First off, I just wanted to thank all of you on this forum for the helpful info. I started reading threads here about a month ago and began to practice counting (hi-lo) two weeks ago. Last night was my first official crack at it in AC, so I wanted to share some observations. As some of you would assume, I wasn't very good at first... I dropped the count towards the end of the first three shoes. After I settled in, I felt pretty confident that I was able to keep the correct count and make the right betting decisions based on it. The only problem was that I found myself mostly in situations where the bulk of the high cards came out in the beginning when I had the minimum bet out there, then I would ride out the shoe in a negative situation waiting for the change whilst betting the minimum... I roughly broke even on those shoes. It was strange that I found myself getting angry the count was going negative even as I was winning ... because I only had the minimum bet out, I was frowning on getting two face cards because I was looking at them as a negative two. 
I did have two shoes where the count went to 6 or above and I was able to take advantage of it. It really felt great that on roughly ten occasions, I was getting great hands just as I raised my bet from $25 to $125. So in the end, I played roughly 5 hours betting from $25-$150 and ended up winning about $1,300. It was a successful outing but it seemed like there weren't too many opportunities in a positive count... guess I'm just impatient.
I did have two shoes where the count went to 6 or above and I was able to take advantage of it. It really felt great that on roughly ten occasions, I was getting great hands just as I raised my bet from $25 to $125. So in the end, I played roughly 5 hours betting from $25-$150 and ended up winning about $1,300. It was a successful outing but it seemed like there weren't too many opportunities in a positive count... guess I'm just impatient. 