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Silver Level
I play live tournaments so I want a mechanical shuffle - Shufflemaster or whatever brand. It is important to be dealt as many hands as possible per level or at least a similar number of hands as other tables in an mtt. When you are playing a hand shuffled tournament and you are hit with 2 or 3 dealers in a row who happen to be the slowest in hands dealt per hour in the house when you are in the prime stack building part of the tournament it puts you at a disadvantage to the tables who have not been hit with the sloths. Throw in a couple pe-flop tankers and you are really screwed. So I am 100% for mechanical shuffles.
NO! NOT whatever - ONLY ShuffleMaster - all others are not worth the trouble or cost.
I run two poker rooms in Michigan, (company owns 5 total), one of my rooms has one SM and the other has none. A third/fourth room of ours has two SM each, and the 5th has none.
We only use them for our bigger cash games, they put out a few more hands per hour, making more money and players happy.
The good reliable shufflers (SM) are very expensive so most poker rooms, casinos included, will not have that many, so its tough to justify using them for tournaments which make very little money for the house, and getting more hands out there does not rake more money for anyone. In fact, the only tournaments I have ever seen them used in are WSOP, and they only use like 20 or so, and only when deep in the money of tournaments, and smaller really high buy ins (10k's).
Some respondents do not realize the question is saying the machine just shuffles, the dealer still cuts the deck and pitches out the cards and runs the game, but can put out more hands per hour with a machine pre-shuffling a deck before a hand.
A machine will only be a better "shuffler", as far as mixing the cards, than a bad dealer (which yes there are some), but against a good dealer they will be an even match, just a touch faster (though some dealers can shuffle as fast at it would take to load the shuffler with old deck and take the new one out - I am pretty close myself - so not really that much faster - maybe 2 or 3 more hands per down).
I think the high end players just like the 'feel' of the game when one is used. You realize this when watching the WSOP tournaments deep in the money using the shufflers, it doesnt speed it up the game at all because they are playing so slow to begin with at that level.
They are money makers for sure and help with keeping dealers wrists in good shape so I like them for sure.
HOWEVER conspiracy theorists take note, some of these new shufflers can sort cards, Ill just leave it at that..............
Tampa Hardrock is 2nd biggest room in Tampa by tables and has over twice as many tables as the largest room in Detroit and runs pretty much all their tournaments from hand 1 to the last hand on every table with automatic card shufflers (not Shufflemaster) the tournament running now as I am typing is a 150k guarantee with a $150 buyin with 3 day 1s remaining it was at over 1000 entries when I played earlier today (I busted may play last day 1 tomorrow).
Also the Isle another large FL room uses auto-shufflers in tournaments from hand one as well.I am sure there are others in Florida that use auto-shuffler in tournaments.
Edit: As a side note I found out today HardRock Tampa stopped all food service in the poker room. Watching people eat with their hands and then touch their chips and lick wing sauce off their fingers right after they touched those filthy chips made me want to vomit every time I played. lol
I've never seen an extra dealer only for preparing the second deck.