A shoe is the box-shaped dispenser that holds several shuffled decks at a card table, letting the dealer slide out one card at a time, face down, with a single hand. It is standard kit at blackjack and baccarat tables, where games are dealt from multiple decks rather than a single pack.
Casinos moved to multi-deck shoes largely to blunt card counting: the more decks in play, the less each card that leaves the game changes the odds. Today’s shoes usually take six to eight decks and are mostly plastic. Early versions were wooden and, according to the usual explanation, shaped a little like a woman’s high-heeled shoe, which is where the name comes from. So “dealing from the shoe” is simply the normal way the game is run, not a sign of anything odd.
Shoes in live and RNG table games
Live dealer blackjack and baccarat studios deal from a physical shoe on camera, so deck count and reshuffle point are part of each table’s rules. RNG versions simulate the decks in software and typically reshuffle every round. When you add tables through a live casino bundle, check the deck count in each game’s rules: in blackjack it directly affects the house edge.