KO Fan: KO Pref vs KO Full

[KO Fan]

Does anyone out there have an opinion on going to KO Full from KO Preferred. Would there be any appreciable gain EV/Score switching to the Full for single, double, and or six deck? I see that most of the data in BJA 2 regarding KO is with the KO Preferred system.

Thanks for your input.

[Parker]

> Does anyone out there have an opinion on
> going to KO Full from KO Preferred. Would
> there be any appreciable gain EV/Score
> switching to the Full for single, double,
> and or six deck? I see that most of the data
> in BJA 2 regarding KO is with the KO
> Preferred system.

> Thanks for your input.

As the book says, the gain from the full indices is minimal.

If you play mostly single deck, and if you're the sort who can memorize indices with relatively little effort, then it is a quick & easy way to pick up a small amount of additional EV.

For double deck, and especially for shoes, it really isn't worth the effort.

[Adam N. Subtractum]

Unfortunately, the KO book doesn't really provide a good comparison of the gains that can be made by using an extended set vs. the Preferred set.

In the book the respective expectations (unfortunately they do not include a risk-weighted comparo) for Preferred and Full are .62 and .63 (6D,DOA,S17,75%pen,1-8). This comparison shows an increase of a mere 1.61% to our expectation. Obviously, someone looking at these figures would deduce that the gains are probably not worth the effort. It should be noted though, that the "illeged" KO Full set is comprised of only 44 plays...not quite a huge mental feat to put to memory.

Now let's make a more fair comparison, using a more complete "Full" set, generated by some up-to-date, quality software. (The figures I am using for this particular case come from Dr. Org's "Understanding Knockout Blackjack" article, and were generated with the condition of risk-aversion.) This time, using around 80 indices and the same exact conditions as in the KO book, except for a 1-10 spread, we achieve expectations for Preferred and Full of .73 and .78, respectively. This shows us that we increase our expectation by 6.85% by using the Full set, over 4 times the increase from the Full set in the KO book!

This works out to about $1.75 extra on your $25/hour win rate...is it worth it? That's a relative question, and one only you can answer for yourself.

If your still not moved by these figures, an increase of over 10% could be attained (using the same amount of indices) with only a MINIMAL increase in difficulty...see my upcoming post at cardcounter.com, to be entitled "21st Century True-Counting".

ANS

[Adam N. Subtractum]

...that the effect would've been slightly more pronounced with the 1-8 spread used in the first example.

ANS