blackjack players – time to shuffle up

The shuffle in blackjack is crucial.  It’s crucial to advantage players seeing to employ a counting strategy, and is even more important to players who include shuffle tracking in their arsenal or tricks to try and bet the house.

Forgetting shuffle tracking for a moment and thinking about card counting only – the key consideration is where the deal stops and the shuffle starts.  Put another way, counters want to know  how far into a shoe the deal will go – the further it goes the more robust the count can be.

To find to find out where the various casinos insert their cut cards and shuffle as a matter of policy, visit our shuffle policy page. But in almost without fail you’ll find live blackjack shoes, regardless of casino or platform provider, are re-shuffled at the halfway mark – usually 4 decks into an 8-deck shoe.

Here’s a nice little illustration of your typical cut-card insertion.  This shuffle is from a blackjack game streamed out of Playtech’s European studio. Keep an eye on where that cut card is placed at the end of the deal!