Alternate Suggestion
jesse shepard,
Rather than count out 52 cards, why not find a table where the shoe is just ending? Take a seat and watch. After the dealer finishes the last round, she'll take the undealt cards, place them alongside the discards, and then plug them into the discards. At this point you'll be seeing ALL the cards in the discard rack: thus, you'll instantly see the height of 6 (or 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 or 8, depending on the location) decks from the precise perspective where you'll be playing. For instance, you might notice that the top of the entire pack is just a bit higher than the top of the padded rail from where you're sitting. From that, you can quickly and accurately perform your deck estimation for that session.
As an added bonus, since you sat down as the shoe was ending, you'll also have an excellent idea of what the penetration was on that shoe by visually comparing the thickness of the undealt cards to the thickness of the dealt cards in the discard rack. For example, if you estimate that the thickness of the discards is 5 times the thickness of the undealt cards, you'll know that the pen is about 5/6. I say "about" because the discards contain not only the cards originally in front of the cut card but also however many additional cards were required to complete the final round: if you saw the last round, you'll have a good idea how many "extra" cards were required. After the shuffle and cut, as the dealer inserts the cut card you can see the pen on the upcoming shoe to check your previous estimate.
Finally, if you notice the pen has changed significantly from the last shoe to the present shoe, try to ascertain whether or not the present dealer also shuffled the preceding shoe: if so, this will give you an idea of this dealer's accuracy.
Hope this helps!
Dog Hand
