discarding cards at the shuffle?

[yaboy]

new to this forum, wanted to say hi first.

I'm new to card counting. I just started learning it about 3 weeks ago. I chose to learn the knock out system for now.

There's this poker room at the next city where I live and I went there just to see what it's like to count in a live game. I didn't gamble a lot since I've just started learning card counting.

At the poker room I went to the dealer discards around 5-10 cards before he/she begins dealing the new shoe after shuffling, only showing us 1 of the cards. Also they switch dealers mid shoe and discard another 2 cards and they don't let us see them either. It looks like they only play 75% of the shoe because they always put a yellow card about 25% in the shoe at the end.

Is this bad for me? Is it worth trying to count cards at this poker room considering those cards they put aside?

Would I be better off going on a hour drive to the nearest casino instead? I'm not sure how their rules are about shuffling at my nearest casino though.