Olaf Vancura and Ken Fuchs
KO – K-O stands for Knock-Out Blackjack and also Ken and Olaf, the designers of the K-O Count — a very easy, yet powerful, unbalanced strategy optimized for betting. Becoming one of the most popular card counting systems and probably the easiest of the legitimate, published Blackjack strategies. Described in Olaf Vancura and Ken Fuchs’s book Knock-Out Blackjack, Isochoric Publishing, 1996. Most experts initially had difficulty accepting that this count could be as powerful as it is, given its simplicity. (Some still cannot.) However, it is now generally accepted to be on a par with Hi-Lo. For extra gain, some people true-count K-O. Although, this substantially increases difficulty.
KO comes in three flavors: Rookie, which has no indexes, Preferred, which has compromise indexes, and Full, which has accurate indexes.
Olaf Vancura is now working on the casino side. Ken Fuchs is no longer active in Blackjack and sold his interest to Anthony Curtis. I believe an earlier strategy with the same tag values, the “All Sevens Count,” was independently introduced in The Book of British Blackjack by Dr. Zadehkoochak in 1992. It is no longer in print.
Card Tag Values
|
Strategy |
A |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
T |
|
KO (all versions) |
-1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
-1 |
Specifics
|
Rookie |
Preferred |
Full |
|
|
Strategy Type |
Unbalanced |
Unbalanced |
Unbalanced |
|
Level |
I |
I |
I |
|
Betting Correlation |
.98 |
.98 |
.98 |
|
Playing Efficiency |
- |
.55 |
.55 |
|
Insurance Correlation |
- |
.78 |
.78 |
|
Ease of use |
8.5 |
7.5 |
7 |
|
Ace-Reckoned |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Compromise Indexes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Suit Aware |
No |
No |
No |
© 2009 Norman Wattenberger
