The only real way of making big money card counting is by team play. You can sit at a table for hours and the count will not go your way.
When you play as an individual you are totally reliant on the count and it sticks out a mile away if you suddenly change your bet from $20 to $500. You will get kicked out immediately. You have to have somebody else sit down when the deck is primed to start betting big and stay betting big for the length of time that the count is good.
Yeah, not only that, but team play just makes more logistical sense, for multiple reasons:
1. They were having trouble with people messing up their counts, well, in team play you only have a select group keep track of the count. Everyone else just makes the big bets.
2. The counters are less likely to be backed off, because it is difficult to determine who they are or if there is even anything suspicious going on. The big bettors will get backed off eventually (unless they just hit and run the table), but the counters can just sit there all night while new bettors are rotated in and out.