My interest in Black Jack was sparked by my recent visit to the United States which included two days in Las Vegas. Between doubling my money (80 dollars from 40) on a Black Jack table and having it pointed out to me that an optimal strategy could be calculated I decided I wanted to create a Black Jack simulation that was as close to the casino version (in terms of game mechanics) as possible.

The existence of an optimal strategy also allows for the programming of computer players which will enforce the strategy with different levels of 'knowledge' of that strategy and hence have different levels of success.

This is, at present, more of a future development than a current project. An initial basis for the program has been formed but will probably be rewritten since I now have a far better grasp of component construction.

An interesting side track is the calculation of the optimal strategy. Overall this may seem very complicated since any card could be drawn which may or may not happen to give the player a total greater than the dealer's hand after the dealer's play. It is actually quite simple if you happen to know the right tools to use and you break the problem down into sections.

As with almost all optimal strategy calculations the last stage must be calculated first. In this case a table may be calculated that tells the player the probability that he or she will win given that the player has a total of x and the dealer has y showing. I have already constructed a simple program to do this for one rule set and I may put these results here at some point in the future.

The second, slightly more complicated, step is to use these probabilities to determine if it is more 'profitable' to hit, stand, double or surrender given the situation you are currently in. This step should not be very complex to program but I have not yet had a chance to construct it.