CSM's vs manual shuffle

Saw the thread about BJ rules on various ships/lines, and I like it. How about a simpler thread simply stating whether the ship/line uses Continuous Shuffle Machines or allows the dealers to manually shuffle the cards? Just off the Carnival Miracle (yeah, the one that hit the pier in St. Kitts), and they use CSM's for their straight BJ games. The gimmick games (Fun 21, Face-Up 21 & Spanish 21) are manually shuffled. I noticed the overall play at the straight BJ games was down from my previous cruise in October, and down significantly from years' past (prior to the CSM's). While I continue to play a bit on the Carnival ships, my overall play (time + money) is way down from when the cards were shuffled manually. Since the itineraries of all the lines are similar, and the food generally good to very good, I would seriously consider changing my allegiance from Carnival to another line in order to make my BJ more equitable and enjoyable.

BourbonJim -

I also hated to see CCL go to the automatic shufflers. I always seemed to be able to do well at blackjack on the ships until those were put in. I know it still supposed to be "random" but I don't think it truly is. The machine follows a preset shuffling pattern (at best it is quasi-random).. but people tend to play the hands the same (i.e. 2 High cards and they stay... take more cards when they have small cards, etc..) My theory is that over a long period, the small number cards tend to build up in an area of the machine and the same for the higher cards. So instead of being random you get long pockets of cards that are the same general ranking. Which would be good if you can hit a run of big cards... but bad because a run of smaller cards can wipe any profits you can make too.. Last cruise I managed to play over a couple of hours and noticed that the cards seemed to come in waves like this... so by betting minimum during lulls and bigger during the highs, I managed to make some money. But you have to leave before a high point stops which is hard to do....

I could be imagining that too and what I am seeing is a random nature of outcomes but when you put a machine into play, the true randomness element is gone. i much rather would play on tables with a good old dealer shuffle. I play in casinos in Shreveport where they struck a nice balance between man and machine They have a machine that shuffles an entire shoe. So as the dealer is dealing the working shoe, the other is being shuffled. Then the dealer swaps them out at the end of the shoe. This way, the casino gets more hands dealt because the long shuffling period is gone but gives the players the "static" shoe worth of cards.

As far as you overall question- I have also seen the CSMs on NCL. But I have not been on RCCL lately and don't know if they switched to them yet (last time I was on Royal they still manually shuffled)

I HATE those machines! At least, with a shoe, you MIGHT get a lucky run going....with those shufflers, there's really no way it's going to happen.