New found confidence.

I haven’t been practicing my BS and counting for very long, but I wanted to go ahead and give it a test run before I invested anymore time in learning a trade that wasn’t going to be a good fit for me. I’d also like to add that I was very skeptical coming into this project considering the fact that I tend to be a very “unlucky” person.

I deviated from some of the things that I learned from my research on AP, but like I said I just wanted to get a feel for the game (I’ve never actually played BJ at a casino). I haven’t read the books or learned any of the advanced strategies. I don’t even count as fast as recommended; I average about 28-30 sec. a deck. I could go on and on about all the mistakes that I made (as I’m sure all of you will).

I won’t bore everyone with the minor details, but overall the night was a success. I am now more than confident that I should continue on with my research/study.

I also want to thank all the active members for the invaluable advice given on this forum. Without this site, I would be another clueless ploppy.

Sidenote: At max, the discard would have 3 decks, could I safely assume I’m working with a 4D shoe? Or were they just being bastards with only a 50% penetration? I was unsure, so I’m embarrassed to admit that I abandoned my card counting efforts and continued on playing with just BS. Thanks again.

There are plenty of places who's standard procedure is 50% (and even less) penetration, so it's really not possible to give a definitive answer. However, it's never a problem to simply ask the dealer how many decks they're using. And BTW, you did the right thing to revert to BS. Any time you have doubts, you can't go wrong with basic strategy. It's certainly better than just guessing.

ask the dealer

Sometimes they are clueless. Once as spanish table-new variant, I asked dealer are these spanish decks or blackjack? She answered- this is blackjack with 3-card poker side bet... she has some other variant in mind..

Ask them but do confirm their thinking..

I never saw a discard rack incapable of holding all of the decks - they often use them to "square up" the cards between shuffles.