
Analysis of casino shelf shuffling machines (2011) - ColinWright
https://arxiv.org/abs/1107.2961
======
dghughes
I bet most people are unaware how expensive card shufflers are $20,000 US is
typical. But really leasing shufflers is far more common.

One company, Shufflemaster (SHFL), had a monopoly on the market. But Bally
bought SHFL and then Scientific Games bought Bally.

I've heard the patent (or whatever it is) SHFL has expires very soon. There
may be a rush of new companies trying to get in on this expensive market.

Other ridiculously expensive casino equipment is a small mirror/prism. It's
affixed to a card table in front of the dealer. Two cards are inserted face
down but the prism reflect back the card number and suit so the dealer can see
it. This small simple thing is only leased costing $100 per table per month.

I'm a recently suddenly out of work slot tech forgive my reminiscing.

Edit: table not tanke

~~~
stinos
_slot tech_

Do you mean the 'digital' ones i.e. the games with 3 or 4 3x3 rasters where
one has to place 3x1 lines and try to match the fruits and bells and whatnot?
If so could you share some knowledge on how the randomization on these things
work? When I play these I can't help but wonder how this works. I'm fairly
sure it's not 100% work of a random generator but rather finely tuned to give
enough so the player comes back, but not too much. And at the same times
there's a weight assigned to certain piecs and combinations thereof. And
possibly there's even some rules like 'max number of points per x games can be
no more then y' etc. All in all, it feels pretty complicated but I might be
completely wrong.

~~~
joezydeco
The magic is US Patent 4,484,419. Known in the industry as the "Telnaes"
patent after it's inventor.

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US4448419A](https://patents.google.com/patent/US4448419A)

This invention is where slots migrated from physical reels to virtual ones. A
reel could now have thousands of "stops" compared to 10 or 20 on the older
machines. The physical reels were now driven by stepper motors to show the
landing position of that virtual reel. Having virtual reels with many more
stops also meant the jackpots could be a lot higher than the typical 1-in-20^3
possibility of a physical reel group.

After some time, it was realized that the careful design of these virtual
reels is where the slot designer can create many many "oh-so-close"
combinations of the physical symbols without making the player land any closer
to the jackpot than normal. And that semi-positive reinforcement draws the
player in to play more.

------
jedberg
I never play on a table with an auto shuffler. As a player, the house already
has an advantage over you. The auto shuffler means the house always has the
same advantage on every hand.

At least with a hand shuffled deck, most humans can't get a perfect shuffle,
so the odds of any one hand shift slightly back and forth. If you're good at
counting cards, you can find the spots where it is slightly in your favor and
bet bigger.

At least, it's more fun for me, because I win a little bit more and also get
the fun of practicing counting cards.

It's hard to find the hand shuffled decks though -- they pretty much only have
them on high stakes games ($25/hand and up).

~~~
downandout
The condition you're referring to only occurs on one specific type of
shuffler, called a CSM (continuous shuffler machine). These are the kind where
the dealer feeds previously discarded cards back into the machine every hand
or two, and there is never any pause in the game. CSM's are less common than
traditional shuffler machines, where two decks/shoes are used, and one is
being shuffled while the other is being played with. Traditional shuffler
machines have no bearing on your ability to count cards, as the game is played
out exactly as it would be if the dealer were shuffling.

Also, advantage players have found flaws that make certain models of shuffle
machines vulnerable to attack. Here's a fascinating example of this from the
world's best known advatange player, James Grosjean:

[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/magazine/how-
advantage...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/magazine/how-advantage-
players-game-the-casinos.html)

~~~
jedberg
You're right, the CSM is terrible and is what I was actually referring to.
However, I will still try to avoid the traditional machine shufflers since
they still get more random shuffles than a hand shuffle which rarely has more
than 3 or 4 riffles.

