Blackjack KO Card Counting System

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Easy Knockout Blackjack Card Count System

One of the most attractive features of blackjack is that it offers an incredibly low house edge with very minimal effort. The term ‘basic blackjack strategy‘ uses the word ‘basic‘ because it’s so easy to employ, while still being fantastically effective in dropping the house advantage to ~0.5%.

To get that edge even lower, you’ll need to include a card counting system in your repertoire. Note that you can’t do this at an online casino, or on any other mechanized blackjack game. Electronic cards are always reshuffled after each hand, making a count futile.

To count cards effectively, you’ll need to play a live dealer game in a land-based casino. Of course, if you get caught, you could be ejected from the table—not because it’s illegal, but because they have that right. That means you’ll need to get in a lot of practice first. And if you appreciate the ease of a basic blackjack strategy, odds are you’ll want to practice the easiest way to count cards.

Knockout Blackjack Card Count System

The Knockout card counting system, (a.k.a. KO card count system), gets its name from its appearance in Ken Fuchs and Olaf Vancura’s 1998 publication of, Knock-Out Blackjack: The Easiest Card Counting System Ever Devised. As the name implies, this system comes with a level of simplicity that virtually anyone can take advantage of. It’s based on the essence of a traditional Hi-Lo card count. Some cards receive a value of +1, others a value of -1, while a few in the middle are designated 0. Unlike a classic count, however, KO is not a balanced system. Counting through an entire deck will not bring you to 0. That may sound like a negative, but it’s actually a valuable asset. More on that in a moment…

Employing the Blackjack KO Card Counting System

Here’s how it works. The following cards are given the corresponding value:

10, J, Q, K, A = +1

2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 = -1

8, 9 = 0

When a game of blackjack begins with a new (freshly shuffled) shoe of cards, you begin the count at 0. For each card that is seen, the corresponding value is added or subtracted from the count. If an Ace is played, add 1; when you see a 4, subtract 1, and so on.

According to the authors of the KO card counting system, once the count reaches +2, it’s time to start increasing your bet size. The higher the count becomes, the higher your bets should be. It’s that simple.

Unbalanced Card Counting Systems

You’ll notice there are more -1 values than +1. This is how Fuchs and Vancura created the unbalanced account that makes the Knockout blackjack card count system one of the easiest ways to count cards.

In a traditionally balanced card counting system, it’s necessary to account for the number of decks in the shoe. It’s a philosophy known as converting the ‘running count‘ into a ‘true count‘. It’s done by dividing the current count by the estimated number of decks remaining in the shoe. It’s not really a true count, though, since it involves a degree of estimation. Fortunately, an unbalanced system like this one requires no conversion to sustain relevancy. Keep an accurate count, and it just works.