How do I simulate games like the wizard?

Quote: VladPutin

You accept SD/DD blackjack for your betting system challenge? If so I might take you on after some research.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

No, and since you failed the reading comprehension test, now I'm blocking you.

Quote: VladPutin

Sounds like you reject blackjack because you're afraid of real math. You're specifically picking games with high HE to make it impossible for betting systems to beat the house edge.

And then you claim betting systems are "completely useless".

You, sir, have just committed a "bait and switch".

The fact that betting systems can not overcome your high HE games is not equivalent to "completely useless" and "makes no difference", iirc those are your own words. The bait and switch here is you're trying to claim they "makes no difference" because they can't over come your high HE games. But that's not what "makes no difference" actually means. It means it does not change the EV.

And that is where you're wrong.

That's why you only take high HE games in your challenge, because you're scared of real math.

If the HE is thin enough, a dent from the betting system can actually turn the EV positive.

According to CBJN, MGM has a 0.19% HE double deck, Paris 0.26% 6D, Aria 0.19% DD, Bellagio 0.20% DD, Caesars 0.26 6D etc etc.

All with thin edges that can be beaten without card counting, merely on the results of previous hands.

TLDR you're a coward hiding behind high house edge games with your challenge while using the fact nobody took your challenge to claim a logical fallacy.
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Quote: camapl

Am I the only one who learned PASCAL?
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Quote: ThatDonGuy

Pardon me for asking, but are you willing to describe your SD/DD blackjack "system" in some detail?
If you are, then it can be simulated.
If you aren't, then how does anyone tell the difference between "just using the system" and card counting?

Quote: camapl

Am I the only one who learned PASCAL?
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No - that was the standard language at UC-Berkeley in my day (early 1980s) for everything in the non-engineering Computer Science degree except assembly language programming (of course) and operating systems (which used C). This includes having to write a compiler in Pascal.
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Quote: teliot

Quote: MichaelBluejay

No, and since you failed the reading comprehension test, now I'm blocking you.

I just blocked them too. Life is too short to engage with people who want to argue that the Earth is flat
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Quote: unJon

To be fair, he was arguing for a simplistic version of “counting” based on whether previous hands were won or lost in blackjack.
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Quote: MichaelBluejay

Quote: unJon

To be fair, he was arguing for a simplistic version of “counting” based on whether previous hands were won or lost in blackjack.
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Maybe, but my Challenge page states:

(1) Games are roulette, craps, or baccarat (i.e., not blackjack)
(2) Challenge available only to system sellers
(3) Counting systems are disallowed
(4) Possibly more things that he missed would be revealed by his subsequent posts, which I didn't read

This is one reason the Wizard stopped offering his own challenge. People can't even read the damn rules.
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Quote: unJon

Yeah I’m not arguing with you. Was just reacting to [him] being characterized that the earth is flat.
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Quote: MichaelBluejay

Quote: unJon

To be fair, he was arguing for a simplistic version of “counting” based on whether previous hands were won or lost in blackjack.
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Maybe, but my Challenge page states:


(4) Possibly more things that he missed would be revealed by his subsequent posts, which I didn't read


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Quote: IWannaBeAP

He basically just said you were "hiding behind" high house edge games and not willing to take on low house edge games where the system can dent the EV. He was proposing blackjack games with ~0.2% House edge. He also called you the "C word" lol
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Quote: MichaelBluejay

(1) Blackjack can be beaten, with card-counting. (The rules disallow card-counting, but as we've seen, people don't read the rules.)

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Quote: IWannaBeAP

haha I meant he said "Coward" lol
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Quote: charliepatrick

I first wrote in Fortran in 1974 to study the UK single charts; the program took in a wad of cards, which included the data, and punched out the updated "file" onto cards and a printout of this weeks chart. The other program I remember was the "Game of Life" using "sparse arrays". In those days you sat at a card punch machine typing in your program.

Quote: IWannaBeAP

Quote: ThatDonGuy

I do my share of simulations, and I use Visual C#, which is part of Microsoft Visual Studio, which you can download for free.
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can you share an example of a simulation you did?
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long NumComeouts = 0L;
long Winnings = 0L;
int Die1, Die2;
int Point;
int Roll;

Die1 = R.Next(6) + 1;
Die2 = R.Next(6) + 1;
Point = Die1 + Die2;
if (Point == 7 || Point == 11)
{
  // Natural
  Winnings = Winnings + 1;
}
else if (Point == 2 || Point == 3 || Point == 12)
{
  // Craps
  Winnings = Winnings - 1;
}
else
{
  if (Point == 4 || Point == 10)
  {
    OddsBet = 3;
  }
  if (Point == 5 || Point == 9)
  {
    OddsBet = 4;
  }
  if (Point == 6 || Point == 8)
  {
    OddsBet = 5;
  }
  // Roll until you roll your point number or a 7
  Roll = 0;
  while (Roll != Point && Roll != 7)
  {
    Die1 = R.Next(6) + 1;
    Die2 = R.Next(6) + 1;
    Roll = Die1 + Die2;
  }
  if (Roll == Point)
  {
    // One advantage of 3/4/5x odds is, all wins pay 7 (1 for the original
    // pass line bet, plus 6 for the odds bet)
    Winnings = Winnings + 7;
  }
  else
  {
    // Remember to subtract both the pass line bet and the odds bet
    Winnings = Winnings - (OddsBet + 1);
  }
}  
NumComeouts = NumComeouts + 1;
if (NumComeouts % 100000L == 0L)
{
  // Output the number of comeouts and the amount of winnings here
}

Quote: teliot

The first programing language I learned was Basic. In 12th grade (1974/75) I would get excused from French Class to go to the one and only teletype our high school had, that was connected to the district's mainframe computer. We would code using yellow punch tape so that the whole program could be saved. In those days the big program we worked on was an array-based version of Star Trek, where you had to use trigonometry to figure out the angle to fire a missile at the Klingons. We'd move one array location at a time towards the base for refueling, or avoid colliding with stars, as we went in search of Klingon battle cruisers to fight. Next up was programming a landing game, where we could choose our planet and its gravitational field was fixed, and we had to land our spaceship using individual directions towards firing the retro-rockets, with a fixed fuel supply. I tell you, those games played incredibly slowly over a teletype were just as much fun for us then as anything I've seen since. In 1975 our little club took a field trip to LA College where we were shown a computer that could play chess. With gratitude to my French teacher.

