Related papers: Snackjack: A toy model of blackjack
In this paper, we calculate a basic strategy for several variations of a simplified version of Blackjack. In short, for these variants the player has only the two options of hit or stand, and they may only make either decision once. Other…
We introduce a variant of the classic poker game blackjack -- the continuous blackjack. We study the Nash Equilibrium as well as the case where players deviate from it. We then pivot to the study of a large class of adaptive strategies and…
The subject of this paper is a variation of a blackjack game, mainly popular in some parts of Europe where it is known as einz (in German slang: one). We describe the rules of this game, indicate its main characteristics, give some…
Computer calculations for most exact expected values in blackjack have been available since the 1960's, but exact results for pair splitting and resplitting have previously been too computer intensive. This paper describes a new algorithm…
In 1970, Statistics giant, Bradley Efron, amazed the world by coming up with a set of four dice, let's call them A,B,C,D, whose faces are marked with [0,0,4,4,4,4], [3,3,3,3,3,3],[2,2,2,2,6,6],[1,1,1,5,5,5] respectively, where die A beats…
This recreational mathematics article shows that the game of Snakes and Ladders is intransitive: square 69 has a winning edge over 79, which in turn beats 73, which beats 69. Analysis of the game is a nice illustration of Markov chains,…
There are 134,459 distinct initial hands at the video poker game Jacks or Better, taking suit exchangeability into account. A computer program can determine the optimal strategy (i.e., which cards to hold) for each such hand, but a complete…
We describe the probability theory behind a casino game, blackjack, and the procedure to compute the optimal strategy for a deck of arbitrary cards and player's expected win given that he follows the optimal strategy. The exact blackjack…
Each of two players, by turns, rolls a dice several times accumulating the successive scores until he decides to stop, or he rolls an ace. When stopping, the accumulated turn score is added to the player account and the dice is given to his…
Blackjack or "21" is a popular card-based game of chance and skill. The objective of the game is to win by obtaining a hand total higher than the dealer's without exceeding 21. The ideal blackjack strategy will maximize financial return in…
We consider the following simple game: We are given a table with ten slots indexed one to ten. In each of the ten rounds of the game, three dice are rolled and the numbers are added. We then put this number into any free slot. For each…
John von Neumann studied a simplified version of poker where the "deck" consists of infinitely many cards, in fact, all real numbers between $0$ and $1$. We harness the power of computation, both numeric and symbolic, to investigate analogs…
Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe is a variant of the well known tic-tac-toe (noughts and crosses) board game. Two players compete to win three aligned "fields", each of them being a tic-tac-toe game. Each move determines which field the next player…
Bidding chess is a chess variant where instead of alternating play, players bid for the opportunity to move. Generalizing a known result on so-called Richman games, we show that for a natural class of games including bidding chess, each…
The classical Maker-Breaker positional game is played on a board which is a hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$, with two players, Maker and Breaker, alternately claiming vertices of $\mathcal{H}$ until all the vertices are claimed. When the game…
Fitch Cheney's 5-card trick was introduced in 1950. In 2013, Mulcahy invented a 4-card trick in which the cards are allowed to be displayed face down. We suggest our own invention: a 3-card trick in which the cards can be face down and also…
In the natural generalization of tic-tac-toe to an $n \times n \times n$ board where $n \in \mathbb{N}$, it is known that the first player has a winning strategy if $n \leq 4$ and that either player can force a draw if $n \geq 8$. The…
We consider a two player simultaneous-move game where the two players each select any permissible $n$-sided die for a fixed integer $n$. A player wins if the outcome of his roll is greater than that of his opponent. Remarkably, for $n>3$,…
Subset take-away is a two-player game involving a fixed finite set A. Players alternate choosing a proper, non-empty subset of A, with the condition that one may not name a set containing a set that was named earlier. A player unable to…
Poker is a family of card games that includes many variations. We hypothesize that most poker games can be solved as a pattern matching problem, and propose creating a strong poker playing system based on a unified poker representation. Our…