Blackjack games
Some years back people started peddling bogus blackjack systems based on the “non-random” shuffles used in casinos. They claimed that these poor shuffles tended to “clump” the high cards with high cards, and low cards with low cards, and that this effect was very detrimental to the players- unless they used a special “trend” system that took this clumping effect into account.
To evaluate these claims, in 198]1 ran computer simulations of blackjack games with non-random casino-style shuffles. The poor shuffles had no effect on the players’ results. So, I tested worse shuffles. Finally, I tested a shoe game in which the dealer did not shuffle the cards at all! He just took the cards from the discard tray and started dealing. This produced some very strange results!
