My biggest RC ever results in bigest loss!

Norm did mention something related, primarily what happens in a SD game, where you have seen over 1/2 or over 3/4 of the deck, and the RC is (say) 1 or 2, but the TC becomes 4 or 8. But even with such a high TC, your advantage might be zero, such as when there are only 10's left. Fortunately, you can't lose in that specific case. Unfortunately, you also can't win. It's uncommon of course...

Unfortunately, you also can't win. It's uncommon of course...

I don't think it is that bad. Remember that if you are -2SD, that should not happen for 68% of your play, as you should be inside 1SD for that period, but when you wander left into -2SD territory, things are _really_ going badly at the table... Yes for every -2SD foray, there should be a +2SD balance on the other side. But living through the -2SD session is miserable and more memorable than the +2SD session. :)

let's assume we have a situation where there are 17 cards left in a single deck, 16 are face cards and one card is a 5. With this situation, the player would have a very large advantage. Because if the D happened to show that 5 as an up-card, we the smart players would simply just split faces 'til the cows come home.

"Someone has almost certainly posted a graph recently in which the data-points move upward as the TC increases until they reach a certain high TC and the line drops off somewhat. Blue-eyed Samurai and I may be thinking of another topic."

Actually, I believe your title is correct: "Percentage of winning hands." We discussed the fact that, for SD, once the count surpasses +4 or +5 (I forget), the player actually does win more than 50% of his hands. However, once the count gets too high, there are an inordinate amount of 20-20 pushes, and that starts to push the percentage of player winning hands back down again.

Don

I'm not sure the TC was as high as your's, but I did have a situation like this about a week ago. I think it was the Nug. It came at the end of a 6D shoe with about 1.75 cut off. I was able to track the clump through the shuffle. The big cards came out as planned, but it didn't help or hurt me too badly. Did you try tracking the clump during the shuffle? I imagine it would be tough to completely break it up. Like "the book" says, you're betting more in high counts, so expect greater variation in losses during these situations. Good luck on your next one. I bet the heart was pumping a bit. Hope you didn't show too much intensity. Hard to keep up an act when you're drooling.

Cards were being shuffled in a Shuffle Master.

I'm pretty well over the fast hart pumping stuff. Been down the path many times. Though when it happens, my face just seems to naturally evolve into a "look that could kill" look because I'm so pissed. I do use sort of a "chasing my losses" act during this kind of an occurrence.

I have to grind forever to get even close to such an opportunity of a monster of all monster counts and then it results in a near devastation of my session roll and my mind.

shaggy, but not too shaggy, the ten counter is also difficult to satisfy.
In the theory of blackjack Griffin has the player advantage reaching the Zenith (almost 13%) when 73% of the cards are tens.
pg 147 in the 4th edition

this is one book I have not been able to find. sounds like it answers questions that are interesting, based on that single point...