So I wanted to get comfortable playing with high TCs, so I got an 8 deck shoe, and some poker chips, and “fixed” the deck so the first 35 cards were low cards, and now my running count is +35 almost one deck into the shoe. Good practice to know what it feels like to lose maximum bets, and buy in for substantially more than my initial 10 unit buy in.

But I found that I usually lost the shoe, since the dealer never busted for those first 35 cards, and I increased my bets until I was ALWAYS deep in the hole to start with.

Then I added mid cards to the mix. If I added 21 mid-cards, then after 56 cards, I had a RC of +35, and I averaged even or a little bit ahead to practice having an (almost) full shoe with maximum or near max bets out.

Why do I write this? Before this practice, I was always very uncomfortable when the count got high. Afterwards, my comfort level was greatly increased.