Shuffling Machines

[Louie Landale]

That discussion doesn't seem to take into account a key feature of shuffling: how many cards are in each group that gets interleaved: if I cut the deck at exactly 26 and then "riffle" each half with exactly 13 cards each, its going to take more than 7 shuffles to randomize the deck. Similarly if the cut it exactly in half and then riffle 26 groups of 1 card each, you could predict the outcome, thus losing the desirable "random" feature of a "good suffled deck".

I have no idea what a "perfect" suffling algorithm is, but I'm sure it features some randomness of how many cards are in each half of the deck, and also features some randomness on how many cards are in each riffle-group. And large riffle-groups are a lot less likely than small riffle-groups (6 cards are a LOT less likely than 1 card).

- Louie

[Cazz]

I have *heard* they rent for $300-$400 a month and that may include maintance. One casino near me installed them
on 4 of their tables. They said they started w/ 4
to try them out and they were usually had about 4
full tables in the daytime in the middle of the week.

They have a (max) $3 rake, so 3-5 extra hands an hour would
be $10+/hours extra profit. It should pay the
rent in under 30 hours.

[rogue]

I heard Canterbury made Shufflemaster a deal they couldn't refuse to buy the machines, even though they are not for sale. Supposedly for $10,000 each.