Damaged Cards
I was playing at the Horseshoe Baltimore recently when the autoshuffler damaged a card. The floor came over and replaced just the damaged card.
The dealer told us that in the poker room they replace just the damaged card. In pit games they replace the entire deck. She told us she couldn't tell us why a damaged card is treated differently in the poker room and pit games. I am not sure if the reason she couldn't tell us is because she didn't know or she wasn't allowed to.
Does anyone know if this is true in all casinos, if so why?
Yes it's true. The poker room uses Plastic cards that bend and can be cleaned, at a cost of $15+ a deck. So they just replace individual cards when there is a damaged one. The pit uses cheap paper cards that are only in play for several hours before the deck is taken out of play and replaced. The old decks are sold in gift shops, given away as souvenirs to high rollers, and donated to old folks homes.
I've seen it in a number of rooms here in Vegas.
There was one time, I actually asked the floor if they would replace a whole deck because in about an hour there had been 4 or 5 damaged cards from that one deck. They looked at me like I was crazy, but after a couple more damaged cards -- all from that one deck -- one of the room regulars asked for a new setup and got both decks replaced.
Dave
Also, since the house has financial stakes in pit games, they want to mitigate the risk of cards being marked by replacing the whole deck frequently.
Well as a dealer myself I would say it really depends on the game being played. For the most part single cards are just swapped out on the floor as well unless it's a game security issue