A couple of questions

Hello, i have recently become interested in Blackjack, both the playing and mathematical aspect. Now since i am not a mathematical genious or whatever, i was wondering how the chance that the dealer busts is calculated. I tried to do it myself but ended up trying to think of every possible combination of cards that could come up and then adding the entire sum up. Surprisingly i got confused because of all the numbers and started to doubt my method. Is there an easy(er) way to calculate the dealers chance of busting (or hitting a certain number) than thinking of every possible combination of cards and then adding all the chances up?

I was also wondering how you recognize a CSM, at the casino where i play they have this machine in which they put the cards after every hand and then it starts buzzing and whatnot. This led me to believe that is was a CSM, however, the cards for the next hands are already there.

Thanks in advance, and excuse me if i asked something stupid.

If you see the dealers shuffle the cards by hand, then its a maual shoe. If you never see a dealer shuffle, its a CSM. Shuffling machines are normally big and grey so they are hard to miss.

AS for calculating dealer busts, Im sure i saw a thread about it somewhere, cant find it at the moment, if I do ill link it, someone else might beat me to it.

Welcome to the site!!

A continuous shuffler delivers 52 cards, and the dealer picks it up and deals using regular single deck procedures. But that does NOT mean that the 52 cards delivered has 4 of every rank (or 13 of every suit).

As far as the odds calculations goes, I could be completely wrong here, but I believe it is done by 'brute force'. I.E. A computerized simulation of a couple million hands to get the results.

Dont forget you can also have multi deck CSMs. Where I work we use the shufflemaster 1to6 machines.

Quote: Supersietsie

Hello, i have recently become interested in Blackjack, both the playing and mathematical aspect. Now since i am not a mathematical genious or whatever, i was wondering how the chance that the dealer busts is calculated. I tried to do it myself but ended up trying to think of every possible combination of cards that could come up and then adding the entire sum up. Surprisingly i got confused because of all the numbers and started to doubt my method. Is there an easy(er) way to calculate the dealers chance of busting (or hitting a certain number) than thinking of every possible combination of cards and then adding all the chances up?

The only way to calculate the chances of the dealer busting is to indeed add up all of the combinations. The odds of a dealer busting based on the up card changes as well with the number of decks. For example, the odds of a dealer 20 are less with the number of decks because of the effect of card removal (in a single deck game, a 10 dealt gives the dealer a 15/51 (29.41%) chance of the 2nd 10 while in a six deck game, the odds of a dealer 20 (a 10/10) is 95/311 (30.54%).

The calculation is indeed finite however.

Thanks for your reactions. I guess i wont be bothering to learn how to count cards then since the casino here only uses CSMs. Toobad that theres no easy way to calculate those chances faster though, since im gonna have to make at least one calculation before i can use the tables on this site for a project in school.

Yeah, casino i play at as far as i know uses all CSM's as well. Try Hole carding, and the legal stuff nothing like spooking. Front loading is a good one i guess just get a good angle at the table to see the dealers hole card. Gotta pratice though your only gonna see it for a split second and not very often. It's not like your gonna be rolling in the dough but on occasion the a sloppy dealer will mess up and you can take advantage of it. Not like you gotta be a pro hole carder like some blackjack pro's out their. Just sit down like i do at a table with the sloppest dealer you can find and pay attention for him to mess up, if he does great if not o well. Cause ive heard of guys observing for an hour or two before they sit down. It isnt illegal by the way. But im sure some people on this site will critize what i just said. But what else can you do if you cant count cards.