Live Action Dealers

About 15 years back during my beat the pavement days in Vegas, I had the pleasure of meeting this guy (I will call him Joe, not his real name.) We used to hang around the racebook in the horseshoe following the steam horses. anyways one night around two in the morning I find myself walking through the golden gate casino. Almost homeless, I know enough people to find a couch when I need one, A full belly and 5 bucks, thanks to Tony the poker room floorman at the shoe on grave.
Well anyways I am going through the golden gate casino, and guess what? Here is Joe and two of his road dogs playing blackjack. Mountains of green checks. And I mean mountains. Greens are $25. Well they had the table to themselves. One playing first, one playing third, and Joe playing all the spots in the middle. (first and third is slang for first position and last position.) Always varying his bets. Well let me tell you the first thing that came to my mind is BACK IN ACTION.
I ease over and 5 minutws later they got the pitboss comping me three nights in the hotel and they took up a collection for me. $125. well guess what? these chips were not exactly won on the square. I look at the pitboss and he is constantly picking up the discards (i guess he was looking for marks in the cards. there wasn't any.) It's comical watching how pitbosses act when the chips find their way on the other side of the table. Now the punch line. Guess what they were doing?
True story. It's called shuffle tracking. Joe was so good he would watch the dealer, the dealer mind you, shuffle the cards and he would cut the deck and give himself not just an ace but the ace of clubs. He was that strong. In blackjack if your first card is an ace you have an expected value (EV) of $.52 on the dollar. He would cut the dealer a five or six to. True story. I spoke with Nolan Dolla some years later about what I witnessed. (he was writing for card player and running the room at the shoe,) And he told me that he just wrote an article for card player about shuffle tracking and they wouldn't print it because they will not print anything negative about the game. This is all true story. Anyways after seeing the shuffle machine and after seeing Joe and his crew in action well it makes you wonder. With all the money going around in the world of poker these days, Just what a dealer can do with a deck of cards in his hands. I seen what he could do and he only touched the cut card. So what do you think? Live dealers shuffling or the machine does the shuffle and the live dealer just slings them?

Great story.

I completely feel the future of poker and blackjack dealing will be mechanical shufflers. Machines will not be able to predict what order the cards come in so the results will truely be random.