At the Blackjack Ball one year, Tommy Hyland came up to mesaying he had a question. The preface “I have a question for you” is always alittle unnerving, especially coming from someone you don’t talk to very often. Sothen he asked me … [wait for it …]

“Why do you recommend KO?”

I was surprised, not by the question itself, but because itindicated Tommy must have read something I wrote. I think most professionalgamblers who know me don’t really read any of my stuff. But everyone’s beenreading Colin Jones’s The 21^st-Century Card Counter, whichespouses the same principle—simplicity gets the money—but draws a slightly differentconclusion.

Mies and I are Less-Is-More apologists, and CJ, who knows more counters than I do, agrees: “All the successful card counters I know (I’m 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.” I would only make a slight modification. The most successful counters I’ve seen aggressively attack certain casinos, but totally avoid others.

Some counters will go ahead and play anywhere, but I don’tthink that’s optimal. There are casinos out there that will allow a shockingnumber of hours. They just don’t know what a counter looks like, or they areunwilling to take countermeasures against the player. Successful countersgenerally play these unicorn casinos often and hard, sometimes camping out for months.The late Big Red camped out on the same table for years! Think about that—spreadingfrom 0 to 2x$300, with no cover, for 20-40 hours per week, for years. Andgetting points and comps on a player’s card on top of it all.  (That might seem like heaven to some, but I’mnot sure if I ever saw the man smile—not once.)

CJ presses the case for choosing a simple count system: “Youcan learn a much more complicated count, but when you consider 1) thecomplexity, 2) the time needed to really master it, 3) the room for errorwhich comes at a cost), 4) the amount of mental energy it takes to use it, and5) the value of rounds per hour, I question whether you’ll actually make moremoney. … And my strongest argument for HiLo is that every major card-countingteam I know of has used it.” To me, that last argument is actually the weakest.

Ironically, one of the teams CJ is talking about would beHyland’s team, but Tommy basically said the same thing to me at the Ball. When Tommystarted out, the Knockout Count (KO) didn’t exist, and other teams were usingHiLo. So everyone uses HiLo because everyone else uses it? It’s a fiat countsystem!

Okay, HiLo is actually a good system, but if, on paper, HiLois comparable to KO, then I’m very confident that KO will destroy HiLo in thewild. Why do I say that? Because extensive observation of actual APs in thewild shows that their performance is consistently below the system specsunderlying the computer-optimal EV.

People have a skepticism regarding running-count systems,but KO has a good pivot, and its indices are more precise than HiLo’s, due to KO’seffectively finer stepsize when we restrict indices to be integers. A singlepoint in the running-counted KO represents roughly a 0.2% change in EV, while apoint in the true-counted HiLo represents about 0.5%. If we were to learn fractionalHiLo indices, that KO advantage would go away, but no one would want to learnthat doubling 9 vs. 7 should happen at HiLo +3.2 (or +2.8, or whatever).

But look, no one estimates decks remaining well, especiallywhen the discard rack and shoe are opaque. And no one does the division fastenough, so hemming and hawing and stalling is introduced to the game. Then theexecution isn’t as smooth, and time is wasted.

Another argument that I sometimes hear, but thankfully notin CJ’s book, is that HiLo is more compatible with shuffle tracking. Oh please.Just stop.

If we’re 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’m 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’m willing to do when multi-tasking.

Every player swears that his execution is flawless, and it’sthe other guy who should consider a simpler system like KO, but the datasays otherwise. In every instance where we do a pop quiz or secret auditto test a player’s skill, the results are disappointing. (This is the scene inthe movie clip where we all stand in a crowd, and one-by-one step forward toannounce “I am the underperforming AP.”)

In recent years, I’ve 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’s some idiocracy going on. I think we’re 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’s BJA empire is a step in the right direction (from UstonAPC, RevereAPC, WongHalves, and others). For a veteran or a new player, I’d recommend KO, but CJ’s doing good work preaching HiLo. It’s aiight.