shadroch,
You wanted to known why I do a side count on the Aces. There are a couple of reasons that comes in handy. Three of the casinos I regularly play at do a hand shuffle. For example: you are at a 6 deck shoe game and looking at the discard tray and only 2/3 deck of cards worth is out of the shoe but within that 2/3 deck deck there has been 12 Aces. When that shoe is over and the dealer breaks the deck in to forths to shuffle (these 3 casinos do the same style of easy to follow shuffle), they split the deck in two then split those into two for a total of 4 piles. As I look at the dealer the stack from left to right are
1) Top 2 decks worth of what was on the top of the discard pile
2) Next is with top 2 decks of the middle section
3) The bottom 2 decks, with the 12 Aces in the bottom decks worth
4) The middle section the was above the bottom 2 decks
Dealer shuffles part of section 2 with section 4
Dealer shuffles part of section 1 with section 3
Dealer shuffles last of section 2 with section 4
Dealer shuffles part of section 1 with section 3
Dealer shuffles last of section 2 with section 4
Dealer shuffles last of section 1 with section 3 (3 is the group with the 12 Aces)
The 12 Aces are in the top 2 decks worth of decks as the dealer squares them up and hands out the cut card. If that card goes in one deck from the back / dealer moves that section to the front and starts dealing. You now know when the you see one decks worth in the discard shoe that the next two decks worth will have 12 Aces from section 3 plus any Aces from section 1 (lets say it's the average of 4) you now know you have a 2 decks worth of cards with 16 Aces instead of the normal 8 Aces coming ~ you may want to adjust your bet.
Also in the blackjack tournaments I play, a Blackjack pays 4 to 2 instead of 3 to 2. So if the discard tray has 3 decks worth and you've only seen 1 or 2 Aces you might want to adjust your bet.
Keeping track of any group of bunched up 10s or small cards in the shuffle ("Shuffle Tracking") in addition to the count means more $$ for me at the tables and more tournaments wins.
I'm new to playing tournaments, been doing it about 7 months now but out of the 13 I've entered I've been at the finalist table 11 times.
If you are a part of this forum you probably received an email about Kenneth Smiths just releasted book "How to win more Blackjack Tournaments" (Sept. 2007), I've read it and it's well worth the money.