Shoe (cards) Shoe (cards) A dealing shoe or dealer's shoe is a gaming device, mainly used in casinos, to hold multiple decks of playing cards. The shoe allows for more games to be played by reducing the time between shuffles and less chance of dealer cheating. In some games, such as blackjack (where card counting is a possibility), using multiple decks of cards can increase the house edge. Prior to 1961 in Las Vegas casinos, all blackjack was being dealt from a single deck. John Scarne proposed to the Nevada Gaming Control Board that a state ruling be enacted such that Blackjack
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (blackjack) Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (blackjack) Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is the name given by gambling authors to the four U.S. Army engineers who first discovered in the 1950s the best playing strategy in the casino game of Blackjack that can be formulated on the basis of the player's and the dealer's cards. The so-called Basic Strategy, which was subsequently refined through the use of computers and combinatorial analysis, loses the least money to the casino in the long term. In 1953, Roger Baldwin, a private in the U.S. Army with a master's degree in Mathematics from Columbia University,