I received an email recently with a fairly common question, so I thought I’d share it with you guys, along with my opinion and the opinion of a few other famous card counters…
Dear Colin, I am VERY interested in card counting both as a hobby and a potential second income. I expect the training to take a good few months before I become sufficiently expert and have saved a substantial bankroll. My problem is that I suspect that more and more casinos will start to use continuous shuffling machines (CSMs), thereby making card counting obsolete and my training and saving all to no avail. What are your views ? -RB
First, let me tell you a short story:
One of the first blackjack trips I went on was a 5 hour drive to a tribal casino with dozens of tables. We’d already been there once, using 3
spotters and one “big player” for a couple days with great success (in terms of EV, though the casino got the best of us the first time). We’d waited about a month and made the trek back to generate more EV. We finally arrive at our destination, eager to get to work! We staggered our entrance by about 10 minutes so we wouldn’t be seen walking in together. I didn’t even make it into the casino before getting a text message from one of my teammates: “
They’ve placed continuous shuffle machines on every blackjack table on the main floor. $@*&!”
So are CSMs going to make card counting obsolete? No! Here’s why:
players don’t like them and they are expensive for casinos to maintain. But rather than just sharing my opinion, I thought I’d ask a few other pros (and Blackjack Hall of Fame members). Here’s what Tommy Hyland and Richard Munchkin had to say:
I certainly haven’t seen any signs of “CSM’s taking over.” To me, it seems like the same old story; some casinos put them on their smaller tables, and customers don’t seem to mind all that much, but when they put them on the high tables, there is significant patron resistance. I have not seen many casinos in the US that use them exclusively on their $50 minimum tables and up. - Tommy Hyland
Are CSMs taking over? I don’t think so. Some places seem to be adding them while others are taking them out. I have been hearing that blackjack is almost dead since I started playing in 1978. In my experience every year brings more opportunities so I wouldn’t sweat the CSMs. – Richard Munchkin
I side with Tommy and Richard. Every year things change. A great game disappears, but a new opportunity arises. CSMs come and go, but there are so many opportunities for EV in this great country (and around the globe)! And remember that casino we traveled to that installed CSMs on their entire floor? They removed ALL of them a week later!
Needless to say, that trip was a disaster, but we learned an INVALUABLE lesson:
Always have a thought out plan! Casino conditions change. Having inaccurate information can ruin a trip! That’s why we created
Casino411.
Accurate, reliable, real-time information is an invaluable asset to card counters. I don’t want to think about how much EV was wasted by our team from not having up-to-date information.
In the first couple years of our blackjack team, we’d send people to Vegas and say, “go play!” Some people would have good experiences, others would get backed off and waste hours trying to find which casinos are worth playing. But we shared, internally, every experience players had about every casino. So players who joined the team a couple years later on knew
WHICH casinos to play on WHAT shift, WHO to avoid, and WHEN to play unrated or rated. The success of a trip was no longer based on luck, but mapped out perfectly so players had the best possible chance of generating the most amount of EV possible with the fewest backoffs.
This is the idea that fueled us to create Casino411: leverage the community’s experiences and game scouting.
If you’re a BJA Member, get involved, share playing conditions and add reviews, and THANK the other members who are contributing: they are making you more money!
A few months ago, a few of us BJA pros were able to return to the annual Blackjack Ball, an invite-only event hosted by Max Rubin. It’s a collection of about a hundred of the most accomplished card counters and advantage players in the world. The room consists of people who ran many of the most famous blackjack teams in history, the people who invented team play and used shoe computers to crush blackjack tables before casinos outlawed them, and a man who has gone on to handicap horse races for tens (if not hundreds) of millions each year. Needless to say, it’s always a fascinating collection of people.
Max Rubin began the Blackjack Ball in 1997 as a way to celebrate the craft of card counting. Max is an incredible host, a great guy, and an accomplished card counter.
Many card counting trainees and lower limit card counters have yet to experience the dreaded “backoff.” I remember how proud and excited I was when I finally got backed off for the first time. I still asked for a comp and remember bragging to the bartender making my milkshake that “I got asked to stop playing because I’m too good at blackjack.” 
I never check bags, but I do like to pack enough in my carry-on to achieve multiple “looks” on trips. The goal is to not necessarily to hide my identity, but to present a character whom the casinos will not associate with my identity. 
