Eli5: why do casinos not just shuffle the deck after every hand

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Casinos throw people out for counting cards but couldn’t this be made impossible by just shuffling after every hand. I know they make money of people who think they can count but is that the only reason?

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9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Profitability.
Shuffling after every hand would reduce the number of games per hour and also make it less enjoyable for players.
And it’s not necessary to ensure a fair game. As long as the deck is shuffled regularly, the chances of any one player receiving an unfair advantage are low.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Frequent shuffling would result in less hands dealt per hour. Since the casino has the edge, this results in less profit for them. Card counting isn’t a widespread skill and only helps a player slightly if implemented correctly.

Anonymous 0 Comments

imagine a shoe with 8 decks where it takes few minutes for a full shuffle, unless some shuffling machine is being used (but those can also have techical issues and seem fishy from a player’s perspective). A game round can take few seconds and delay that lasts for minutes just results in loss. Plus when the shoe is cut in half it makes the counting much more pointless anyway

Anonymous 0 Comments

You seem to have an odd impression about card counting as well. Almost no one does this, but those who do are very good at it, and get identified very quickly. They are either then told to stop playing or told they can’t vary their bet. The house isn’t making money off “people who think they can count.”

Anonymous 0 Comments

Time. Casinos only make money when they are dealing hands. When you are shuffling, the casino is making no money. Casinos already lose millions of dollars to shuffling, they don’t want to lose more.

And card counting is a mostly a thing of the past, the change to 6-5 blackjack completely negates any advantage card counting and more and more casinos are moving to that, and high limit casino that still offer 2-1 are watching for it and making it harder and harder to pull off, and with AI powered facial recognition security systems and live black book access, once you get caught in one place you are going to be insta-banned from every major casino in the country

Anonymous 0 Comments

Casinos use 6 deck rotation for decent hand sizes 50up. You can cut deck, giving the impression that it’s you breaking cards.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Ex online dealer here, led blackjack and roulette.

It’s purely to save time and get as many games as possible out of the shoe. Where I worked we had shufflers, special people doing the shuffling, and the shoe was split in half, so even if you wanted to count, you couldn’t.
I’ve seen people lose with a 20, and win with a 16. It’s all a game of luck and I’ll be honest with you – as long as you play card games online at least, it’s sheer luck and no real skill because there is absolutely no way to predict or count anything.

So yeah, essentially, it is to get as many games as possible out of one shuffle. Proper shuffling takes a lot of time. We used to have times where all shufflers got ill at the same time, and the dealers had to shuffle, and we were timed and our pay was docked if we were “too slow” or dropped a card or literally anything wasn’t perfect.

Anonymous 0 Comments

As others have mentioned the time it takes to shuffle is an important factor. Another factor includes preventing marking of the cards. This can be unintentional such as minor scratches, bends, or defects to the ink on cheaper made cards or intentional with slight folds or bends, small markings of damp nail polish or other marking techniques employed by con artists.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Some casinos do shuffle every hand, there is a machine called a continuous shuffler they use. Those machines though are expensive and players don’t like them. Card counting isn’t a big enough problem for them to install those and tick off gamblers.