The quality of true count that you mentioned is very real and have experienced it myself. In the Theory of Blackjack by Peter Griffin, he also eludes to the idea of creating a bucket counting technique around the 8s and 9s. I've always thought that since the 8s, & 9s were not worth much mathematically , that we just counted them as 0. Since I already count 7s (I use KO) I noticed that my max bet indicator may not always correlate properly with 10s & Aces, or I really should have it my 12 vs a dealers deuce when my count indicated a richness of 10s and Aces.

Thanks for your commentary as usual, very useful, don't know what if any I'm going to do about this.