Inherent advantages of wife (at the casino)
(Having the wife mimic does not address the question: "how can we improve our game?")
She can try the insurance count, but you have already said that she may not want to, and the insurance count is a two-level count. You can see p. 49 of Exhibit CAA for more information, but the insurance count for those who don't know is: 1. Start running count at -4D, where D is the number of decks, 2. Count each Ten as -2 and every other card as +1, 3. Buy insurance when this running count is positive.
There is no true-count conversion, so she really could do it with some practice. However, I am skeptical of this plan, based on your comments. Perhaps she should simply keep a side count. For instance, she could keep a side of Aces. This sounds simple, but given that she does not want to count at all, would you really trust her side count?
There are inherent advantages to having her at the table, even if she is unwilling to do much extra work: 1. More entertaining for both of you, 2. Even when you lose, she will see that Tens and Aces come out when your bets are big, 3. She should be able to play faster than a civilian in that same seat, 4. Between the two of you, you can control three or four spots on the table, thus locking out civilians (who are detrimental to the game conditions), 5. She might be useful for cover, 6. It keeps her from playing slots or other worse games that might tempt her, 7. You can put the action for both of you on her player's card, to preserve your own clean name, 8. A partner is useful to turn the boss, 9. A partner boosts the frequency of payoff errors, 10. She should eavesdrop on the pit for you.
