Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…
A lot of players buy this baloney, and to be honest, it sounds very legit. There's only one thing I don't like about Swami Nonrandomi's "logic," and that is that it cannot be proven by computer simulation.

John Imming's Real World Casino (RWC) software was the first software available to players that allowed programmable, nonrandom, casino-style shuffles. (The RWC software is no longer on the market.) The deck(s) begin in regulation new deck order, and the shuffle routines simulate actual riffles, strips, cuts, and washes, as fine or as clumpy as you decide, even utilizing casino-style breaks into multiple shuffling segments if you so desire.

Here's what I found with the RWC software:
The biggest effect on the player's expectation that I could find comes from no shuffling whatsoever. Ironically, this is a player advantage, not a house advantage. I've tried Imming's software with 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 deck games, with both lay & pay and pick & pay dealing styles, and the player advantage rises by .70%-.75% if playing one-on-one with the dealer, regardless of the number of decks in play or the pick up style. Somehow, the play of the hands puts the cards into an order that favors the player.

Both Stanford Wong and John Gwynn had independently discovered this years earlier. Wong, in fact, ran a computer analysis to determine how the play of the hands ordered the discards, and he discovered that in the discard pile high cards do tend to clump with high cards, and vice versa. We don't know why this favors the player, but it does.

As multiple players are added to the table, this no-shuffle player advantage diminishes. For some reason, the first base side of the table retains the advantage, but the third base side loses it and then some.

Once you start adding any type of shuffle at all to the game, however, the player advantages decrease, until the real world shuffle results are indistinguishable from the outcome of random-number-generated shuffles. The biggest effect I could find in a simulated casino game, utilizing what I figured to be the sloppiest shuffle you might realistically expect to find, was a couple tenths of a percent more or less than the normal basic strategy expectation.

My attempts at creating a sloppy shuffle that would have a greater effect than this were unsuccessful, even though the RWC software allows unlimited variations on lousy, inadequate shuffles.

So, where is this monstrous effect that Swami Nonrandomi promises? I just don't buy the explanation that it happens in a casino, but not in a computer. Why not? New deck order is new deck order, and nonrandom sloppiness is nonrandom sloppiness. There's nothing magical about a lousy, lopsided riffle that a computer can't simulate.

But there is one factor all the nonrandom shuffle gurus have in common. They all say: "Oh, by the way, you can't simulate this effect on a computer." Yet they spout all kinds of precise percentages, based on their "personal studies."

I say, "Baloney." Computers may not be able simulate everything under the sun, but card games are one of the things computers are very good at simulating, especially if what you're looking to calculate is a player's expectation against a fixed house strategy. So take a hike, Swami. I don't believe in gambling systems based on faith. If you can't do the math, hit the path.

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Ever since players learned that there was a real method of beating the casino blackjack tables based on "tracking" the shuffles, the "nonrandom shuffle" gurus started making the rounds with systems that seemed to be based on related theories. Every few years for the past two decades, some self-proclaimed genius starts hustling a blackjack system based on the fact that casino shuffles do not distribute the cards randomly. For a few hundred bucks, one of these brilliant system developers will sell you the inside scoop on how to play blackjack by following the "trends," "clumps," and "biases."

Many variations have hit the scene, but the theory and playing methodology never really change much. Here's how Swami Nonrandomi's logic goes:

First, it's necessary to acknowledge that casino-style shuffles are less than perfect, and that the cards are not randomly distributed by these shuffles. No problem, since anyone who has played any length of time at casino blackjack tables can see that sloppy shuffles are easy to find. When new decks are brought in, it's not unusual to see occasional cards being dealt in consecutive new-deck order. So we know the shuffles are imperfect.

Next, you must accept the fact that these nonrandom shuffles affect the decisions on the hands dealt. No problem again. If you happen to see a dealer hit his fourteen with a six of spades, right after you doubled down on your eleven against his four up—and you caught the spade five—then you will be a believer. Yes! Yes! Those nonrandom clumps are killing me!

Now, what if you had a system designed to play those clumpy games? A system that made rational assumptions about hitting and standing based on the severity of the clumps? Yes! Yes!

Finally, a blackjack system that takes into account the kinds of weird stuff we actually see in the casinos. It's not a system based on some mathematician's analysis of some computer programmer's simulated billion hands of play. This is a reality-based system, and that's the only kind of system that works in the real world.

Card counters are out there talking about advantages of 1%, and they don't even realize that the casinos sometimes have a 10% advantage over them, based on the nonrandom shuffles. What's worse is that the same counters don't realize that they can get a 10% advantage over the casinos, courtesy of the same lousy shuffles.

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Once you are actually placing $2,000 bets, a loss of $30,000 is not at all unusual. This would be equivalent to a $5 bettor losing $75—which any experienced $5 bettor could tell you would not be uncommon. If you count your double loss on your split pair as two hands, you actually began your unfortunate series of losses by losing 10 hands in a row. How unusual is this?

