There is now a large set of OPP simulations posted on www.advantageplayer.com by Cacarulo. The end result? OPP has about 50% of the win rate of KO Rookie. (KO Rookie has no indexes and no Insurance.)
To compare OPP to KO rookie is fine. I suppose newcomers would find it interesting that OPP is half as effective, although it may be easier to learn. I don't think so, but that's me. Certainly with KO Rookie you can learn something that you can grow and build on as your skills advance -OPP, not so much.
But the come out party for OPP trumpeted something way more signifigant than that .. 75% the win rate of HILO.
75%.
Does any reasonable person use HILO without indices? Do they use HILO and never take insurance? Surrender? Never optimize their bet ramp?
No. But that was the comparison being allowed to be made; to his credit Snyder did try to say it was really for girlfriends and boyfriends, wives and spouses, dads and coal miners, all the while being fine with others exclaiming 75%.
Comparing OPP to HILO, as HILO is commonly practiced and taught in any book ever written about it, CACARULO found it to be less than one-third effective. Not 75%. In fact, if OPP is played at a table with other players -as the case will be with most OPP practioners, it is less than one-third effective.
That's the point.
to Carlos -nice job; as I have said before I admire creative thinkers.
to Radar O'Reilly -shame on you, Fake_Handle, George Crumb, and the Blackjack Historian as well. Sell the newbies on the OPP win rate being 75% that of HILO and keep making sure they never read Blackjack Attack. Just don't call me a con man.
BTW, have you explained to Carlos yet why BJA3 is not worth the paper it's written on; and to not read BJA1 or BJA2 either -even though you and Arnold hustled the **** (you pick) out of them?
to the Newbs -there is a lot of great stuff at BJFOL, a lot. Unfortunately it's getting watered down with exaggerated claims like this one and articles like that posted by the Blackjack Historian. Sadly, it now seems you have to choose your reference material carefully over there. If you decide to post, also, be aware they will modify and rewrite your posts for you when/if they see fit. It's happened twice that I know about -who knows how many others.
I don't think two counting systems can be compared at all, to everyone's satisfaction. Do I have to go further than to mention the huge argument I got into on AP.com when someone asked about how zen and hilo compared, and I simply ran two sims using CVCX and posted the results. And HiLo was better. And then it was pointed out that CVCX didn't have indices for surrender for the zen count, yet it was my fault that the comparison was therefore skewed. Norm used the zen count _as published_. And it was not published with surrender indices. Hi-Lo has had them for as long as I have used hi-lo, and then some.
So no matter how one compares two systems, there are always the nit-pickers that are going to say "you left this out" or "you should have left that out" and so forth.
It is hardly worth the trouble to run sims for anyone but yourself, since if you run your own, you ought to be satisfied with the conditions and trust the results.
These feuds really get tiring. And about 90% of it is about feuding, and 10% about blackjack. Which is unfortunate....
I will look over Cac�s results more closely when I got more time. I was getting geared up to do some similar runs myself, so I will compare some of the answers.
