Celeb Blackjack changes....

[weaklink75]

-Only 4 celebs play instead of 5.

-There are 6 jokers in the deck instead of 4.

-There is a "5 Card Charlie" rule-get 5 cards without busting, it's an automatic win, no matter what the dealer has.

[parliboy]

Query: how large is the shoe used on the show?  I'd be curious just to know how much that change affects the luck factor on the show.  (No points to the smartass that says, "It's 50% more jokers, you dolt.")

Also, is the Charlie an even payout, or do they give odds?

[clemon79]

Not much help, I know, but with a gun to my head I'd say it's either six decks or eight.

[JasonA1]

Another not a whole lot, but I have been told and recall Matt/Max referring to the shoe as a 6-deck. I did see Tiki draw the cut card once, and it was in about the same place I do at home with my 6-deck, but that's...only semi-relevant.

Well, to make this worth something, I did enjoy the show last night. Maybe it was the reduction to 4, or just a better mix of celebs, but it was a bit more easy going and less chaos. And the little set improvements were nice.

-Jason

[davemackey]

I think they bagged Alex Borstein too. She didn't add much to the show. At least Hollywood Dave's still dealing the cards.

[CaseyAbell]

Yeah, Alex was gone, in case anybody noticed. A fun game last night. No spoilers, but I will say the victor sobbed (jokingly) about never winning an Emmy before. Also loved the completely gratuitous eye-candy serving the drinks.

GSN reran the show immediately. Maybe not the shrewdest programming move, but I was actually happy about it last night. I was absorbed in the melodramatic Red Sox-Yankees tilt, so I only caught bits and pieces of the blackjack. The rerun helped me catch up on just about the entire game, which went down to the final card.

Vasgersian did his usual competent job, and Stann was at his wise-ass best. The talk got a little raunchy at times, but the atmosphere was pretty friendly.

[GS Warehouse]

[quote name=\'parliboy\' date=\'Oct 13 2004, 12:32 AM\']Query: how large is the shoe used on the show? ...

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During the rundown of the rules, Matt stated that the shoe is a 6-decker.  In fact, that's the kind that was also used in the World Series.  These may be uneducated opinions, but 1) having four players rather than five reduces the chances of the cut card coming out during the game, and 2) Hollywood Dave is a hoot.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'GS Warehouse\' date=\'Oct 13 2004, 11:38 AM\'] These may be uneducated opinions, but 1) having four players rather than five reduces the chances of the cut card coming out during the game, and 2) Hollywood Dave is a hoot.

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1) I was wondering about that, actually, wondering how many hands of blackjack a deck is good for, and whether the shoe needs filled along the way. Just to do some rough estimates, let's assume 5 players and a dealer, and that on a given hand, across those six players, three extra cards are drawn. I think we can all agree those are pretty conservative numbers, yes?

So that's 15 cards a hand * 21 hands (they play 21 hands, yes, as opposed to WSOB's 30?) for a total of 315 cards. Six decks is 312, never mind the indicator. So they're gonna restock a six-deck shoe along the way on the old show, guaranteed.

Now, with four and a dealer, that goes down to 13 cards * 21 hands, or 273 cards. The Vegas mavens can correct me if I'm wrong, but the custom is to plant the indicator fifty cards or so from the bottom, yes? That drops the shoe to right around 260 cards, little more, little less.

So if the intent was to not have to restock the shoe (or, more to the point, not to have to stop down tape to restock the show), it strikes me they didn't give themselves enough of a pad, and could have accomplished that better by switching to an eight-deck shoe. So I don't think that's the reasoning.

I'm thinking a closer guess might be something along the lines of the producers thinking that it might be less confusing for the viewers to follow less players, or something even as simple as budget: one fewer celebrity to pay per show.

2) I agree that Dave is enjoyable on CB. The thing about Dave that you have to watch out for is that there are two Daves: the one who deals, and the one who plays. As long as we have Dealer Dave, we're fine. But remember what a idiot he was as a contestant? I was watching this Vegas Challenge thing on Bravo where people play different table games for a night in an effort to be the chip leader at the end (three civvies and a "pro", Dave was the "pro" this night), and Dave was a perfect asshole the entire time.

