Well that's one way to make a monkey talk- derail a thread! Sure that's very effective and in certain environments it will be the best game to play. There's also less heat, especially when you keep the more advanced systems secret. Deck estimation is only a vague approximation anyway with a shoe game and the same skills you have in BJ deck estimation will suffice, and the pen is what it is; sometimes you find good pen and sometimes you don't. Wonging works too.
I don't use that any more, I use a multiparameter count where the combined count is used for betting and each count, their sum, and their difference is used for various plays and sidebets available. There's also a two-man and a three-man count where a group of AP's can play the same table and signal each other for bets and plays.
Not my intent to be disrespectful or dismissive, but certain activities in AP... until you've written your own code and burned out a few CPUs doing the analysis and simulation, you probably shouldn't be doing them at the table yet. It may be hard to hear and sound elitist or exclusionary, but if I handed a complicated system or a crazy sidebet to a rookie and he lost money I'd feel like crap, and there would be blame and mistrust to go around. Maybe think of it in Eastern mysticism terms, where someone can tell you enlightenment is there to be found, but for it to be worthwhile you have to do the work and find it on your own.
