TKO advantage by count?
- Thread starter Jeff25
- Start date
To be honest, don't use TKO. Solo Player and I had a recent private discussion about the performance between TKO, KO-Preferred, and Hi-Lo because I was once a TKO user. He ran a sim for me of those three along with Halves and Zen (both irrelevant).Jeff25 said:
Sim: 6D, H17, DAS, RSA, LS, 4.5/6 cutoff, 1-16 spread, 25-400. 100 rounds/hr.
TKO.
Win rate per hr: 73.73
Standard deviation per hr: 1334.24
SCORE: 30.54
NO: 32,745
Hi-Lo sweet 16 fab 4.
Win rate per hr: 78.77
Std dev. per hr: 1353.49
SCORE: 33.87
NO: 29,524
KO preferred
Win rate: 72.85
std. dev: 13338.04
SCORE: 29.64
NO: 33,734
Basically pointless to use TKO, because there is less than a dollar gain/hr between that and KO-Preferred. There's more work in TKO (deck estimation) for an insignificant gain. So, I'd suggest sticking to KO, or use Hi-Lo. An even better choice would be to move to Halves or Zen. Look at the difference below.
Halves full
Win rate per hr: 84.40
std. dev:1375.02
SCORE: 37.67
NO: 26,544
Custom Zen (Solo Player's)
Win rate per hr: 85.29
std. dev: 1444.49
SCORE: 34.86
NO: 28,683
Southpaw
Well-Known Member
The Case for KO
I personally use Zen when I count, but have become more interested in forms of advantage play other than counting. Despite using a more complex count, I advocate JG's rhetoric in this piece:
In a thread on an bj21, a post comments on different count systems to help new players decide which count is best for them. Read it here:
http://www.bj21.com/greenchip/misc_bj/index.cgi?read=111757
I'd like to add a few points to make a stronger case for KO. Some people dismiss KO out of hand, reasoning that a count without a true-count conversion (KO) could not possibly compete with a count that has a true-count conversion (HiLo). This is not necessarily true. Here are some things that can compensate for the lack of a true-count conversion:
1. Better tags. HiLo's tag of 0 for the Seven is not very accurate. Most advanced counts would use +1/2 for the Seven, and KO's +1 may be better than HiLo's 0 tag.
2. Good pivot. An unbalanced count may have a pivot that happens to be at the point where we want to start betting some real money. If so, the good opportunities will be identified, even without a true-count conversion.
3. Finer stepsize in indices. HiLo indices used by most players are integers, e.g., +3 or +4, but not +3.6. For betting purposes, each HiLo TC point represents about a 0.5% change in expectation. KO also uses integer indices, but the integer refers to the KO running count. A 1-point change in the KO running count represents a finer step size. For instance, for betting expectation, each 1-point change in KO running count represents a change in expectation of about 0.2% as compared to HiLo's 0.5%. What this means is that the KO system has precise indices for betting and playing, so this too will help compensate for the lack of true-count conversion.
But those are just theoretical reasons why a non-converted count like KO may not suffer in performance. For many games, KO's performance is identical to HiLo. (See p. 53 of Exhibit CAA.) Now let's consider two of the REAL reasons that KO crushes HiLo.
1. A HiLo wonger who misses the first part of the shoe has to remember to add those discards in the rack to the "unseen cards" when doing his TC conversion. For the remainder of the shoe, he can't simply eyeball the pile in the discard rack to do the conversion; he must remember that the bottom chunk of discards were unseen. I am confident that many counters fail to make this adjustment, which is a special case of ...
2. HiLo counters CANNOT MAKE ACCURATE TC CONVERSIONS!! Yes, I know, if you're reading this, you're part of the 2% of HiLo counters who do indeed make accurate TC conversions, so the following comments apply to "the other guy." (Remember, in self-rated intelligence on a 10-point scale, the median score is something like 6 or 7. Right.) I've seen many counters in the field over the years, many OCP players, many BPs, many spotters, many participants at the Blackjack Ball, many game protection experts, many "sharp" pit bosses, many "competent" Eyes in the Sky, several cheaters, and you know what? Most of them are weak, even at the critical skill that they need to be successful at their endeavor! Spotters who can't see. BPs who can't follow signals. Sharp pit bosses who don't even know the payouts for a new carnival game. Scouts who forget to check the back pit on the second floor. I'm telling you--counters cannot handle the TC conversion anywhere near as well as required to make HiLo competitive with KO. (Participants at the BJ Ball are not as good at deck estimation as I would expect, though many of those players are not counting specialists.)
I realize that there are other benefits to HiLo, such as tracking applications, but let's get realistic: for the vast majority of Green Chippers and hobbyist ("serious amateur") counters, the advantages of HiLo over KO are imaginary.
Spaw
I personally use Zen when I count, but have become more interested in forms of advantage play other than counting. Despite using a more complex count, I advocate JG's rhetoric in this piece:
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The Case For KO
The Case For KO
In a thread on an bj21, a post comments on different count systems to help new players decide which count is best for them. Read it here:
http://www.bj21.com/greenchip/misc_bj/index.cgi?read=111757
I'd like to add a few points to make a stronger case for KO. Some people dismiss KO out of hand, reasoning that a count without a true-count conversion (KO) could not possibly compete with a count that has a true-count conversion (HiLo). This is not necessarily true. Here are some things that can compensate for the lack of a true-count conversion:
1. Better tags. HiLo's tag of 0 for the Seven is not very accurate. Most advanced counts would use +1/2 for the Seven, and KO's +1 may be better than HiLo's 0 tag.