So as long as Dave remembers his place, and Player Dave doesn't start peeking out, it should be okay.

(And I'd like this post archived as evidence when people start accusing me again of contributing nothing useful to this board.

[goongas]

The five card charlie rule swings the edge to the player instead of the house if the player uses basic strategy.

[parliboy]

If we always used the Ace as a "1", a suit of 13 cards would have 85 points, a deck 340, and the shoe 2040.  Since there are five hands (assuming no splits), there would be a maximum of 105 points used per hand, or just over 5% of the shoe's points.  So technically speaking, you could run out, but it's unlikely.

If they wanted to play it safe and decide that they need a second shoe, I doubt they'd have to stop tape to restock the shoe.  Just prepare a second shoe ahead of time.  After it's time for a shuffle, they just switch to the second shoe.  End of story.

[Michael Brandenburg]

In response to the following lifted from "clemon's" post in this thread:

The Vegas mavens can correct me if I'm wrong, but the custom is to plant the indicator fifty cards or so from the bottom, yes? That drops the [6-deck] shoe to right around 260 cards, little more, little less.

  The late gambling expert John Scarne was the one who devised that rule after one Edwin Thorpe and others found in the early 1960s that the game could be beaten by keeping track of certain cards as they were dealt out from the deck.  He [Scarne] originally called for a 4-deck shoe, with the re-deal "indicator" card inserted about 1/4 of the way from the bottom of the deck.

   Interestingly, he also called for the "shoe" to consist of two red and two blue-backed decks to thwart "second-dealers" (those who try to keep a certain card at the top of the deck and deal to a player the card underneath it) -- after all, imagine what would happen if a player saw a red-backed card at the top of the deck, called for a "hit," and got a blue-backed card that "busted" his hand!

   He also had another rule for "Scarney Baccarat" (a variant of regular casino Baccarat that he invented) that I've seen utilized on one of the poker tournament shows.  His "protective dealer" rule for that game called for the dealer to receive only one card at the start of the game (the players each got two, as in regular Baccarat), and then after the players played out their hands, the dealer would discard the top card of the deck and take the next card as the second card of his hand -- and if he had to take a third card (with a hand worth 4 or less), he'd discard the next card from the deck and take the next card after that.  (The idea was to prevent player cheats from worn, defaced, or marked cards that happend to end up in the deck.)  So if you watch any of the "Texas Hold 'Em" poker tournament shows and see the dealer discard the top card of the deck before dealing the "flop" cards for a hand, then do so again before dealing the hand's "turn" card, and do so yet again before dealing the hand's "river" card, you know where that practice came from.

   Incidentally, I've now caught two shows of Celebrity Blackjack on GSN, and I like it better with only 4 celebrities per show -- and I've noted from GSN's website that this is the way it's going to be for the first 10 weeks of the new season.  (They are going to have 40 celebrities this time around, up from the 25 they had in the first season.)


   Michael Brandenburg
   (But how many of them plan to remain in this country if President Bush gets re-elected next month?  I've been told of some Hollywood people who are planning to leave the U.S. unless Kerry wins!)

[dzinkin]

[quote name=\'Michael Brandenburg\' date=\'Oct 22 2004, 09:26 PM\'](But how many of them plan to remain in this country if President Bush gets re-elected next month?  I've been told of some Hollywood people who are planning to leave the U.S. unless Kerry wins!)

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And I've been told of people who have ignored the requests to avoid gratuitous political slams.  If you want to rail against Kerry, go to FreeRepublic.com, not here.  (Likewise, if you want to rail against Bush, go to DemocraticUnderground.com, not here.)

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'Michael Brandenburg\' date=\'Oct 22 2004, 06:26 PM\']In response to the following lifted from "clemon's" post in this thread:

The Vegas mavens can correct me if I'm wrong, but the custom is to plant the indicator fifty cards or so from the bottom, yes? That drops the [6-deck] shoe to right around 260 cards, little more, little less.

<extreme bloviation deleted>

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And none of that offered the tiniest bit of proof for or against my initial estimate.

Though I fail to be surprised that you have also read Scarne.