game) to 1.5-2%. THAT is a big deal.
And while there is an easy way to detect this, by just counting the frequencies of blackjack for both player and dealers combined, which should be roughly 1 in ever 20 hands (I think closer to 21 hands actually). But because that is such an infrequent number, you would have to track thousands of hands to come up with a number that statistically meant anything. But guaranteed if the machine was manipulated to clump high cards with fewer aces mixed in, the number of total blackjacks would be significantly less than the statistical norm of 1 in 21 hands.
BUT an experienced blackjack player doesn't have to track thousands and thousands of hands to know what is going on. An experienced player can fairly quickly spot when something just isn't right. Whether or not he wants to put in the time necessary to prove it is another story.
Now again, as I always do state, in my own experience this is not widespread. I have encountered 2 times I can comfortably say I KNOW this was happening and maybe 2 more times I suspected, but didn't pursue or try to prove it to myself, just removed that game and casino from future play.
But the bottom line is that this capability is there. Has been for a decade. Anybody arguing that it isn't, doesn't know what they are talking about. And anybody arguing that no one associated with the casino industry would ever do such a thing, doesn't know this industry, or has a reason (agenda) to make such a bullshit statement.