"Card-counting" is a really fun term for probabilistic variables, but inaccurate in this case (kind of like "coin flip"). This will give everyone who battles a better idea of the value of their recruiting efforts, as well as how prestige and preferences affect your odds. It's only card-counting if all things always remain the same - you'll never know exactly what your odds are to sign a player beforehand regardless of how much data you put together. Here are two scenarios:
Scenario 1: Team A has A+ prestige, Team B has C+ prestige. Team A gives 20 HVs, a CV, and 15 APs per cycle. Team B gives 20 HVs, a CV, and 30 APs per cycle as well as a promised start and minutes (in this particular scenario, the player prefers to play early). In the end Team A [hypothetically] has a 42% chance to sign the player, Team B has a 58% chance (everyone else is Moderate, or low, but also completely fictional).
Scenario 2: Exact same scenario as the first, only Team B doesn't promise the start until the 2nd to last cycle before the recruit is signed. To my understanding, a promised start operates as a kind of multiplier to APs, so with the exact same effort Team A could [hypothetically] have a 51% chance of signing, with Team B having a 49% chance.
Now imagine much more complicated scenarios where more than two teams are involved. There's too much you won't know before the recruit signs to "count cards". Get more creative with your complaining, or just be honest and say "I don't like 3.0 as much as 2.0, and I'm trying to find new ways to express that".