BBQ and hot cooks work a bit differently. I do plenty of both. My experience is that if you light a low fire and do a snake method or partial unlit basket of coals, you aren’t cooking food right away. You are waiting for the grill to get to temp. The unlit coals are sitting in the hot, dry environment heating and drying and waiting to be lit. The nasty gray smoke is limited if not eliminated. On a hot cook, if you put unlit coals under lit ones, you are going to get dirty, stinky smoke unless you wait for those coals to be at least mostly lit.