One of the biggest running counts that I ever saw happened during the second year of our operation. I was back counting a shoe game and with a table full of seven players, the first two rounds of play produced only one ten value card.
The first round of play alone left a running count of +14 and the second round increased this still further to +25 if my memory serves me correctly. This was a six deck game so with 5.5 decks remaining the true count was 4.5.
In all my years of casino gambling and counting cards both in and out of gaming, I have never seen a running count go through the roof as quickly as this. I would like to report that we made a lot of money from this situation but the rest of the team wasn’t present as I was merely scouting the game 
Still, a few percent in edge isn’t something that you can take to the bank. But it does make a good story and the sum total of this advantage was that I won £45. I couldn’t really max out on the situation for two reasons.
Firstly I was only playing minimums and having a spread that was too big would have alerted the gaming staff. A second reason was that I didn’t have that much on me for a scouting mission (about £200).
There was another reason as well and getting heat at this stage would not only have been foolish but it would also have been selfish as well as we would have been coming back into this casino at some future point in time.
The game from a theoretical point of view with regards to conventional blackjack was poor, the penetration was around 60-65% and the game was six deck.
So without shuffle tracking and advantage play, it was quite poor. This was a cross reference taken from six different blackjack dealers. Not one single dealer dealt more than about 70% of the cards from the shoe at anytime.
Blackjack can really be a frustrating game at times but +25 after two rounds…..now that takes some doing.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson
