More distributor/advance questions

I set it to 12 degrees advanced a few weeks ago and by 3000 RPM it was well over 40 without the vacuum hooked up. With the vacuum it was well over 50. Right now it is set around 5 initial and the throttle plates on the carb are open at idle to keep it at 800 RPM (the ported vacuum has 10 in Hg) so the recommendation was to increase initial to around 18-20 because of the cam and adjust total from there.