As far as counting goes...I was a card counter in the mid-80's. (I dropped out of UNLV to do it after meeting some pros.) Before I switched to poker, I got barred once, backroomed once, and shuffled up on just about everywhere. Managed to stay out of the Griffin book by pure luck.
Honestly, I hated the casinos. I couldn't stand the fact that they made it clear that you weren't allowed to THINK before you placed a bet. Made me nuts. Bill Maher made a joke recently about Vegas security: "In Vegas you can't do MATH in your HEAD without Joe Pesci dragging you out to the Desert."
The funny thing is that counting is really, really easy. Much easier than poker. All it is, essentially, is roughly tracking the ratio of big cards to not big cards. (By adding or subtracting 1 to a running count in your head) If the deck is higher in big cards you have the advantage. If it is full of little cards, the house has the advantage. You bet more when you have the advantage, less when they do. It's pretty much that simple. And boring. God is it boring. If it wasn't for endlessly waiting for them to spot you, you'd get no excitement at all. And all for an advantage of--if you are careful--maybe 1%.
What's great about poker is that, in so many cases, there may not be a right answer. The difference between one choice and another is sometimes debatable. In blackjack there is only math, and your choice is either right, or wrong. Boring. Very mechanical.
Spotting a card counter is easy. If a bunch of little cards come out and a guy raises his bet, he's probably a counter. Plus, most of the casinos have counters working for them. If they think someone is counting, they'll just count along with him until they are sure. I had a teammate who got barred from the Barbary Coast (Is that even still there?) in under 10 minutes.
In my case, back then, I was very young, had long hair and glasses and looked kinda smart. Before I even sat down, if you asked the pit boss what a card counter looked like, he'd have pointed to me and 'hey, do you see that guy....'
Btw, the reason they went to a multi-deck shoe wasn't to make it harder to count, but to even out the statistical anomalies that make counting profitable. With a multi-deck shoe, and the cut card in the middle, there is a good chance you're not going to get to a particulary high count (or low count, for that matter) situation.
Sorry for the long (and fairly off-topic) post...
Also, as to the Raymer thing...the guy who taught me to play hold em--a pro stud player--got robbed at gunpoint coming out of the front of the Riv once after cashing out with about $5,000. He always believed it was an inside job.
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