ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BLACKJACK

K. See king.

Kalinevitch Ten Count. {TCS}. TBD
[ 78 Kalinevitch Blackjack Made Easy ]

Kaplan, Bill.  Kaplan was a 1980 Harvard MBA graduate and ran a successful blackjack team in Las Vegas.  That is, until he met “Mr. M” of the MIT Blackjack Team and helped form a new MIT team in 1980.
[ blackjacklife.com ] [ WIKIPEDIA: MIT Blackjack Team ] [ YOUTUBE ] [ ARCHIVE: themitblackjackteam.com ] [ cigaraficionado.com ] [ History VS Hollywood ] [ PODCASTS: Oct 14, 2011, Jun 8, 2017 ]

Kansas.  In 2016, the state of Kansas had 6 casinos with 70 blackjack tables.
[ qfit.com ]

K.C.. A professional blackjack and advantage player. See Inside the Edge: A Professional Blackjack Adventure.
[ PODCASTS: Dec 16, 2011, Jun 20, 2019 ]

Keen, Paul (March 14, 1942 – Oct 22, 1994) aka “Fast Action Jackson”. A well respected card counter and former Las Vegas reporter for Arnold Snyder’s Blackjack Forum.  Paul was an employee of the Gambler’s Book Club in Las Vegas and was always willing to share his knowledge of the game with visitors.  Steve Forte has said that “Paul Keen was certainly one of the game’s notable ‘journeymen’“.  Howard Schwartz comments, “Paul was a very special person and probably assisted more people on blackjack books than anyone else in our 30-year history.”  Paul died of heart failure. See Precision Count.
[ ARCHIVE: rge21.com  2001 ] [ Winter 95 BJR 4.1 ] [ 36 BJC Nov 94 ] [ ARCHIVE: blackjackforumonline.com ]

Kelly betting. To bet in a manner that will maximize the long term growth rate of your bankroll.   See Kelly Criterion.

Kelly Criterion/. (John L. Kelly, Jr.) (1956) This is a bet-sizing system based on the knowledge of the player’s advantage and variance at any point in the game.  The standard deviation (SD) for a single hand in blackjack is about 1.15¹⁾A standard deviation of 1.15 is based on a blackjack game with liberal rules.  If the rules are not so generous the SD can be as low as 1.10 or so. thus the variance turns out to be about 1.32 (square of the SD).  An optimal Kelly bet can be calculated to be:

KELLY CRITERION FORMULA

Amount to bet = (%Advantage / Variance) x $Bankroll
where Variance = 1.32

So, if a player has a 1% advantage and a $10,000 bankroll:

(.01 / 1.32) x $10000 = $75.76

he should bet about $75 on the hand.  The Kelly Criterion is used in money management by many professional card counters to maximize the long term growth rate of their bankroll. Since the formula above recommends a $0 bet when you have no advantage, many players opt to use 1/2 or even 1/4 Kelly.  See risk of ruin.  See gambler’s ruin. See Leib Criterion.  See Certainty Equivalence. See SCORE.  MORE INFO
[ 03-21-56 Kelly A New Interpretation of Information Rate  turtletrader.com  and bjrnet.com ] [ wizardofodds.com ] [ wizardofodds.com ] [ WIKIPEDIA ] [ 6/66 Thorp A Favorable Side Bet in Nevada Baccarat Vol.61,313 ] [ 70 Wilson The Casino Gambler’s Guide ] [ 81 Friedman Understanding & Applying the Kelly… ] [ 10/81 Wong BJW Vol.3,162 ] [ 83 Griffin A Fractured Fable Vol.22,6 ] [ 83 Friedman Kelly vs Mini-Max Vol.24,10 ] [ 87 Humble World’s Greatest Blackjack Book 203 ] [ 3/93 Schlesinger Risk of Ruin BJF 5 ] [ 9/93 Leib What’s a Kelly Man to Do? BJF 31 ]

Kelly, John Larry, Jr. (July 7, 1923 – July 15, 1965)* A scientist who worked at Bell Labs and best known for formulating the Kelly Criterion, a formula to determine what proportion of wealth to risk in a sequence of positive expected value bets to maximize the rate of return. * Grave headstone shows “Sr” ???
[ WIKIPEDIA ] [ billiongraves.com ]

keno tickets. Where many blackjack experts (and authors) jot down notes about game conditions and dealer/casino information. When playing blackjack, it is a nice touch to have a few keno ticket receipts sticking out of your top pocket 🙂

key card(s). A reference to a card or group of cards that are memorized with the hope that they will reappear after the shuffle.  Used in ace location and sequencing strategies. The term “false key(s)” refers to a card or groups of cards that are falsely identified as key cards.  See kiss.

