Card Counting Blackjack Game

Hello fellow forum members. Please try out the new card counting blackjack trainer game on WizardOfOdds.com.

You can select one of several popular counting systems, or enter one of your own liking.

The game starts with the following rules: 8 decks, dealer hits soft 17, double any 2 cards, double after split, surrender allowed -- but you can change them to just about anything by clicking Adjust Rules in the upper-left corner. It also defaults to the Hi-Lo counting system.

If you choose to have the game warn you on strategy errors, note that it calculates optimal strategy at every step, based on the exact composition of the remaining cards in the shoe; it does not know or enforce basic strategy.

There may or may not be a glitch with the calculations, which are done behind the scenes in a somewhat fragile process, and if anything goes wrong it will say Analysis Error or something to that effect.

Feel free to post any questions, comments, complaints, or bugs.

Thanks!

Oooooohhhhh! Christmas came early!!

I think there are a LOT of people that have been waiting and hoping you'd do this. What a gift, JB! Thanks!

I'd like to add that this card counting version of the blackjack game has been on our to-do list for years. We've had countless requests for it but there always seemed to be something more urgent to do, until now. JB worked hard on this for weeks so please give the tires a good kick and let us know what you think.

I really like this card counting training tool! I already see how bad my counting is but am sure I will improve with this practice.

The program works really well. I did find one small bug--it let's me hit split aces even though the rules are set in the default "NHSA." (I must choose stand after getting a non-ten on a split ace.)

If you play on "Turbo" it doesn't show one of the players cards or the dealers up card. It does show the totals, but not all the cards.



ZCore13

FIRST... this is phenomenal JB. Very nice job and I wish this was around when I was learning =P. It will still be used by vets of the game for trying/learning new counts I'm sure!

The cards are showing for me while playing "Turbo."

What are you using in the background on when to decide how to use the TC? i.e. if the TC = 2.4, are you rounding down to 2?... and if TC = 3.5 are you rounding up to 4? etc

I believe I've found a strategy error... I'm dealt 6h-3h vs. Dealer Qc. I hit and drew the 7c. So now I have a 3 card 16, and the RC is +1. Either way (3 card 16 or positive count) I shouldn't 'technically' be hitting my 16, though when I try to select "Stand" it tells me "Standing is not the best play."

...I see when clicking Analyze that it shows why hitting is being "calculated" as the best play given ALL of the remaining cards. This might be misleading to new players learning how to play as "on average" you do not want to hit here, though in this 'specific' situation given the exact cards the calculations show in the back that hit is better by .003.

p.s. I like the warning, but if it's going to say I'm wrong, and I've selected to see the warning, you might as well add a sentence for what the right play is?


Bug #2:
3h-Ad vs Dealer 7c.

I drew the Ah for soft 15, then the 9c for hard 14. So now I have hard 14 vs dealer 7, with a RC +5 and TC = 0 (6.6 decks left). The proper play is to hit, and when I try to it tells me that's not the right play. When I click Analyze Hand it only shows me STAND -1.00000000.

Is it possible to have the count information that would display when you moused over, instead of having to either have it on all the time, or click every time you want to see the count, and then click again to hide it again? Yes, I know how lazy this sounds, but if a mouse over is easily doable, it would make a nice option.
Great tool JB! I have been too lazy to practice counting, but this was the motivation I needed.

I second Romes request for the warning to either tell you the right play, or better yet, just present the calculation results.

Overall, a sound addition to the Wizard of Odds website. Most new programs have bugs which get sorted out over time but I have two points that I would like to make.

Firstly, would it be possible for the program to include BB+1, OBBO and OBO which would assist players in international jurisdictions?

Secondly, I believe it should be made clear to the player how the true count is calculated, i.e. floored, rounded or truncated. Most blackjack programs floor but rounding is more accurate.

I was so confused as to why the running count was innacurate, then I figured/assumed the machine was using HiLo...since I use a different count.

Pissing me off I can't early surrender my 13vsA. :( It says "that's not the best play", I'm like "EARLY SURRENDER IS THE BEST PLAY QUIT LYING TO ME" but machine probably only had LS, not ES programmed.


aside from my stupid frustration, good work.

Would be nice to have a shoe/discard rack(tray?) in the corner to visualize the played/remaining decks for TC calculation.


and mouse-over for RC/TC.

Thanks, I would really like it if you can do the exact same thing for single deck and double deck blackjack, as they have plenty of practical value due to wilder swings.

Quote: JB

Feel free to post any questions, comments, complaints, or bugs.

Thanks!

I'd just like to say what a great piece of work. Thank you JB.

I found another bug: With a running count of 0 (Hi-Lo) it said surrendering was not the best play for 16 vs. 10 (which is obviously incorrect).

Okay, lots of things to respond to.

- I am unable to reproduce the "not all cards show up in turbo" bug. So far it seems Zcore is the only one who has encountered this issue?

- The true count and running count are irrelevant in the sense that the game never uses them, since it calculates optimal strategy at every point. The counts are shown in the system you have selected so that you can verify your own internal count. The true count result is floored as some have discovered. For example, 1.9 floors to 1 and -1.1 floors to -2.

- Romes obviously encountered a bug with the 14-vs-7, which I'm looking into.

- Early surrender is only supported on ENHC games (which are implicitly early surrender). For peek games, you can adjust in the settings whether or not (late) surrender against an Ace is allowed.

