> G'day everybody,

> As a beginner I have spent the past three
> months learning the KO Preferred count. I
> have that down pat. I've been using CVBJ
> full table drills to practice the count.I
> seem to have plateaued out at 5.5 to 6
> rounds per minute with mostly 100%
> accuracy...occasionaly make one mistake in a
> round. Just wondering what speed others
> achieve and what is considered to be fast
> enough?

First, more specifics. I do the same drill. I run full-table, starting hands, 6 decks, which makes it a bit harder because the running count can be extreme. I run it at 5 seconds per shot, but give myself another 5 seconds (never use it) to find the right button. I often find it taking as long to find -8 as it did to count all the hands. I typically go between 9-10 per minute, although if I _really_ bear down I can go beyond that quite easily, but it becomes tiring.

I don't really like the "full hand" approach as I never count like that in a game.

Another idea. I have a CVTEST customized to do the following:

1. flashcard, normal two-card hands, no indices.
2. flashcard, normal two-card hands, with fab4/I18 indices.
3. counting drill, two cards at a time, running count for 6 decks dealt to bottom.
4. remaining decks for 6 decks, 1 deck resolution.
5. counting drill, two cards at a time, true count, for 6 decks dealt to bottom.
5. full table running count
6. full table true count

I usually screw up one along the way somewhere, by hitting the wrong count, the wrong strategy play, or the wrong remaining deck estimate. I run this custom test once or twice a day, usually when I am fooling around late at night, and out of the last 5 runs, 3 were perfect, two were 99%.

Now to your other question. Hitting 5-6 per minute is not bad. I am not sitting in front of CV right now, but I believe it has at least 5 or 6 players + dealer hand. 5 per minute means you are counting 30-35 hands per minute, or 1800+ per hour. A dealer going that fast would dislocate his wrist and elbow and melt the shoe. Believe me, 5 per minute is plenty fast when you think about it.

I run the 2-card counting drills at 1 sec exactly per pair. I can go a bit faster, but if I screw up, I can't pause to refigure the count. For a reference I can count down a deck in about 15 seconds, two at a time... I can do that quite a bit faster, but at 15 seconds I don't make any errors, period. Going faster I will often end up at zero with a 10 or small card removed.

> I am going to do a bit of back counting at
> the casino,so I guess that will be a good
> guide as to whether I am fast enough.

Another good thing with CV is to set the options to play like a pitched game where the first two cards are dealt face down. That makes you pay more attention, as when a player takes a hit, and busts, CV will turn over his cards for a split second and then drag them to the discard. If you don't pay attention you will miss them. When you can do that with no problems, face-up games seem like child's play...

> I've read Knock out Blackjack and Stanford's
> Professional Blackjack and am currently
> reading Don's Blackjack Attack.
> Also read every post on this Forum and have
> learnt heaps.
> Looking forward to reply's.

> Christian

It would be an interesting side-topic to compare notes with others to see how speeds compare. Only thing that is necessary is to specify _exactly_ how we run each test, since CV has lots of options, with sliders that can speed up or slow things down, you can have the cards displayed only horizontally (easier to count) or mixed (turned every which way which makes it a bit harder at first) and so forth.

If several are interested, we could make a standardized test and perhaps Norm can tell us if there is an easy way to share the file that contains the customized test suite so that everyone could run the same tests.

Obviously for those that like the competition. I assume most BJ players fit that mold. My "competitiveness" often pisses my wife off, when I try to wrap a package faster than her, or clean something faster, etc. Just comes naturally to me.