Um, there's a reason it's called that

[Tuxian]

Short one here, but I got a bit of a laugh out of it, and so did my coworkers last night.

I was dealing blackjack, and my relief came and tapped me to go on my break. As I step off the table to let the relief on, I see her begin to pull the burn card out of the shoe (we burn a card from a blackjack shoe when we change dealers for any reason). As she's doing that, the guy in the center of the table says to her "Can we see that burn card?"

Um, no, dummy, it's called a 'burn card' for a reason... it gets BURNED so no one sees it!

[Mr. Rude]

Sure thing...Are you a prophet?

Can you read ashes?

[Kyree]

I'm totally lost here...why do you burn them...?

[cj1991]

They don't actually burn the card (like fire burn), unless this casino does something I'm not familiar with.

I detest Wikipedia for many reason (many personal) but it gives a short and easy to understand explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_card

[Lingering Grin]

I'm totally lost here...why do you burn them...?

It's not literally "burning", as in "setting on fire".

It's just removing the top card of the deck from the game, and noone gets to see it.

It helps screw up card counters (well, crappy ones that still use that silly +1, -1 trick... hehe newbies). It's used in Poker too.

Like in Texas Hold Em.

Everyone gets 2 cards in their hand.
You burn one card
Put 3 cards face up in the center of the table
Burn another card
Put 1 more face up in the center of the table
Burn another card
Put the last face up card in the center of the table.

It's just to make it harder for people to keep track of which cards have been played and which haven't.