2. Good pivot. An unbalanced count may have a pivot that happens to be at the point where we want to start betting some real money. If so, the good opportunities will be identified, even without a true-count conversion.
3. Finer stepsize in indices. HiLo indices used by most players are integers, e.g., +3 or +4, but not +3.6. For betting purposes, each HiLo TC point represents about a 0.5% change in expectation. KO also uses integer indices, but the integer refers to the KO running count. A 1-point change in the KO running count represents a finer step size. For instance, for betting expectation, each 1-point change in KO running count represents a change in expectation of about 0.2% as compared to HiLo's 0.5%. What this means is that the KO system has precise indices for betting and playing, so this too will help compensate for the lack of true-count conversion.
But those are just theoretical reasons why a non-converted count like KO may not suffer in performance. For many games, KO's performance is identical to HiLo. (See p. 53 of Exhibit CAA.) Now let's consider two of the REAL reasons that KO crushes HiLo.
1. A HiLo wonger who misses the first part of the shoe has to remember to add those discards in the rack to the "unseen cards" when doing his TC conversion. For the remainder of the shoe, he can't simply eyeball the pile in the discard rack to do the conversion; he must remember that the bottom chunk of discards were unseen. I am confident that many counters fail to make this adjustment, which is a special case of ...
2. HiLo counters CANNOT MAKE ACCURATE TC CONVERSIONS!! Yes, I know, if you're reading this, you're part of the 2% of HiLo counters who do indeed make accurate TC conversions, so the following comments apply to "the other guy." (Remember, in self-rated intelligence on a 10-point scale, the median score is something like 6 or 7. Right.) I've seen many counters in the field over the years, many OCP players, many BPs, many spotters, many participants at the Blackjack Ball, many game protection experts, many "sharp" pit bosses, many "competent" Eyes in the Sky, several cheaters, and you know what? Most of them are weak, even at the critical skill that they need to be successful at their endeavor! Spotters who can't see. BPs who can't follow signals. Sharp pit bosses who don't even know the payouts for a new carnival game. Scouts who forget to check the back pit on the second floor. I'm telling you--counters cannot handle the TC conversion anywhere near as well as required to make HiLo competitive with KO. (Participants at the BJ Ball are not as good at deck estimation as I would expect, though many of those players are not counting specialists.)
I realize that there are other benefits to HiLo, such as tracking applications, but let's get realistic: for the vast majority of Green Chippers and hobbyist ("serious amateur") counters, the advantages of HiLo over KO are imaginary.
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Spaw
I don't think anyone really answered your question, although I think Spaw was more responding to Johnny's post. The answer is yes the advantage is VERY similar and you are completely safe using bet spreads generated for HiLo with TKO (TKO not KO, they have to be based on TC) assuming your generating them right.Jeff25 said:
On another note, i'd have to agree with what Spaw posted, KO would be a better method for quite a few reasons unless you plan to ST. I'm also not sure where those sims Johnny posted came from as every one i've seen has TKO out performing HiLo by a very minute margin due to the extra information gained by counting of 7's.
Like I said good sir, the sims came from Solo Player. Zengrifter told me in another thread that Hi-Lo actually did outperform TKO before I ever spoke to Solo, but his sims said differently. I asked if it was an operator error but he said no and I gave him the benefit of the doubt.revrac said:
However, the sim was generated with only a few indexes for TKO, since Dravot's book only has a couple of them to begin with. This could've been the issue, but I'm taking the information as I see it. I don't have CVCX, so if you want you can post the sim here.Thanks bud!
(Since I saw the sims, I didn't bother answering the question. I wanted to steer him towards KO since the difference between TKO and KO is very minute. But my bad!)
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johnnyb said:Like I said good sir, the sims came from Solo Player. Zengrifter told me in another thread that Hi-Lo actually did outperform TKO before I ever spoke to Solo, but his sims said differently. I asked if it was an operator error but he said no and I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Thanks bud!
Some may be due to the number of indices and may also be somewhat due to Dravot's book (CoBJ) not being full TKO. CoBJ is only TKO for betting purposes, to get all the advantage you'd also have to use it for playing decisions as well; however, I don't think this is the cause. You can see the sims by Qfit which compare KO to HiLo and KO ever so slightly outperforms in all but the deepest of penetration and this isn't even using TKO which would be even better: http://www.qfit.com/high-low-ko.htm Additionally you can see a few comparisons here on a TC and running count basis for 2 and 8 deck which has TKO outperforming: http://web.archive.org/web/20041220175523/http://frontpage.inxpress.net/grinder/simpage/syscomp1.htm
I think you may have ZG's words backwards as there are several threads he states TKO slightly beats HiLo. For example, If you look at post #24 in this thread http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=12936&highlight=tko+hilo&page=3
I'm not advocating TKO vs KO or KO over hilo, they are all extremely close and will work just fine.