The primary weapon to thwart the systems player or discourage the winning player is the shuffle-up. The dealer is instructed to shuffle whenever he feels a player has an advantage or whenever the pit boss orders it. If the dealer can track cards, he will elimi-nate any favorable situations for the player. If a pit boss thinks you are successfully tracking cards, he may order the dealer to shuffle after each hand no matter what the situation. In either case-early or immediate shuffling of the deck-the opportunities to find advantageous playing conditions are greatly reduced or eliminated.

Like most winning players, I get shuffled up on quite a bit. For example, I like to play at the Royal Inn when I am in Las Vegas.

It's a small place, single-deck game, clean, honest, and lots of local people. One pit boss there has a vendetta against systems players. I was playing alone against the dealer letting my win-nings ride from one to two to four units in favorable situations. After noticing my winnings, the boss stood there tracking cards with me. Every time the deck was favorable, he would tell the dealer to shuffle up. I left soon thereafter.

The same thing happened later in the trip at the Cal-Neva. A pit boss there looked like Rodney Dangerfield, except that he was going to get respect because he was bigger, fatter, and very ugly. I put a two-hundred-dollar bet out once in a favorable situation thinking that the pit boss might have the dealer shuffle up. When he did, I left the bet out there, figuring that I had at least an even game with my knowledge of Basic Strategy. As luck would have it, the dealer dropped me a Blackjack paying three to two. I collected my five hundred dollars in the betting spot and walked off laughing as the boss steamed. It was great fun and extremely satisfying.

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