What About Card-based Craps?

[Blitzkrieg]

Wow, that was a while ago. Yeah, initially the casinos were dealing craps from a shoe which meant the game was countable and potentially trackable. Once they started getting hit too hard they switched to shuffle machines. A few of us (independently apparently) reverse engineered the machines and were able to predict how the cards would come out. The casinos tried several different machines, including at least 3 by Shufflemaster, but they were all vulnerable to some degree or another. After randomly changing the game conditions and blindly tweaking the dealing procedures they eventually lowered the edge enough that it wasn't worth playing anymore. The fact that they didn't fix the games shows that they don't truly understand the vulnerability, which is why people aren't discussing the details on public forums.

-Sonny-

You say initially they dealt the game from a shoe, would they shuffle up the cards and then load the shoe where a player drew one card at a time? Is that how that procedure worked? How and the hell did the idea come into your head to see if there was an edge available if the shuffling machine could be predictable?

[Sonny]

You say initially they dealt the game from a shoe, would they shuffle up the cards and then load the shoe where a player drew one card at a time?

Every casino did it differently. Some used 12 cards (two sets of A-6) and shuffled after every hand. Others used some combination of such decks (I saw 44 and 52) and either hand shuffled them or machine shuffled them after dealing out most of the shoe. Others used 2 shoes, one for each die. Still others used one or more decks of 36 cards - one for each dice combination. Some used a joker. There were even some that used dice, but the dice would only determine which set of cards would be selected. Every casino was making up it's own rules and none of them knew what they were doing.

How and the hell did the idea come into your head to see if there was an edge available if the shuffling machine could be predictable?

I already had a basic understanding of how the machines worked, so when I saw how the casinos were using them I immediately knew something wasn't right. It was obvious.

-Sonny-

[zengrifter]

There were even some that used dice, but the dice would only determine which set of cards would be selected.

[MJOK]

You are laughing at this because it seems absurd. And it is.....BUT that's life under a gaming compact. They don't allow full class 3 gaming (which is cards (BJ banked by house) dice/craps, roulette.) Sooooo........they figure out ways around it. It's absurd but it's what they do.


So they can use 'dice' to determine a set of cards but they can NOT use dice to determine the game like in regular craps.