Is there any reason not to use KO over Hi-Lo in 6 deck games?

FrankieT

Well-Known Member
#1
I never noticed how effective KO was compared to Hi-Lo - it has a better betting correlation and the same playing efficiency. I always assumed unbalanced counts were inferior to balanced counts and never gave them any attention.

Is there any reason not to use KO over Hi-Lo in 6 deck games?
 

bejammin075

Active Member
#2
I'll just say this

I'm still reading, learning and practicing, but here's what I think I figured out. When I first took a look at different counting systems, I had never heard of anything like an unbalanced count, but I liked the idea of not having to convert to the true count. I was only familiar with stuff like they had in the movie "21" (balanced counts). I read the KO Blackjack book. I started practicing in Casino Verite, and made my own custom KO strategy (I tweaked a few of the index numbers to make it fit me and my brain). My ups and downs were all over the place. It was tough to get ahead. I played thousands of hands with a $10 to $100 spread under a variety of (mostly good) playing conditions.

Then somewhere I got a tip to read Daniel Dravot's book (The Color of Blackjack), and it was a little pricey for a very small book, but it was basically a modification of KO where instead of completely ignoring the discard pile, what you did was compare your running count to pre-determined yardstick type numbers for the number of decks played. I'll give you an example of that in a minute. But bottom line, when I started taking the number of decks played into account, during my practice of thousands of more hands in CV, I was definitely making much more steady progress upwards, with not so many scary losses of bankroll.

To summarize my practice in Casino Verite: With straight KO, I too frequently went bankrupt with very wild swings. When I did as Dravot indicated to do, I climbed much more steadily.

Dravot pointed out that with KO, when you don't look at the discard pile, there are times in the early part of the shoe where you actually have an advantage, but don't even know about it. By the same logic, there are also times at the end of the shoe when you might think you have an advantage and make a big bet, but you don't actually have an advantage. The weakness of KO: early underbetting, late overbetting.

Dravot's idea didn't involve any pesky true count conversion, just that you had an idea that after 1 deck, your TC needs to meet or exceed a certain number, then after 2 decks dealt, your TC needs to meet or exceed a certain number. And so on, and so forth.

I started to see all the missed opportunities at the beginning of the shoe, and realized I was indeed sometimes placing big bets at the end that were not a good idea. Dravot's betting modifications also made me seem like I was playing more like a typical gambler, and less like a counter. If you use the KO Key Count for your threshold to decide to make bigger bets, you end up flat betting a lot until you suddenly ramp up at the end of the shoe.

After practicing this way for a long time, I got a lot more confidence than with plain KO. I started to get comfortable with looking at the discard pile and instantly knowing well enough how tall it looked. And I realized how important it is to take the number of cards played into account. And I realized how dumb it seems to completely ignore the discard pile. And for now, while I read and learn more, I think I'm going to change to a balanced system. I'm probably going to do Zen. I'm in the process of getting all the true count indexes into Excel, and then making my own rounded indexes for what is easy to remember for me. Zen tracks all the same numbers as KO. Two through Seven, and Ten-Ace.
 
#3
FrankieT said:
Is there any reason not to use KO over Hi-Lo in 6 deck games?
One good reason is that the standard-issue KOs will require you
to know a separate index set when you switch from 6D to 2D.

Therefore, TKO would be the best of both worlds. zg
 

Shoofly

Well-Known Member
#5
FrankieT said:
I never noticed how effective KO was compared to Hi-Lo - it has a better betting correlation and the same playing efficiency. I always assumed unbalanced counts were inferior to balanced counts and never gave them any attention.

Is there any reason not to use KO over Hi-Lo in 6 deck games?
I have no numbers to back it up, but my gut feeling is that if you are very good at estimating decks (to within a couple of cards), the balanced count is superior. If you are not that precise at deck estimation, the unbalanced count is better.
 

jaygruden

Well-Known Member
#6
bejammin075 said:
I'm still reading, learning and practicing, but here's what I think I figured out. When I first took a look at different counting systems, I had never heard of anything like an unbalanced count, but I liked the idea of not having to convert to the true count. I was only familiar with stuff like they had in the movie "21" (balanced counts). I read the KO Blackjack book. I started practicing in Casino Verite, and made my own custom KO strategy (I tweaked a few of the index numbers to make it fit me and my brain). My ups and downs were all over the place. It was tough to get ahead. I played thousands of hands with a $10 to $100 spread under a variety of (mostly good) playing conditions.