key card concept. See Sklansky Key Card Concept.

king. (K). One of four 10-valued cards in a standard deck of playing cards.  If a player knows he will receive a 10-valued card he has an advantage of about 14% or so.
[ 888casino.com ]

King’s Bounty. (KB) A blackjack side bet from Bally Technologies.  According to their literature: … a side bet that pays when a player’s first two cards total 20.  To play, players make a standard blackjack wager and the King’s Bounty side bet. The dealer will deal blackjack according to house procedures. Players will win the King’s Bounty side bet if their first two cards add up to 20. The top award occurs when a player has two Kings of Spades and the dealer has blackjack. Other variations of this side bet include King’s Bounty Dealer Envy and King’s Bounty Deluxe. Typical payoffs are: 4/6/9/20/30/100/1000 for any 20 / KK / suited 20 / matched 20 / suited KK / KsKs / KsKs and dealer blackjack.
[ ARCHIVE: ballytech.com 2015 ] [ Wong CBN ]

kiss. 1) Keep It Simple Stupid or 2) An example of a mnemonic for the King of Spades.  Mnemonics are often used as an aid in remembering key cards when Ace sequencing.
[ 2)  Wiki: Mnemonic ]

KISS 1.  {PCS/L1} (c2003) (Fred Renzey). An unbalanced card counting system that supposedly simplifies things by “omitting” 50% of the cards from the count.  Discussed in Renzey’s book Blackjack Bluebook II.  Note that this is a unique “suit aware” count that only counts half of the 2s (either black or red) and ignores the Tens.
[ 2010 Wattenberger Modern Blackjack 182 ]

A 2  3 4 5 6 7 8 9 T  J  Q  K
0 0/1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 -1 -1 -1

BC = .87 PE = .58 IC = .81

KISS 2.  {PCS/L1} (c2003) (Fred Renzey).  An unbalanced suit-aware count where the 2 is counted differently depending on the color of the suit.
[ qfit.com ]

A 2  3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0 0/1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 -1

BC = .90 PE = .62 IC = .87

KISS 3.  {PCS/L1} (c2003) (Fred Renzey). An unbalanced suit-aware count where the 2 is counted differently depending on the color of the suit.
[ qfit.com ]

A  2  3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
-1 0/1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 -1

BC = .97 PE = .56 IC = .78

Knowlton, Brett. Former player / manager for the MIT and Greek Blackjack Teams. Brett has a B.S. in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University and a PhD from MIT in Materials Science.
[ ARCHIVE: aleaconsultinggroup.com  2019 ]

Knock-Out Blackjack. (KO) {PCS/L1} (1996) (Olaf Vancura and Ken Fuchs)  A very popular unbalanced card counting system praised for its simplicity.  What makes this more simple than a balanced system such as Hi-Lo is you don’t have to convert to a true count.  More info.  See REKO. See TKO.  See T-H Card Counting System(s).
[ 98 Vancurra/Fuchs Knock-Out Blackjack ] [ qfit.com/cardcounting/K-O/ ] [ AMAZON: Knock-Out Blackjack ]

A 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
-1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 -1

BC = .98 PE = .55 IC = .78

KO.   Acronym for Knock-Out Blackjack.

Konik, Michael.  (Born 1965) An American author, gambling columnist, television personality, jazz singer, improvisational comedian and blackjack / poker player.  Konik has participated at least twice in the World Series of Blackjack and has also competed in the World Blackjack Tour.  Konik is the author of The Man with the $100,000 Breasts and other Gambling Stories and was a contributing author to Cigar Aficionado magazine.
[ MichaelKonik.com ] [ WIKIPEDIA ] [ blackjackhero.com ] [ Cigar Aficionado ] [ PODCAST: Sep 16, 2011 ]

Krigman, Alan. (19?? – Oct 2013) A syndicated gaming columnist and publisher of the Winning Ways newsletter, a monthly newsletter.  His columns focused on gambling probability and statistics.  He passed away in October, 2013. 
[ krigman.casinocitytimes.com ]

Kucharski, Adam. Author of the book The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling.  Interviewed on the Gambling with an Edge podcast.
[ PODCAST: Jun 14, 2016 ]

kurtosis.   A measure of how “fat” a probability distribution’s tails are, measured relative to a normal distribution having the same standard deviation. A distribution is said to be leptokurtic if its tails are fatter than those of a corresponding normal distribution. It is said to be platykurtic if its tails are thinner than those of the normal distribution.
[ ARCHIVE: contingencyanalysis.com 2000 ] [ Graphic: Courtesty of Contingency Analysis ]