Casinos primarily identify counters by watching for bet variation. If you don't bet like a counter, you won't usually be marked as one, regardless of how accurately you play your cards. It is very easy for a counter catcher to count down a deck from behind or above you, using any card counting system, while monitoring your bet size. Regardless of what counting system you use, your bet-sizing will give you away. A Red Seven player would raise and lower his bets similarly to a Zen Count player. A counter using any other valid counting system would have no difficulty detecting the conspicuous betting patterns of either player.
Most camouflage techniques are used to disguise bet variation. Such techniques inevitably hurt your potential win rate, but without camouflage you will be frequently shuffled-up on, and probably barred if you play for high stakes.
Depth-charging is a single-deck strategy that allows you to play a winning game without using a betting spread based on your count. This strategy is not recommended for Red Seven players—to take advantage of depth-charging gains, you want a system that is strong on playing strategy.
Single-deck games can be beaten with a flat bet, but you need a deep shuffle point to pull it off. Deep penetration is hard to come by in one-deck games these days, because the casinos know that counters can beat these games easily. Still, some four-plus decades after Thorp, I continue to get regular reports from players on deeply dealt one-deck games they've found.
One type of game that often has a deep shuffle point is the full-table game, when two rounds are dealt. These games are rare in Las Vegas, but still fairly common in Northern Nevada, especially in many of Nevada' smaller towns. The problem with these games is that they are always dealt face down, and some players hide their cards. The deep shuffle point is worthless if you cannot see the other players' cards prior to making your decisions. If you can see the other guys' cards, however, this type of game can be very valuable.
So, let's look at just how valuable.
If I set up a seven-player table, with two rounds between shuffles, and I allow the third-base player, who is using the Zen Count, to see all of the cards of the players who play their hands before him, with a flat bet he will win at the rate of 0.77%. (This is with Reno rules, which allow doubling on 10 and 11 only, and the dealer hits soft 17; with downtown Las Vegas rules, where you can double on any two cards, but the dealer still hits soft 17, the flat-betting third base player will win at the rate of 1.06%, assuming he can see all of the other players' cards.)
This player can do quite a bit better than 0.77% if he uses a conservative betting spread. For instance, if he were to always come off the top with a 2-unit bet, and only lower it to 1 unit on the second round if the count goes negative, his Reno win rate would be 0.92%, as opposed to 1.23% in Downtown Vegas.
With a more aggressive 1 to 2 betting spread, where he came off the top with one unit, then raised to 2 units on any positive count, his Reno expectation would go up to 1.31%, and 1.60% in downtown Vegas. All of this data was obtained from running simulations of 10 million hands each with John Imming's Universal Blackjack Engine software. Here is the data in chart form:
Zen Count, Third Base, Full Table, 10 Million Hands Each
Flat Bet 1-2 (2 off top) 1-2 (1 off top) Reno: 0.77% 0.92% 1.31%
DT Vegas: 1.06% 1.23% 1.60%
Naturally, if you could find better rules than these, the expectations would be even higher from the same ultraconservative betting strategies. Note also that this approach is weak from the first base position. Seeing just four fewer cards per-round before making his decisions, the first base player's win rates for these betting schemes is barely half of the third base player's.
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