Blackjack Strategies: Shuffle Tracking
Every self-respecting blackjack player has a strategy. At one end of the scale is the amateur player who wants to win and figures that his best bet is sticking to the tried-and-true basic strategy and its helpful chart. At the other end is the super-professional dedicated blackjack player for whom no technique is too challenging or hard to master. At that end is where the blackjack shuffle trackers sit.
Shuffle trackers are basically upgraded card counters; they're actually in a different league altogether. Shuffle tracking, which is sometimes called cluster tracking, is a form of card counting but a much harder form. Shuffle tracking is to card counting what race-car driving is to cruising around in your Ford Focus. All great shuffle trackers are good card counters, but not all card counters can track the shuffle.
Successful shuffle trackers are the ultimate multi-taskers. They need to play the game while concentrating on the deck. Shuffle tracking requires great concentration and a huge amount of focus. It's hard to understand, harder to grasp and even harder to put to practical use. All the great card-counting teams, like the legendary MIT Team, had members who could shuffle track; it is an important casino-breaking skill that few have learned and fewer have mastered.
A Blackjack Strategy for Professionals Only
The way that shuffle tracking works is all about keeping your eye on the shoe and watching the cards that have been dealt. In a multi-deck blackjack game, it's relatively easy (certainly compared to shuffle tracking) to keep track of how many valuable cards have been dealt by counting cards.
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If you can continue to keep track of the high-end of the pile, through subsequent shuffles, then you've figured out how to shuffle track. It takes an eagled-eyed and determined blackjack player to use shuffle tracking to win; it's not for the faint hearted, that's for sure. Shuffle tracking is not a science. Basically what is means is looking for big bunches of aces and tens and keeping track of them through subsequent shuffles. A good shuffle tracker will then bet big when it's time for that clump to surface. In theory, it sounds simple and logical; in reality, it's close to impossible.
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Although many blackjack card-counting theories are considered mathematically sound, shuffle tracking is unpredictable and too vulnerable to human error to be considered a reliable way of winning at blackjack. It takes such intense concentration, and such keen eyesight, that there are only a handful of really proficient shufle trackers in the world. In an online casino, of course, where the blackjack cards are virtual and the "shuffling" is by a Random Number Generator, shuffle tracking is irrelevant. Still, it is good for any blackjack player to know that shuffle tracking exists as a blackjack strategy and to admire those few who do it well.
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