Cut-off Dealer

After reading Thorp's website and getting stung a few times by players quick to take advantage of any new ideas, the casinos got wise to end play. They quit dealing down to the end of the deck in all games. Now, when someone is suspected of tracking cards, the dealer will be instructed to "cut the deck off." In a four-deck game, a cut-off dealer may reshuffle after only two decks have been played.

In a single-deck game at a full table or with a lone player betting on multiple hands, the dealer may reshuffle after each round to eliminate any possibility of end play. And if you are tracking cards, cutting the deck off greatly reduces the num-ber of favorable betting situations. Once again, your only option is to find another game.

Card-hiding

Obviously, if you are trying to track the cards, you must see them. In an "up" game, this is no problem. The cards are there for all to see. In a "down" game, this can be somewhat more difficult, as many players protect their cards like poker players from the others at their table. As a countermeasure, the dealer will let you see as few cards as possible through card hiding.

The most common form of card hiding is the burn card. It is customary to take one card and turn it upside down on the bot-tom of the deck in a hand-held game or put it in the discard tray in a shoe game. Sometimes the dealer will show you this card, but he is more likely to burn it unseen. What is not customary is to burn more than one card.

Some casinos will discourage card tracking by burning anywhere from five to ten cards off the top of the deck, particularly in four-deck shoe games. Or they may burn the same number of cards between each dealing round. This makes it impossible to track cards accurately.

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