UncrownedKing said:
I guess yet again, I have learned a bad habit...I clearly won't be able to count 6 or 7 hands at a time even when dealing slow
I have found that it doesn't make that much of a difference how many hands are at the table, since the dealer deals to them one at a time. I count two cards at a time, so I will be looking at players 1&2, and then 3&4, etc.
I do find there is a difference when there is an odd v an even number of players when counting two at a time, because if there is an odd number of players, the dealer's card is needed to complete the last pair (e.g., player 3 + dealer).
On my last trip to the casino I found myself doing something a bit different than counting in pairs as described above. I'm not sure I can describe this adequately, but here goes. I would count in "pairs" but across more than two cards at a time. For example:
Player 1 gets a 10 - I think "-1"
Player 2 gets a 9 - I ignore it
Player 3 gets an 8 - I ignore it
Player 4 gets a 2 - I think "1 + -1 = 0, no change to the count"
I find that when I think this way, instead of focusing on Player 1 + Player 2 and then Player 3 + Player 4, the game seems to slow down