January 13, 2008 at 11:55 am

Games have become the subject of some serious scientific study.

Take blackjack for example. Here we all know the rules, but we don’t have access to perfect information about all the variables. So, when you play blackjack in a casino or play online blackjack, you see all the players’ cards, but only the dealer’s upcard. You’re also not allowed to look through the decks (which would take all the fun out of the game) and so do not know the order of cards in the stack. But, for calculation purposes, this is still very good quality information and “robot” players can be given comprehensive rule systems for shading the odds in their favor.

For a long time, no-one thought that computers would be able to compete with the best in the world at poker because less information is available to the players and the strategies involve more the human skills of devising devious traps and dishonest tricks (sorry, that’s called bluffing in more professional circles). But, in July 2007 at Vancouver, Canada, a machine called Polaris came close to winning against two of the top poker professionals. The most interesting feature about the contest was that Polaris was not only able to work out all the probabilities, but also to analyse the human opponents’ style of play and, where necessary, bluff.

So, back to blackjack. There’s no reason why you can’t be as good as a well-programmed computer. When you see all the other players’ cards and the dealer’s upcard, there’s always a “perfect” blackjack strategy. If you learn and apply all the strategies, you’re almost even-money with the House. Whether you get better than evens depends on the House rules. Different rules shift the odds slightly in both directions.

If we stopped there, most people could play blackjack both in the real world and in online casinos, and not lose money over time. Casinos and their investors would not be so happy, but we would all have played blackjack for fun and, if we hit a lucky streak and knew when to quit, we could walk away with a profit. Is there more?

Well, now comes the sensitive subject of card counting. Let’s be straightforward about this. If you count the cards, you shift the odds in your favor. All you are doing is using your memory and skills to give yourself an edge. There’s nothing illegal about it although a casino always has the right to ask you to leave if you start winning too much money. The reason why it works with blackjack is the so-called Law of Independent Trials. When you play roulette, the croupier rolls the ball round the spinning wheel, where it will land, no-one knows. At the end of each spin, the croupier picks up the ball and repeats the throw with another spin. There’s no mathematical connection between each spin. They are completely independent events for the purposes of calculating probabilities.

But, in blackjack, you start with a finite number of cards in the stack of decks, so each new deal changes the probability of what the remaining cards must be. Suppose you’ve already seen half the available picture cards and you know how many cards have been dealt, you can work out the probability of receiving one of the remaining picture cards in the next deal. That can give you a big edge if, in the next deal, you pick up a pair of 8s. With the probabilities calculated, you can judge whether to split and go for 18 with one of the predicted picture cards. This simple kind of calculation gives you a very real advantage in planning your blackjack strategy.

Hey, come on! When you play blackjack online, you’re playing against a machine so why not show it who’s the boss. Let’s get a little more scientific about playing this game of blackjack online.

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