If I was flipping a coin, with heads being a win, and tails a loss, the odds against me coming up tails 10 times in a row would be about 1,000 to 1. That's pretty unlikely, though far from impossible.

Blackjack, however, is less advantageous than a coin flip. In 100 hands, a basic strategy player will experience, on average, 43 wins, 48 losses and 9 pushes. Since a martingale bettor ignores pushes and lets his bet ride, we can ignore them in our analysis. For every 100 win/loss decisions, a basic strategy player will see about 53 losses and 47 wins.

With these win/loss proportions, the odds against losing 10 consecutive decisions are only about 500 to 1. Now 500 to 1 may seem nearly impossible to many people, but realistically, at any given time, a series of losses equivalent to yours happens to dozens of players in Atlantic City, and to hundreds of people every day of the year in U.S. casinos. It's happening right now to one out of every 500 people who are playing. How many tens of thousands of people are playing blackjack right now in U.S. casinos?

You must realize that if you had been flat-betting $10, instead of "doubling-up" to try to recapture your previous losses, you would only have lost $110 (and this includes both your pair-split and your double down loss!), instead of being behind by $7,880 at the end of that first unfortunate string of losses. And your total loss at the end of the debacle would only have been $230, not $29,980.

The martingale is a systematic method of chasing your losses. There's no other way to describe it. This is about the most foolish way to gamble. You violated the single most important rule for gamblers: "If you can't afford to lose it, don't bet it."

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I highly doubt you were cheated.
The straight martingale is one of the riskiest betting systems any gambler could use. Any gambler who ever has used it with any regularity could tell you his own hair-raising "impossibly unlucky" tale of why he gave it up for more conservative methods. Here is what happened to you:

1. You bet $10, and lost.
2. You bet $20, and lost.
3. You bet $40, and lost.
4. You bet $80, and lost.
5. You bet $160, and doubled down on your 11 vs. the dealer 8, and you lost.
6. This double loss required you to place a next bet of $480, which you then lost.
7. You placed a bet of $960, and split your 8s vs. a dealer
10, and you lost both hands.

8. This double loss required you to place a bet of $2,880, which was higher than the $2,000 table max. So you bet the max, and lost.

9. On your next hand, you bet the max again, and insured your 20 vs. the dealer ace. You lost both the insurance bet, and your hand when the dealer hit to 21. This put you behind by a total of $7,880.

10. You then bet the max, and pushed.
11. You then bet the max and won!

You say that the above series of results took about 10 minutes, and that you do not recall the exact series of wins and losses in the approximately two-dozen hands that you played over the next 20 minutes. You note there were a few wins interspersed with the losses, but you had to have had 12 more max bet losses than wins (perhaps 18 losses and 6 wins?), as you left the table a $29,980 loser.
How "impossible" is this?
Unfortunately, not very.
You must realize that you were required to start placing max bets after only seven consecutive losses.

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I used to write a blackjack Q & A column for Card Player magazine. This was one of the questions that came in:

I lost a substantial amount of my savings playing blackjack at in Atlantic City—almost $30,000. I admit that I was using a progressive betting system—a "straight martingale," and I know that won't give me any advantage—but even so, I feel pretty certain that I was cheated. I was winning steadily for quite a few hours using this system (a simple double-up after a loss), then in a short series of hands that lasted only about 30 minutes— they totally cleaned me out. I was playing perfect basic strategy.

I have enclosed a chart that shows the series of bets I made, and the win/loss results that eventually bankrupted me. I would like to know your expert opinion on whether or not this could have happened in an honest game. Can I take any kind of legal action against the casino if this series of hands [indicates] cheating? I have a friend who witnessed the debacle who can attest to the truth of what happened.

The "martingale" is the granddaddy of all "betting progression" type systems. It is essentially a system whereby you progressively increase your bet to make up for prior losses. The theory sounds reasonable, since no one will lose forever. A single win will wipe out all prior losses, so the system seems foolproof. So, how did this guy lose $30,000? He sent me a partial record of what had happened.

Here's how I answered his letter:

I have studied your results, and although anyone would acknowledge that you suffered an unusually unlucky series of hands—and an especially devastatingly unlucky series for any martingale player—the series of hands in and of itself would not be indicative of cheating.

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Ralph announced he had broken down and sent away for a pair of X-Ray Specs. Word spread through our neighborhood like wildfire. Every pubescent kid on the east side of Detroit had been fantasizing about owning a pair of these goggles since they'd first laid eyes on a Superman comic. Now Ralph was going to realize our fantasies.

It must have been 10 weeks before the specs came in the mail. To us it seemed like an eternity of asking Ralph day after day, "Did they come yet?" We all had big plans for those wonder glasses. As soon as we saw that Ralph's worked, we would all get some. We'd wear 'em to school. The nuns would never suspect what we were up to. We'd go watch the girls play softball. The women of Detroit were about to become unwitting exhibitionists for a gang of horny 12-year-old Catholic schoolboys in funny glasses.

