On 1 Dec 2003 at 18:51, Joshua Singer wrote:
Regarding the method outlined below, in which a shill burns through a blackjack deck when the state favors the player, I'm not sure this would accomplish anything. It seems to me that this is as likely to make the deck even more favorable to the player as to make it less favorable.
Well, I've gotten fooled by probability args in the past, and surely will be in the future, but I think this one is OK. The question turns on whether you believe that knowing something about the distribution of the cards remaining in the deck affects the player's odds or not. If you *DO*, then the shill _can_ affect things to favor the house:
As a thought experiment: suppose that the shill had the option, at his turn, to take the *bottom* four cards off the deck. Does it seem like this would affect the other players' odds? Since the next four cards and the bottom four cards are equivalent, from a probabilistic standpoint, the answers to the thought experiment and to the actual proposed method must be the same.
Indeed, and it works for me: if the deck is 'hot', that means that the probability of getting "good cards" is higher than expected, which is disadvantageous to the house. Taking the bottom four cards, or ANY four cards, out of the deck in such a situation is *more* likely to remove "good cards" from the deck than would be expected, and so should, on average, 'cool' the deck [and in a way that deprives the player from winning money from the house with the 'good' cards]. Yes, taking the bottom cards won't affect the *next* hand, but even taking the TOP card might not help the house: even with the deck being 'hot', the shill might get a deuce next and make the deck "hotter"for the player, but I think that *on*average* the shill will help the house. Consider a simpler game: red wins and black loses. The dealer just turns over a single card per player and it is 50/50 [no house edge!] whether you win or lose. It seems obvious to me that in this game [which, IMO, has the same basic hotdeck/colddeck properties as in BJ] that the player that ONLY plays when there are more reds than black left in the deck will end up ahead [which means that the other players will have ended up behind, since the complete game is zero-sum].. Am I missing something here? /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <--