Stopping the knock: Lower compression and ported heads...

During this long process, several people have chimed in. Some suggestions got lost in the mix. I have had a few suggest to have the chambers hogged out and to use a thinner gasket. Not a bad idea. Some liked the idea of going thinner with the heads as is to gain quench. I decided to go with thicker gaskets and ported heads.
Yeah, the port job isn't as slick as some others I have seen recently online. I had no experience having heads ported before so I wasn't knowledgeable enough to know the difference between a passable job and a precise CNC job. I DO know that prices for the expert porting are easily double what I paid, so its not as if my money was totally wasted.
One of the nagging things during all of this is the comments from many that felt my compression ratio SHOULD have been okay on pump fuel. I read from many that had engines with more CR that ran fine. I asked these people for the specifics of their engines and a few did respond. The majority of them used 93 octane which we can't get here in CA. EVERY one of these people with successful high CR engines were east of me where the fuel is a better quality AND higher octane.
This still brings me back to the nagging question: If others were able to run on pump gas, how can I get to that point?
I was under the belief that I was running at 10.73 to one. After cleaning the pistons and REchecking deck clearance, I found that I was .012 in the hole instead of .017. Then I started thinking of how I've had these heads off the engine a few times and had them lightly surfaced each time. The resurfacing surely reduced the chamber size by a measureable amount. This means that my actual compression ratio couls be closer to 11.0 to 1 but I still am at .051 quench distance at best. The 191 average cranking PSI shows that I am over the limits of what I can run with 91 octane fuel.

I asked around about what actual physical signs are visible if detonation is occuring. Some told me that the tops of the pistons will look like they have been hit with an icepick. I looked at mine before cleaning the carbon off and found absolutely no markings like that. After cleaning, the result is the same.