Some warnings from Arnold Synder's in his Cookbook to newbies:
{{{"I have known many highly skilled counters, pros among them, who acknowledge that they simply have been unable to track shuffles, despite a thorough understanding of the mathematics and principles involved. Many have given it up because, "When I try to cut to the high card slug, the high cards often just arn't there"
So, before you waste six months studying charts and theory......
But be forewarned.....shuffle tracking may not be a learnable skill for many players"}}}
I wanted to see what another blackjack expert (Don S) thinks of Synder's warnings. Is he being too harsh? I don't find my deck estimation skills to be particularly impressive but also they arn't really that bad either. But like Synder says the bar is really low for deck estimation as a card counter and much much higher for a tracker.
I can get really good at deck estimation if it's the same deck of cards (same thickness) but what really threw me off as a traveling counter that was constantly getting backed off was dealing with frequent changes in card thickness between casinos. It was so pronounced that sometimes I would get to a new casino and their cards were so thin for the life of me I swore they were 5 decks and not six! Constantly adjusting to new card thickness (and usually only for a fleeting amount of time since the backoffs came quick) was my least favorite part of counting by far.
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