Hand shuffled shoes

Does poorly done hand shuffling favor the House? One of the local casinos has the most liberal blackjack rules but dealers seem to produce poorly hand shuffled shoes. What I mean by poorly shuffled is that either low cards seen to come out in bunches (I know low cards favor the dealer) and/or groups of cards seem to out together, ie. on a 6 deck game, 4 or 5 cards of same numerical value consistently come out together throughout a playing session.
The other night I played for about 4 hours and the aces, 2s, 4s, and 7s came out together in the same (but separate) deal all night. It looked like the dealer was flipping 4 or 5 cards at a time when shuffling. Or is this just some form of weird variance that has nothing to do with the method of of how the cards are shuffled? It seems to throw off basic strategy since the cards aren’t truly randomized. The other night I made a $50 bet, split 6s against a dealer 5. I received a 4 on one split and a 3 one the other so I doubled on both hands and received 10s on both. So I have $200 wagered with a 20 and a 19 against a dealer 5. The dealer draws a 6 and a 10…..I lose both hands. So I had two 6s, the dealer had a 6 and a 5, plus I had a 3 and a 4. Lot of low cards together! Not sure what other players had. By the way I was at 3rd base position, so on my hand above, the dealer was drawing his cards immediately after me.

It seems to me that a poorly-shuffled shoe would tend to benefit the player because it would be easier to track the cards.

Keep in mind also the "anything might happen" of variance or whatever you want to call it.

I had a sequence in a DD game not long ago where the count was not only massively positive but also something like 11 cards in a row came out with no tens or face. I jumped the bet to REALLY high and expected that at least the first card out the gate would be a ten (and also the second) but I got a double down instead, two small cards, and dealer got a crappy small card face up. I figured okay, even better there must be a ten or face coming.

I asked for the third card face down. Old habits die hard. 😆 (In the old, pitched card days I used to bend up the face down card to peek and then if it was a face bringing me to 21, joke with the dealer that he "had to bust" especially on hands where I had doubled at table limit).

To my surprise (dismay) the dealer turned over another small card, and then drew a couple MORE small cards which luckily added to under 17, then...finally...a face and bust. And it turned out that my third double down face down card was small too. Which means that something like 17 cards in a row came out of the deck all small, even after and during a very positive count.

I had something similar happen when I jumped the bet, got an ace, expected a blackjack, but got another ace. Again, fine, no problem, figured there should be a million tens coming but I ended up getting a third ace which at that particular DD table (at some of my private ones I am allowed to resplit aces even at DD) was it, so I ended up with three very large bets out there where not one of them added up to much. Luckily, again in this situation, dealer busted.

Could you explain what you mean by “track the cards”? If you mean count the cards I don’t see how this would make counting easier.

Quote: technics

Could you explain what you mean by “track the cards”? If you mean count the cards I don’t see how this would make counting easier.

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Yeah it's not counting cards, he already gave you the key phrase =). Shuffle tracking has been around a long time as well.