Then somewhere I got a tip to read Daniel Dravot's book (The Color of Blackjack), and it was a little pricey for a very small book, but it was basically a modification of KO where instead of completely ignoring the discard pile, what you did was compare your running count to pre-determined yardstick type numbers for the number of decks played. I'll give you an example of that in a minute. But bottom line, when I started taking the number of decks played into account, during my practice of thousands of more hands in CV, I was definitely making much more steady progress upwards, with not so many scary losses of bankroll.

To summarize my practice in Casino Verite: With straight KO, I too frequently went bankrupt with very wild swings. When I did as Dravot indicated to do, I climbed much more steadily.

Dravot pointed out that with KO, when you don't look at the discard pile, there are times in the early part of the shoe where you actually have an advantage, but don't even know about it. By the same logic, there are also times at the end of the shoe when you might think you have an advantage and make a big bet, but you don't actually have an advantage. The weakness of KO: early underbetting, late overbetting.

Dravot's idea didn't involve any pesky true count conversion, just that you had an idea that after 1 deck, your TC needs to meet or exceed a certain number, then after 2 decks dealt, your TC needs to meet or exceed a certain number. And so on, and so forth.

I started to see all the missed opportunities at the beginning of the shoe, and realized I was indeed sometimes placing big bets at the end that were not a good idea. Dravot's betting modifications also made me seem like I was playing more like a typical gambler, and less like a counter. If you use the KO Key Count for your threshold to decide to make bigger bets, you end up flat betting a lot until you suddenly ramp up at the end of the shoe.

After practicing this way for a long time, I got a lot more confidence than with plain KO. I started to get comfortable with looking at the discard pile and instantly knowing well enough how tall it looked. And I realized how important it is to take the number of cards played into account. And I realized how dumb it seems to completely ignore the discard pile. And for now, while I read and learn more, I think I'm going to change to a balanced system. I'm probably going to do Zen. I'm in the process of getting all the true count indexes into Excel, and then making my own rounded indexes for what is easy to remember for me. Zen tracks all the same numbers as KO. Two through Seven, and Ten-Ace.
Great input. As user of UB count...this is helpfull. Will check this book out.
 

Shoofly

Well-Known Member
#8
Most Interesting Man said:
How precise does estimation need to be? Down to a few cards would be overkill for a shoe game no?
Sure, but the point is that if you can't estimate to within a few cards, you may as well be taking the easier route with an unbalanced count.
 

matt21

Well-Known Member
#11
zengrifter said:
One good reason is that the standard-issue KOs will require you
to know a separate index set when you switch from 6D to 2D.

Therefore, TKO would be the best of both worlds. zg
Zengrifter, is a separate index also required if you switched from 6d to 4d?

Logically, the less often that the counter needs to look at the discard tray in order to work out the TC conversion, the better - from a heat perspective.
 

Gamblor

Well-Known Member
#12
matt21 said:
Logically, the less often that the counter needs to look at the discard tray in order to work out the TC conversion, the better - from a heat perspective.
Its a good point about looking at the discard tray, especially for n00bs, so something for them to consider - until you get more experience at looking at it w/o drawing attention.
 

FrankieT

Well-Known Member
#13
zengrifter said:
One good reason is that the standard-issue KOs will require you
to know a separate index set when you switch from 6D to 2D.

Therefore, TKO would be the best of both worlds. zg
I just use complete zen for 2d.
 

FrankieT

Well-Known Member
#16
zengrifter said:
And that is fine for any #decks.
Are you using 1/4DTC or 1DTC? zg
1/4 on 2d.

Since KO has better betting correlation than Zen and outproduces on 6 deck, why use Zen over KO on 6deck?

Wong halves would be one of the few counts that has a higher betting correlation and more suitable for 6deck, but wong halves would be pretty tedious on a 6 deck.
 
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#18
FrankieT said:
Since KO has better betting correlation than Zen and outproduces on 6 deck, why use Zen over KO on 6deck?
If you are saying that KO out-performs ZEN at 6D, something is off.
Could it be your true-edge 1/4DTC?? zg
 
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FrankieT

Well-Known Member
#19
Count per 1/4 deck on 2 deck games.



zengrifter said:
If you are saying that KO out-performs ZEN at 6D, something is off.
Could it be your true-edge 1/4DTC?? zg
I ran a sim comparing the two using the same conditions, and Full 6 deck KO had a very slight advantage in SCORE as Complete Zen (with top 22 indexes) on 6 deck
 
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Coyote

Well-Known Member
#20
straight KO will have you raising your bets later in the count compared to hi-lo, and over betting later in the count. TKO helps compensate for this.

Best of fluctuation to you,
Coyote
 
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