Card Clumping

[chrisphd]

In the tips section on this website, it mentions a card clumping phenomonon. Can someone please explain what causes high and low cards to clump in the discard tray in blackjack. This might be an easy question, but i've thought about this for a while and can't figure it out.

[Casinopro]

This is primarily caused by the pickup procedure in a multiple deck game. When they pick up the breaking hands first, they are actually sorting the cards by doing this. How? Because the hands that break will be mostly low cards with an occasional high card at the end because of the nature of hitting hands. So now you have a pile with a "clump" of low cards! This is further enhanced by the cards starting off clumped by lack of shuffling to begin with. These hands are then all placed in the discard tray on top of each other.

The hands that are left on the table will be for the most part pat hands of high cards or in the case of a low card clump - a self perpetualing low card clump.

The addition of forcing crowded seven player games enhances the effect. The fact that they are using 6- 8 decks which cannot be randomized with 2 or at best 3 shuffles doesn't help. I couldn't imagine playing poker at a home game and then picking up the "single" deck of cards and shuffling them only twice and dealing. I would be shot!

I am sure that while they say the cards are random and they obviously are not, the different shuffles they employ must also have an effect. If the cards were truly random what would be the purpose of a different shuffle since they are all random cards anyway? Here in lies the paradox that is revealed.

[aegis21]

Well said Suzanne... All anyone has to do is play a seven player eight deck shoe game at home. Using a standard casino shuffle and basic strategy for several shoes, it will become obvious. Even for the super doubters out there...easy to see with your own eyes!

I haven't been to AC for a couple of years but when they had the crowds on a Friday or Saturday night and all games were played seven player for hours you would consistently see either all low cards on a table or all high cards on a table. They out numbered the tables that had any kind of "normal" random distribution of cards by 10 to 1 You couldn't even win playing first base because you would push on almost all your high bet two ten twenty hands! AC made lots of cash in those days....