To make a long story short, the X-Ray Specs didn't x-ray anything. They were ridiculous-looking cardboard and plastic gizmos that made the person wearing them look like a jerk. As Ralph described the phenomenal X-Ray power of the lenses when he slowly and reverently placed them on his eyes for the first time, "Well…urn…they just make everything look…um…blurry."

Alas, the women of Detroit were safe.
I haven't read a Superman comic in quite a few years, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if X-Ray Specs are still being hawked to 12-year-old thrill seekers. Meanwhile, Gambling Fool magazine is publishing adult variations of this comic book advertising ("Win a Million Bucks a Day Even if you're Stupid!"). I find it amusing how these ads for "incredible and amazing" gambling systems insist that it doesn't take much effort to get rich. That's exactly who's going to fall for this nonsense—people who don't put much mental effort into anything.

If Ralph reads this ad, he'll break down and have a check in the mail before his next mortgage payment is due. Six months later, when the bank is foreclosing on his house, if you ask him how his mail order blackjack system is working, he'll say, "Well…um…you see…um…" Alas, the casinos of Vegas are safe too.

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If you ever read any of the slick gambling magazines that you find in casino gift shops and hotel rooms, you've probably noticed ads telling you that you can haul in mucho bucks anytime you want, that you won't have to work for a living any more, and, in fact, you can even buy your own private jet and an island in the South Pacific if you just buy one of the advertised systems, which are so easy to use that some of the lower primates could probably learn them. It's a good thing casinos don't pay off in bananas.

Ads like this remind me of the comic book ads that used to catch my attention when I was a kid. I was a Superman addict, and every issue had a few pages of ads for mail order products that indulged my fantasies of becoming the "Man of Steel." Of course, there was the familiar "I-was-a-97-pound weakling" pitch for turning my puny 12-year-old excuse for a body into something that looked like King Kong on steroids. According to the ad, with only 15 minutes per day of easy exercise, I'd be huge in a month. Or, for only a buck, I could get a secret ancient chart of the body's "pressure points," which would immediately transform me into an invincible Master of the Asian Fighting Arts. Muggers, thugs, and linebackers would gasp and tremble when I entered the room.

My favorite, however, had to be the ad for the "X-Ray Specs." Here was a 590 pair of glasses that purported to give me Superman's incredible x-ray vision—and with it the ability to see through doors, walls, and most importantly, clothing. This ad always had a cartoon illustration of some dodo wearing the specs with his tongue falling out of his mouth while he's gawking at a fully clothed dish striking a come-up-and-see-me-sometime pose.

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The strategy changes here provide most of the gains available from the Zen Count system. You may use these indices for any number of decks, and any set of rules. In shoe games, you only need the bold indices. If you play in games where the dealer hits soft 17, you will find these indices, along with many others, in the Appendix. Use basic strategy for all decisions for which no index number is provided.

TO USE THE CHART:
Stand only when your true edge is equal to or greater than the number in the table.
Double down only when your true edge is equal to or greater than the number in the table. Note that no soft doubling indices are provided here, as there is very little value to varying from basic strategy on soft doubling decisions. (If you want to use these indices, you will find them in the Appendix.)

Split all pairs according to basic strategy. A few of the ten splits have some dollar value, but it's not a great play for most card counters because it draws so much heat. There is little dollar value to varying from basic strategy on other pair-split decisions. You will find extensive pair-split indices in the Appendix. Learn these if you want, but they are worth very little in dollars and cents.

Surrender only when your true edge is equal to or greater than the number in the table. Note that these are the late surrender indices; should you discover an early surrender game, you will find the proper indices in the Appendix.

Take insurance only when your true edge is equal to or greater than the +1.

THE GENERIC ZEN STRATEGY
FOR ANY NUMBER OF DECKS
ASSUMES STAND ON SOFT 17
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 X A
STAND
16 4 2 0 3
15 -2 4 1 4
14 -1 -2 -2 3
13 0 -1 -1 -2 -2
12 1 1 0-10
DOUBLE DOWN
11 -2 -2 0
10 -2 -1 1 1
9 0 0 -1-2 2 4
8 4 3 2 1
SURRENDER
16 2 0 -2 -1
8-8 4 0
15 3 1 0 1
14 4 2 1 2
7-7 1
13 3
INSURANCE: 1
BOLD = Major indices for all games
[The light indices are important in single-and double-deck games.]

The easiest way to learn the Zen strategy indices is to start with the bold indices and learn them in blocks. Unless you play in games that include it, you may also ignore the bold indices for surrender.

The 0 Block is most important. After you learn that, learn the +1 Block, then the +2 Block, and finally, the -1 Block. Shoe game players don't have to bother with any indices other than these. If you play in handheld games, these indices are still the most important. Learn the others in blocks, if you want to add an extra few tenths of a percent to your advantage, starting with the positive indices. The negative indices are least important.

If you want to test the Zen Count system using computer simulations, and your blackjack program does not allow you to enter indices as true-count-per-quarter-deck, then you must multiply all of the Zen indices by 4, in order to use a traditional count-per-deck adjustment. The -1, +1, and +2 indices become -4, +4, and +8, respectively.

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