It’s hard to estimate the number of decks casinos use. What is known is this: the US Playing Card Company sells over 20 million decks a year.
Casinos make a great effort to ensure discarded decks are never used again. To keep cards from reentering a game later, they are “canceled”. This also serves to prevent cheating.
Who Does the ‘Canceling’?
Some casinos send the decks to organizations to cancel them. Others do it themselves. Still, others, like Nevada casinos, send them to a state prison to be canceled by inmates. Decks can be given away, donated to charity organizations, or sold in gift stores.
Why Is It Important to Cancel Cards?
When you add or remove cards from a deck, the odds of the game change. Both local authorities and casinos frown upon this. In some jurisdictions, changing the outcome of a game by changing the cards is illegal.
Blackjack was played with a single deck before card counters arrived. Casinos adopted multideck games to make keeping track of the cards harder, where two or more decks were shuffled together. Most casinos todayuse multiple decks mixed together.
Playing Card Games Online
The future of gambling is online. For example, playing real money blackjack onlinehas proven to be an increasingly popular pastime. Can you change decks or even count cards in blackjack online? Not really. After each round or almost every round, the machine shuffles the cards in online blackjack. While it’s possible to count cards in live dealer games, the deck penetration tends to be insufficient. While you can count as a way to improve your odds in live dealer games, it’s very risky to increase bets with a positive count.
Ways to Cancel Cards
There are many ways to annul decks: rounding diagonal corners, trimming corners, markingthe sides with black ink, or drilling a hole in the middle of the deck. Whatever the approach, it will be easy to notice a canceled card reentering a game.
Canceled decks can make a nice present. They can be used to practice to become a better player. It’s not hard to get your hands on a canceled deck. Some blackjack pit bosses give them away. Get in touch with one. If he doesn’t have any, you might be sent to a rewards center. People who register for a player card get decks for free.
The Memory Remains
If you ever decide to go to a casino, get a deck of cards there. Having a casino deck can breathe life into fond, special memories of a fun and perhaps profitable casino experience. You might be able to get a lucky deck, which someone used to win a fortune at a casino. It would be a great story to tell all your friends when you come back.