Blackjack and casinos preventing card counting

I was curious as why casinos dont just use a new deck each hand to prevent card counting?
I dont play blackjack but I do play poker. Here at the Hard Rock Tampa the poker tables have shuffle machines so dealers just go back anf forth between 2 decks. If casinos deal off a fresh deck everytime, theres no cards to count. In fact to keep the pace fast, why not have a huge shoe with like 20 pre shuffleed decks and dealer deals off the top of a deck, hand finished, machines drops rest of cards into a reshuffle machine and dealer deals off top of next preshuffled deck. With technology today, i'm sure a mechanical system could be devised and still keep the pace fast.

Ed

Or maybe put 6 or 8 decks of cards in a shoe ! Or perhaps have Bj pay 6/5.

Quote: terapined

I was curious as why casinos dont just use a new deck each hand to prevent card counting?
I dont play blackjack but I do play poker. Here at the Hard Rock Tampa the poker tables have shuffle machines so dealers just go back anf forth between 2 decks. If casinos deal off a fresh deck everytime, theres no cards to count. In fact to keep the pace fast, why not have a huge shoe with like 20 pre shuffleed decks and dealer deals off the top of a deck, hand finished, machines drops rest of cards into a reshuffle machine and dealer deals off top of next preshuffled deck. With technology today, i'm sure a mechanical system could be devised and still keep the pace fast.

Ed

A lot of places have CSMs, which are similar. A lot of (non-counting) players don't like them.

Quote: AxiomOfChoice

A lot of places have CSMs, which are similar. A lot of (non-counting) players don't like them.

I have read that some CSMs used even at H17 BJ tables are countable.

Quote: RogerKint

I have read that some CSMs used even at H17 BJ tables are countable.

DiscountGambling has a good article about his (Stephen How is the man). I agree that it's countable, but I'm not sure that I agree that it's useful. The edges are just too rare and too razor-thin. You would need a monstrous bankroll to be able to bet it for any reasonable win rate (assuming you are following Kelly)

Basically, I find it theoretically interesting, but practically useless.

Burn 3 cards every round.
No Mid-Shoe (def. as after 2nd Round) Entry.
Narrow the gaming limits to a factor of 10.

Quote: 98Clubs

Burn 3 cards every round.
No Mid-Shoe (def. as after 2nd Round) Entry.
Narrow the gaming limits to a factor of 10.

Burning cards between rounds is a waste of time and annoys customers; you can get the exact same effect by just moving the cut card up (ie, decreasing penetration). The problem with this is that the you are spending time shuffling instead of playing. The house's edge while shuffling is 0.

No mid-shoe annoys regular customers as well. It's not a big problem for single or double-deck, but a 6-deck shoe takes a while to get through. Do you really want to tell a losing player, sorry, you have to wait 15 minutes to play? The house edge over the customer who is sitting out is also 0.

Narrowing to 10x limit spread is probably expensive as well, although less so. The last thing you want to do is chase a progression player to another casino; those guys are a good steady source of income. It's also not particularly effective, since a counter can just go to multiple spots.

There is a pattern here -- most countermeasures cost the house more in civilian business than they lose to APs.

CSM is probably better than any of these, although, from a discussion in another thread, I gather that they are expensive and have to be leased, not bought? They also slightly lower the house edge (pesky cut card effect) but they more than make up for that in lack of down time for shuffling. Also, I'll bet that they trick people into playing longer. The end of a shoe is a natural stopping point -- I think that with the CSMs people are more likely to sit and play until it's all gone. The ease of just playing "one more hand" is too much for a lot of people. If you have to wait a few minutes for the shuffle before that "1 more hand", it's a lot easier to leave.

Quote: 98Clubs

Burn 3 cards every round.
No Mid-Shoe (def. as after 2nd Round) Entry.
Narrow the gaming limits to a factor of 10.

SUPER costly to the casinos. Many gamblers (especially high-stakes players) vary their bets wildly. And no mid-shoe entry is the ultimate money-shredding solution to a minor problem (card counting). There have been many, many times that I've been at a table with several players waiting to place their bets as one or two players works their way through an entire shoe. In my favorite instance, a single player who didn't want to play heads-up in the first place had to play through an entire shoe on a $25 minimum table while 6 other players sat in their seats waiting for the shuffle, which came about 10-15 minutes later. Brilliant!

To the OP: this is partially true, but an edge can still be obtained from counting in a single deck game with only one round dealt, even with poor rules. It's certainly not optimal, but it can be done pretty easily. And it would also be a tremendous waste of time for the casino. In your poker game, the tables usually get around 25 rounds per hour. If a dealer were dealing 25 rounds per hour at blackjack, they'd either be fired, sent back to dealing school, or given a suit and promoted to dual-rate.