If you play blackjack you have likely heard about automatic card shufflers (CSM) and how they were designed by casinos to not only speed up the rate of play, but also give the House a better advantage over card counters.

Shuffle Master is the most well-known company building these smart devices, while the Shuffle Master King is probably the most well known elevator shuffler system on the casino floor. Although the King does not use a linear design like other CSM's, all of the devices essentially do the same thing. When a blackjack hand is finished, the dealer will place the discarded hands back into the shoe, which are then reshuffled into the entire group of cards, thus giving them the possibility of being dealt on the very next hand.

Using nineteen different shelves to pull out cards, CSM's truly facilitate a random card-dealing process. However, since every card of every deck in the shoe has an equal chance of being dealt each time, the efficacy of card-counting is essentially disabled. Despite this setback, it has been mathematically shown that CSM's actually only raise the House Edge back up by .034%, which any actuary (like the Wizard of Odds) will tell you is very slight and will not greatly affect a players odds in the long run. Most places these days will use multiple decks of cards as well as automatic card shufflers, which despite this small increase in the Casino Advantage, should still be avoided if at all possible.

Using the Basic Blackjack Strategy is the best protection a player has in keeping the House Edge down, especially at blackjack tables using fewer decks of cards. The truly discerning blackjack player will seek out tables with one to two decks. And whether you are a card-counter or not, if you have to pick between a blackjack table using a CSM or one that just uses multiple decks, pick the multi-deck table that does not use a CSM. If you are using the Basic Strategy, it will keep the Casino Advantage down as low as possible.

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