Quote: charliepatrick

I use Javascript for my simulations. As has been said you need to ensure you have coded the RNG correctly
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Quote: VladPutin

Bruh you look like you don't know how to read either. Either that or you're ignorant of the math of the games you claim to know.
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Quote: Wizard

Personal insult. Three-day suspension.

Quote: Wizard

The only code I didn't write is a Mersenne Twister RNG.

Quote: Mental

I guarantee that if you solve a few games that really interest you, you will gains skills that will transfer to other problems. It will also help you recognize beatable games. Ed Thorpe's calculations weren't that difficult or sophisticated. His real genius was in sensing that he could make significant improvements to basic strategy by understanding the effects of card removal. I imagine he learned a lot about the problem as he was writing his programs. You don't learn as much from reading a result from someone else (which may not even be correct).
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Quote: Mental

To analyze video poker, you just analyze the best strategy of all 8,000 or so nonequivalent deals and then take the weighted average HE. There is no RNG involved in calculating the HE for video poker. That is what I do in my program and I can do it 1.6 seconds, including generating a strategy. This is an exact result. A MC sim would be slow and inexact.

I assume this is what gordonm888 means by looping -- looping over all possible deals.
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Quote: Ace2

Please define unique
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Quote: aceside

Is there some way to collaborate with a programmer?
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Quote: ThatDonGuy

Quote: Ace2

Please define unique
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A "unique" hand is one that is different from the other unique hands even when you switch the suits around. For example, if you have a hand, and then make all of the spades in that hand hearts and all of the hearts in that hand spades, those two are the same unique hand.

Another way to put it: replace spades with "Suit A," hearts with "Suit B," clubs with "Suit C," and diamonds with "Suit D"; the hands formed by assigning spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds to Suit A through Suit D in each of the 24 orders are the same unique hand.

Examples:
All four Royal Flushes are a single "unique hand"
All four hands that are four Aces are a single "unique hand"
The hands 2s, 3s, 5h, 8d, 9h; 2d, 3d, 5c, 8h, 9c; 2d, 3d, 5s, 8h, 9s are a single "unique hand" - a suited 2 and 3, a suited 5 and 9 of a second suit, and an 8 of a third suit.
Note that 2s, 2h, 3s, 3h, 4s (2, 3, 4 suited; 2, 3 suited in a different suit) and 2s, 2h, 3s, 3h, 4c (2, 3 suited; 2, 3 suited in a different suit; 4 in a third suit) are two different "unique hands." If the 4 is a heart, it is the same "unique hand" as the one with 4s; if the 4 is a diamond, it is the same "unique hand" as the one with 4c.
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Quote: ThatDonGuy

Quote: Ace2

Please define unique
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A "unique" hand is one that is different from the other unique hands even when you switch the suits around. For example, if you have a hand, and then make all of the spades in that hand hearts and all of the hearts in that hand spades, those two are the same unique hand.

Another way to put it: replace spades with "Suit A," hearts with "Suit B," clubs with "Suit C," and diamonds with "Suit D"; the hands formed by assigning spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds to Suit A through Suit D in each of the 24 orders are the same unique hand.

Examples:
All four Royal Flushes are a single "unique hand"
All four hands that are four Aces are a single "unique hand"
The hands 2s, 3s, 5h, 8d, 9h; 2d, 3d, 5c, 8h, 9c; 2d, 3d, 5s, 8h, 9s are a single "unique hand" - a suited 2 and 3, a suited 5 and 9 of a second suit, and an 8 of a third suit.
Note that 2s, 2h, 3s, 3h, 4s (2, 3, 4 suited; 2, 3 suited in a different suit) and 2s, 2h, 3s, 3h, 4c (2, 3 suited; 2, 3 suited in a different suit; 4 in a third suit) are two different "unique hands." If the 4 is a heart, it is the same "unique hand" as the one with 4s; if the 4 is a diamond, it is the same "unique hand" as the one with 4c.
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Quote: MichaelBluejay

Quote: aceside

Is there some way to collaborate with a programmer?
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There are lots of sites where you can hire programmers for one-off projects, like Upwork, StackOverflow, and Fiverr. You might even be able to find some here. (I'm not available now, sorry, and I'm not the best programmer, anyway.)
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Quote: Wizard

Quote: VladPutin

Bruh you look like you don't know how to read either. Either that or you're ignorant of the math of the games you claim to know.

Personal insult. Three-day suspension.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

No, and you failed the reading comprehension test.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

Quote: unJon

Was just reacting to [VladPutin] being characterized that the earth is flat.
]

Got it. But actually, I wouldn't put it past him.

Quote: aceside

Do you think it is possible to use Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in Excel to simulate for the house edge using a certain Blackjack basic strategy to play a billion 2-deck shoes?
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Quote: teliot

So either one can code or they can't.

Quote: DogHand

teliot,

Thanks for providing your code. I almost always learn something new when I see examples of code from experienced programmers.

One quick question: you have this statement fragment in your code:

banker1 >= 0 && banker1 <= 2

Do you actually have to check if banker1 is greater than or equal to zero?

Dog Hand
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