At the Blackjack Ball one year, Tommy Hyland came up to me\nsaying he had a question. The preface \u201cI have a question for you\u201d is always a\nlittle unnerving, especially coming from someone you don\u2019t talk to very often. So\nthen he asked me \u2026 [wait for it \u2026]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy do you recommend KO?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
I was surprised, not by the question itself, but because it\nindicated Tommy must have read something I wrote. I think most professional\ngamblers who know me don\u2019t really read any of my stuff. But everyone\u2019s been\nreading Colin Jones\u2019s The 21st<\/sup>-Century Card Counter<\/em>, which\nespouses the same principle\u2014simplicity gets the money\u2014but draws a slightly different\nconclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mies and I are Less-Is-More apologists, and CJ, who knows more counters than I do, agrees: \u201cAll the successful card counters I know (I\u2019m talking six- or seven-figure earners) have made their money not by the complexity of their systems, but by aggressively attacking the casinos and getting in thousands of hours of play.\u201d I would make only a slight modification. The most successful counters I\u2019ve seen would aggressively attack certain<\/em> casinos, but totally avoid others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some counters will go ahead and play anywhere, but I don\u2019t\nthink that\u2019s optimal. There are casinos out there that will allow a shocking\nnumber of hours. They just don\u2019t know what a counter looks like, or they are\nunwilling to take countermeasures against the player. Successful counters\ngenerally play these unicorn casinos often and hard, sometimes camping out for months.\nThe late Big Red camped out on the same table for years! Think about that\u2014spreading\nfrom 0 to 2x$300, with no cover, for 20-40 hours per week, for years<\/em>. And\ngetting points and comps on a player\u2019s card on top of it all. (That might seem like heaven to some, but I\u2019m\nnot sure if I ever saw the man smile\u2014not once.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n CJ presses the case for choosing a simple count system: \u201cYou\ncan learn a much more complicated count, but when you consider 1) the\ncomplexity, 2) the time needed to really master it, 3) the room for error\n(which comes at a cost), 4) the amount of mental energy it takes to use it, and\n5) the value of rounds per hour, I question whether you\u2019ll actually make more\nmoney. \u2026 And my strongest argument for HiLo is that every major card-counting\nteam I know of has used it.\u201d To me, that last argument is actually the weakest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ironically, one of the teams CJ is talking about would be\nHyland\u2019s team, but Tommy basically said the same thing to me at the Ball. When Tommy\nstarted out, the Knockout Count (KO) didn\u2019t exist, and other teams were using\nHiLo. So everyone uses HiLo because everyone else uses it? It\u2019s a fiat count\nsystem!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Okay, HiLo is actually a good system, but if, on paper, HiLo\nis comparable to KO, then I\u2019m very confident that KO will destroy HiLo in the\nwild. Why do I say that? Because extensive observation of actual APs in the\nwild shows that their performance is consistently below the system specs\nunderlying the computer-optimal EV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People have a skepticism regarding running-count systems, but there are reasons that a running-count system can produce results comparable to a true-count system, even on paper. KO’s indices are more precise than HiLo\u2019s, due to KO\u2019s effectively finer stepsize when we restrict indices to be integers. A single point in the running-counted KO represents roughly a 0.2% change in EV, while a point in the true-counted HiLo represents about 0.5%. If we were to learn fractional HiLo indices, that KO advantage would go away, but no one would want to learn that doubling 9 vs. 7 should happen at HiLo +3.2 (or +2.8, or whatever). Potentially, a running-count system could have tags that provide a better playing correlation for certain critical decisions. KO counts the 7 as +1, which is better for insurance purposes. And KO has a good pivot, so that regardless of the decks remaining, a counter wants to be blasting when the count has reached the pivot. Though the edge E might be estimated less accurately than a true-counted system, a count above the pivot tells us that we’re safely in the E >> 0 zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But look, no one estimates decks remaining well, especially\nwhen the discard rack and shoe are opaque. And no one does the division fast\nenough, so hemming and hawing and stalling is introduced to the game. Then the\nexecution isn\u2019t as smooth, and time is wasted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another argument that I sometimes hear, but thankfully not\nin CJ\u2019s book, is that HiLo is more compatible with shuffle tracking. Oh please.\nJust stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we\u2019re going to talk about other beyond-counting methods, then the case for a true-counted system like HiLo gets weaker, and KO looks good. When I\u2019m playing a complicated blackjack game, if I count at all, the counting part of things needs to be really simple, and not slow down decisions that might already be tricky. KO is the limit to what I\u2019m willing to do when multi-tasking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every player swears that his execution is flawless, and it\u2019s\nthe other<\/em> guy who should consider a simpler system like KO, but the data\nsays otherwise. In every<\/em> instance where we do a pop quiz or secret audit\nto test a player\u2019s skill, the results are disappointing. (This is the scene in\nthe movie clip where we all stand in a crowd, and one-by-one step forward to\nannounce \u201cI<\/em><\/strong> am the underperforming AP.\u201d) <\/p>\n\n\n\n In recent years, I\u2019ve become a bit disappointed by the AP community, primarily because the skill level overall is so poor, and the posers are tolerated. And I think there\u2019s some idiocracy going on. I think we\u2019re getting worse, despite all the new tools available to learn. I think the millennials are not as serious about the game, and maybe CJ unfairly takes some of the heat for that. But the best way to improve collectively is to be realistic about our abilities in the field, and utilitize the simple but powerful systems we now have available. By promoting HiLo, Colin Jones\u2019s BJA empire is a step in the right direction (from UstonAPC, RevereAPC, WongHalves, and others). For a veteran or a new player, I\u2019d recommend KO, but CJ\u2019s doing good work preaching HiLo. It’s aiight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the Blackjack Ball one year, Tommy Hyland came up to me saying he had a question. The preface \u201cI have a question for you\u201d is always a little unnerving, especially coming from someone you don\u2019t talk to very often. So then he asked me \u2026 [wait for it \u2026] \u201cWhy do you recommend KO?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[558],"tags":[1332,1367,1375,1371,584],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121730"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}