Cut-off Dealer

Thorp pointed out a strategy of betting called end play. The ca-sinos used to let every card in the deck be dealt out. They felt that the number of people who could memorize each card as it was played and compute the odds on the remaining cards was so few as to be safely ignored. They were right about the number of people who could do that, but they were wrong about the safety in doing so.

The strategy behind end play was to take advantage of the drastic swings of the composition of the deck when only a few cards remain. By composition, I mean the makeup of cards that result in a dealer or player advantage. End play is a method of maximizing the frequency of favorable deck conditions.

Let's say, for example, that you are playing in a single-deck game. There are only sixteen cards remaining to be dealt, and they contain mostly cards that are unfavorable to you. If you were playing alone against the dealer, correct end play would be to bet five hands at the table minimum of five dollars. This would force a reshuffle as you played out your hands. As soon as the reshuffle occurs, stand on any remaining hands.

Now you will have bet only twenty-five dollars into an unfavorable situation. Since the "unfavorable" cards are on the table, the newly reshuffled remaining thirty-six cards have a favorable composition. You would now bet five hundred dollars per hand on all seven betting spots, thirty-five hundred dollars into a favorable situation. Every hand would have a better-than-even chance of winning. Con-versely, if the remaining sixteen cards were highly favorable, then you would bet five hundred dollars on only one hand at a time until the reshuffle. In either case, you are betting heavily into fa-vorable situations.

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