Push Your Luck and Lucky Ladies side counts

[Cimsfe]

My twofold question has to do with the best way to play these two side bets: Push Your Luck and Lucky Ladies.

1. I am already familiar with Lucky Ladies - that you shouldn't even bother with betting it unless the true count is 6.5 or higher in Hi/Lo. I read Norm's free book and saw that he had a special segment on Lucky Ladies and has a chart which shows that positive EV is only at 7.0 or higher. I already knew that. I assume that chart was for a 6 deck game. There used to be a 4 deck game here in Arizona at one of the Indian casinos that had a four deck Lucky Ladies and I enjoyed making money on that but they took it away and replaced it with Push Your Luck.

My question is - since I have taught myself to count the number of Queen of Hearts (whenever there are more than 4 seen before the shoe ends, it doesn't seem worth playing, since your need at least 2 Queen of Hearts to win big) - is the best strategy to wait until the count is high (i.e. 7 or greater) and there are only a few, if any Queen of Hearts already seen - and then bet the max on it - here in AZ it is $25)?

2. Push Your Luck. You make 10x your side bet if you push your card totals with the dealer (as long as he doesn't bust) - plus if you split you are generally allowed to post the side bet again (at least here in AZ you can). Norm's book does not have any section on that nor whether it is beatable.

Here is my question: Is the best way to play Push Your Luck to wait to close to the end of the shoe and see if the count is high and try to push hoping to match a 20 with the dealer getting a 20? Also, what is the optimal true count to do this?

[Marvin]

1) Most of your gain in Lucky Ladies comes from 20s, not QQ or QQ+BJ:
http://www.blackjackincolor.com/blackjacksidebet1.htm
http://apheat.net/2012/08/08/card-co...jack-side-bet/

2)
Push your luck requires a modified basic strategy to exploit. Here is a link to get you started:
http://discountgambling.net/2012/12/...jack-side-bet/

The book Exhibit CAA has an analysis of this side bet as well as a couple of counts to target it, but I'm not going to plagiarize and post any of that here.