Shuffle Tracking

Blackjack Shuffle Tracking

Not all card counting techniques involve running counts, +1s and -1s, and long division. Shuffle tracking is a form of card counting strategy that isn't as glamorous or popular as High-Low or unbalanced counting methods. It is considered an advanced technique due to its complexity, but one that can lead to profits just as easily as a well-played traditional card counting method.

Shuffle Tracking Basics

The basic premise of tracking the shuffle depends on the idea that shuffles of the deck are not truly random. People who track shuffles try to figure out where certain cards are after the deck or decks are shuffled. To people unfamiliar with shuffle tracking, this sounds outrageous. But think of it this way--if you keep count of a shoe before it is shuffled, and your count is +10 right before the shuffle, it stands to reason that the part of the deck that's already in play has a count of -10, using a balanced count. If the unplayed cards get shuffled back into the top of the shuffled pile, you can have some idea what the count should be. Card counting is necessary to proper shuffle tracking--it gives you the favorable "regions" of the cards already played so that you know what to track.

Casino Zone Shuffle

The most common shuffle that blackjack dealers use is known as the "zone shuffle." In a zone shuffle, the cards are split up into piles which are shuffled. That means that certain cards will not move out of their region, and actually have a higher probability of being in one or two particular regions of the shuffled pile of cards. Shuffle tracking uses the casino's biggest weakness (the inability to thoroughly shuffle the deck in order to maintain high profit) against them.

When a zone shuffle is in use, shuffle tracking is at its best. You'll need to learn to track "regions" of cards, and you'll need a running balanced card count, but that's really about it.

Shuffle Tracking Example

Pretend you are playing in a four deck game, and only three decks have actually been dealt. A smart shuffle tracker will have recorded a running count for each deck, mentally labeling the decks A, B, and C. Remember that each running count has a unique deck that it counts for. The unplayed deck in this example is called "D," and it is assigned the exact opposite of the running count for decks A + B + C. The ability to keep lots of numbers in your head is key to shuffle tracking, even more so than for card counting.

For this example, deck A had a count of -4, deck B had a count of -2, deck C came in at +1, and that means deck D came in at +1.

If the dealer uses a zone shuffle, he'll start it out by placing the unplayed deck on top of pile of played cards. That means the full pile has D on the top, then C, then B, and then A at the bottom.The dealer then cuts the pile in two, so that B and A are in one pile, and D and C are in the next. The most common shuffle technique indicates that the dealer will shuffle together the top halves of each pile, with the bottom halves combined and placed on top. The deck now finds A+C on top of B+D.

Take the running count of decks A and C and combine them, and do the same for decks B and D. You'll find that the top of the deck now has a count of -3, while the bottom of the deck has a count of +3. You now have some idea of how aggressively to bet based on the newly "shuffled" deck.

Notice that zone shuffles aren't true shuffles at all, but a mixing of piles. This type of shuffle is most advantageous to shuffle trackers.

Different casinos around the country and around the world use different shuffles--any casino using shuffling machines is pretty much immune to shuffle tracking. Shuffle tracking methods exist for other types of shuffles, but they are far more complex than the tracking method for the basic zone shuffle. While shuffle tracking, like card counting, is not illegal, you can be asked to leave at any time. That's why it is best to not keep too obvious a track of the shuffle and shuffle math, choosing instead to cover your track or (as some experts have found) to use your chips to track. Any way you can hide your card counting or shuffle tracking will help you out in the long run.