- Single and Double deck games are supported - just click Adjust Rules and change the settings.

- I do not foresee a graphical representation of the discard tray in the immediate future.

- Other hole card rules (OBBO, BB+1, etc.) are extremely difficult to calculate and are not supported at the moment. Using ENHC should be a closer match than the peek rule. I leave open the possibility that they might be implemented at some point, but probably not in the immediate future.

- Showing the count by clicking will probably stay that way since there is no way to hover if you are playing the game on a phone. (Technically, there is a way to "hover" on iPhones at least, but that's a discussion for a different day.)

- Regarding 16 vs. 10, the count is irrelevant to the game because it does not enforce basic strategy + index plays. It calculates optimal results based on the exact composition of the shoe at that point. It would be impossible to have it teach index plays since you can enter any counting system of your own design.

Thanks for the update. A suggestion for the future - would it be possible to include Spanish 21 rules so both games can be played? The counting system may be a challenge as balanced counts, such as Hi - Lo, using Spanish decks(48 cards) would need to start at -4n where n is the number of decks in the shoe.

Quote: davethebuilder

Thanks for the update. A suggestion for the future - would it be possible to include Spanish 21 rules so both games can be played? The counting system may be a challenge as balanced counts, such as Hi - Lo, using Spanish decks(48 cards) would need to start at -4n where n is the number of decks in the shoe.

From a purely programming perspective I can tell you this would change the game entirely. It's not as easy as adding a toggle for Spanish 21 and changing a few rules... it's changing tons and tons of code where and is exactly what it is, an entirely new game. So this could be another game somewhere down the road perhaps, but just for a simplistic programming answer, no, this is not something that I'd even want "included" in this game.

Romes, I refer you to Casino Verite(CVBJ v5.6) where both games are supported on the one platform so it is possible but I agree it would be a challenge and a separate game maybe the answer. Even CVBJ does not support all the hole card rules or adjust for 48 card decks in the visual display of its discard tray drills. I wrote to Norm Wattenberger about this some time ago and it appears no one had raised the matter with him previously and he is looking into it so we may see them included in a future update of that program. However, it was just a suggestion since Spanish 21 is a Blackjack variant and can be counted.

If that were to happen, it would be unlikely to done by me. Changing the entire blackjack calculation engine to support Spanish 21 would be a massive undertaking, largely because suits matter in Spanish 21 whereas they do not in regular blackjack, so that shortcut gets thrown out the window. Sorry, but it really isn't as simple as just changing a couple quick things and now Spanish 21 is magically supported.

Casino Verite is a stand-alone executable program. Native-code executables have far more resources available to them, at a much faster speed, than Javascript in a web page does.

Ok, your reasons seem to indicate it to be an impractical request so it is probably best to fix any bugs and then leave it alone. However, if at some stage you can code the program to support the other hole card rules that would be beneficial to many players outside the US.

Weird I had the turbo bug the first time I loaded the game. The next time I loaded it (10 mins later) it didn't appear.

I could swear that the game told me I was making a non-optimal play when I tried to hit with a multi-card15 vs dealer's 10, TC minus 2. Hard to believe standing in that situation could be right play.

very handsome and useful software package. Very impressive, JB.

Comments so far:

1. I am having trouble with the aspect ratio of the screen. the vertical height of the image is such that I cannot see the count at the top of the image and the circles at the bottom of the image (that provide me my gameplay options) simultaneously on teh same screen. I.e., the image is too tall vertically to fit completely on my screen. I don't have this problem with other WOO graphical packages or with video games on other sites.

2. I have only played 17 hands so far. My play has been optimal, but I've only won one hand, pushed on 2 hands and lost on 14 hands. LOL, that's a bit too realistic. Seriously, that seems like a highly improbable run of cards. Probably just an RNG thing, but GEEZ!

Quote: radioraheem

I could swear that the game told me I was making a non-optimal play when I tried to hit with a multi-card15 vs dealer's 10, TC minus 2. Hard to believe standing in that situation could be right play.

It might very well have been optimal to stand if there were an unusually large number of sixes and fives absent from the deck. Remember that JB's program calculates the outcome of standing vs hitting given the actual distribution of cards remaining in the deck.

Possible, but how likely? I was about half way through an eight deck shoe.

Quote: radioraheem

Possible, but how likely? I was about half way through an eight deck shoe.

Card counting is inherently inaccurate, since it is only an approximation of what the optimal results might be. There will be times when the count seems to indicate one thing but the optimal result is something different.

Within the next few days I will make it so that showing the count also displays the exact composition of the remaining cards in the shoe. This will help identify whether or not there is a problem in the analysis algorithms.

After I make that change, I will only entertain/investigate inaccuracy claims which include a screenshot showing (1) the rules, (2) the remaining shoe composition, (3) the cards in the player and dealer hands, and (4) the analysis results. This way, the exact scenario in question can be verified with a third party, such as this calculator, which I relied on during the development and debugging of my analysis code.

Here's what the "Turbo Error" can do.

http://imgur.com/ig6KYAW

Thank you.

I was playing the double deck game, and the last hand of the shoe I got an alert to stand on hard 13. The count was negative, I think. I hit "analyze" and got an "analysis error" message, and the game crashed.

Edit: Got a couple other "Analysis Error" crashes.