Greetings,

Yes, my friend did use terminology such as 'shuffle tracking.' It's been a long time so let me see if I can provide a somewhat accurate description of this tactic. Basically, the idea is to track the clumps of rich and poor cards and bet accordingly. This tactic works best with a clean shuffle as opposed to a strip shuffle (which randomizes the cards to much).

Conventional card counters just start at the beginning of the deck and divide the running count by the number of decks to obtain the true count. Many casinos offer poor penetration, which makes it hard to get high true counts. Shuffle tracking thwarts this countermeasure by telling you where the ideal cards are located.

Heck, I remember one riverboat casino (Catfish Bend in Iowa)
that had a shuffle whereby they simply put all the cards in a one pile, cut them in half, and shuffled each stack two times. Anyways, even though he was aware of shuffle tracking I think he was employing a different technique (trying to micromanage cards by remembering 'patterns'). I thought it was completely irrational, but possibly because I didn't understand his premise.

Neverthless, my belief is he effectively was playing basic strategy (despite his convoluted and dubious system). It is entirely possible though that he, like many others, was improperly shuffle tracking. I personally never attempted serious shuffle tracking because it seemed to arduous. I preferred using a simple hi/lo count and making adjustments to basic strategy that were contingent on the count (for example, if the true count was plus 1 I would stand on my hard 12 facing a 3, as opposed to hitting it with an even or negative count).

Thanks for the post,

JeffreyREBT "Wherein I don't promise to make you rich without trying, or even trying very hard; I do promise to say things that will make you FEEL rich."