Shuffle Master (was Re: [ba-poker] Bay 101 trip report)

[Alan Bostick <abostick(deleted the rest)>]

On Saturday, February 5, 2005, at 11:24 PM, Dave Horwitz wrote:
> Then I notice a black square shaped cover in the
> center of the table, at an angle, with a red button
> and a green button. I'm baffled. Ask the dealer if
> it's there to check for black jacks. It's a
> shuffle master! Very cool. Too bad the cover isn't
> translucent so you can watch it work. These things
> are the nuts! Last time I saw something of this ilk
> it was in Reno years ago (BJ table?). It was exposed,
> *slow* and jammed. This thing was fast and usually
> done by the time the flop betting was done. You could
> tell because the green button lit up. Dealer said they
> count down the deck when they shuffle too. Cost: 16K.
> Even the slower dealers must have been turning 50
> hands an hour. Every now and again a dealer did a
> light weight scramble before putting the deck in the
> machine. NOBODY asked for a deck change! Maybe that
> was an anomaly.

Do they actually shuffle the cards well?  I have my doubts.

Last October I was playing 20-40 high-low stud at the Bicycle
at a table that had a Shuffle Master installed.  At one point,
when an inexperienced dealer was in the box, the setup was
changed.  The dealer checked to see that all the cards were there,
gathered them up without scrambling, and put the still-spaded
deck into the Shuffle Master.  (He then checked, scrambled, and
shuffled the other deck by hand, and dealt a hand, but that's
not part of the story.)

The next hand, the spaded-and-then-Shuffle-Mastered deck came
out of the machine.  I'm picky about shuffling, asked to be dealt
out.  Five players anted up[1], and the hand was dealt.  The
upcards were, in succession, the 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 of hearts.
Technically it wasn't a misdeal, but no one wanted to play the
hand.  The 4 brought it in, and everyone else folded.

That's the only sample I've seen of the deck being in an initially
ordered state prior to being Shuffle-Mastered, and the outcome
was one of lots of order remaining in the deck.  I would want to
run more tests before I said flat-out that the Shuffle Master's
shuffling is no good, but I am not optimistic.  Shuffle Master's
Web site claims that the shuffled decks are truly random; they
don't give a precise specification of what that means, and I'm
dubious of "randomness" that is generated purely mechanically.

[1] Aside to Michael Wiesenberg:  "anted" or "anteed"?  THE OFFICIAL
DICTIONARY OF POKER doesn't specify, and they both look wrong to my
eye.

--
Alan Bostick          | This Age wanted heroes.
abostick(deleted the rest) | It got us instead
                      |      Tony Kushner, A BRIGHT ROOM CALLED DAY
http://www.spicejar.org/asiplease/