> Er, excuse me, but I think about 8 of us
> worked six months or so to produce Chapter
> 13, Part I. You might want to have a look!
> :-)

I did. I was really asking a rhetorical question of a sort, because I didn't think it had a real answer. For example, at an indian casino a month ago, I found perfect conditions to back-count 2 tables. One jumped up, one saw a bunch of 10's come off and went south. Before I could sit down at the remaining position on the climbing count, someone beat me to it. I kept back-counting both as I had nothing better to do. The good count quickly dropped back to slightly negative (TC). But the other cycled up and went right on up to +2 before I could sit down. I sat down, played about 2.5 decks and did pretty well.

The thing that caught my eye was that the table I played at was pretty bad after one deck. Something like TC -3 (I truncate for the record, rounding might have been closer to -4).

The point of the above was if I could have, I would have jumped into the first + table which was already heading back south again, and missed the second table that started off ugly but turned good.

I guess there is really no way to predict any of that, based on what I have seen over the past four years with counts going every-which-way...

> Sounds like you're probably watching
> negative shoes too long, hoping for them to
> "come back." Reread Chapter 13.

> Don

I don't often watch them if they go south, except that on occasion I sort of get forced into it as above, where the empty position on the good table gets jumped on before I can get to it, leaving me with nothing to do but keep back-counting..

But thanks for the reminder. I'll go back and re-read it. A assume you haven't changed this much from previous versions? Or should I hint to my wife that another book order might be a good Christmas idea?