BLACKJACK TRAINER DOCUMENTATION Blackjack Trainer may be used in several ways: As a Game: ---------- At its most basic it can be played simply as a game. Select "Play without Help" from the "Options" menu and the Blackjack Table will appear on the screen, the pack will be shuffled and your Bank will be set to two hundred pounds. You can now play until you run out of money. The method of play is intuitive and is designed to replicate normal casino play. Before any cards are dealt, the player must place a bet. To do this pick up chips from the £1 or £5 box (or both) with the left mouse button. (If you pick up too much, you can drop chips with the right button.) Move the chips into the betting box and press the left button to make the bet. Two cards will be dealt to you, and one to the dealer. It is now up to you to select Stick, Hit, Split or Double. Once you have finished, or got exactly 21 the dealer deals to himself according to the rules, and settles the bet(s). If you run out of money, you will be given the choice of finishing or using a pretend credit card to get some more cash. The SAVE and LOAD buttons on the table screen allow the player to save a game if interrupted during a lucky streak. The current pack is saved along with the player's bank and the next card to be dealt. The SAVE option can also be used to play the same pack using differing strategies. Simply SAVE a game immediately after a shuffle, and load it again when the pack runs out (at the next shuffle) to start playing with the same pack. As a Teacher: ------------- It can also be used to practice playing according to a given "Hitting Strategy". To do this select "Play with Help" from the "Options" menu. You will now be given advice on the best choice of play by a little flashing light alongside the buttons on the left of the screen. To give this advice the program looks at your hand and the dealer's first card, and consults a chart which has been loaded with the program. Of course you are free to ignore the advice if you choose. To Alter a Strategy: -------------------- If you feel that the current advice chart can be improved upon, select "Edit Strategy" from the "Options" menu. You will be presented with the chart. Each red square represents "Yes" and each green square represents "No". If a split is possible (the player has a pair), the computer will first look at the centre box to see if a split should be advised. If so it looks no further. If a split is either not possible or not advised, the computer then looks to see if a Double is advised. If one of the player's cards is an Ace it looks at the Soft Double box, if not it looks at the Hard Double box. (See later for Soft and Hard hand definition.) If Doubling is not recommended the computer looks at the Soft Hit box if the player has an Ace, or the Hard Hit box if not. Note: A Soft hand is a hand which contains one or more Aces because an Ace can be worth either 1 or 11 whichever is to the hand's advantage. To change the advice chart simply place the mouse pointer (which is now a cross) over the square you want to change and press the left mouse button. To return to the Main menu, press the Right Mouse Button. As a Strategy & Staking Plan Tester: ------------------------------------ This enables the computer to simulate playing up to 10 sessions of up to 1000 hands of Blackjack using the current strategy. You can thereby test your strategy with what amounts to several years of playing while you take a bath or go for a drink. Once you feel that you have honed your strategy to what you consider to be the ultimate, select "Test Current Strategy" from the "Options" menu. You will first have to select a Staking Plan (more on these later) by clicking on your choice with the left mouse button. You will then be asked to select how many sessions you want the computer to play. Then you will be asked how much you can afford to loose per session and how much you want to win per session. (This is to stop the graph plotter from going off the screen, and it is also sound gambling policy. i.e. Never play with more than you afford to loose, and always stop when you have achieved your target.) Lastly you will asked how many hands per session you wish to play. When all the selections have been made the computer will start to play by taking the advice of the current Strategy. A graph showing the state of the bank (which starts at zero in this mode) will be drawn in grey ink, and another graph showing the difference between hands won and hands lost will be drawn in red ink. You will not see the hands being dealt because speed is of the essence in this part of the program. When all hands have been played a summary of results are printed on the screen. Below the summary four further figures are printed. All these figures are accumulative and are only reset when you return to the Main menu. The first figure is the Total Hands Played. The second figure is the total amount you have staked IN ALL THE TESTS RUN SINCE YOUR LAST VISIT TO THE MAIN MENU. The Accumulated Profit/Loss is how much you have won or lost SINCE YOUR LAST VISIT TO THE MAIN MENU. With these two running totals the computer lets you know how well the current strategy is doing by calculating the House Edge. The House Edge or Percentage is the built in advantage which the casino has in any game to ensure it can pay its wages, light bill, taxes and back-handers. In games like Roulette and Craps the house edge can be calculated exactly, but in Blackjack the Edge depends on how good the player's strategy is. The computer assumes there is a loss and prints the house edge as a positive number. The formula for the House Edge is: -1 * (Profit or Loss) * 100 /Total Money Staked. Over the first 10,000 hands played the House Edge may vary quite a bit, which is an illustration of just how fanciful Lady Luck can be, even over long periods. However the house edge should settle down to a figure less than 1.00% either side of zero depending on how good your strategy is. WARNING: If the computer plays 10,000 or so hands and finishes up with a profit, please do not think that you have discovered a perfect strategy/staking system, stick two fingers in your boss's direction, mortgage the house and fly to Las Vegas. Many more hands should be played before drawing any conclusions as to the viability of a system. If you have a huge profit after playing at several thousand hands please contact me because it probably means there is a bug in the program! STAKING PLANS. -------------- There are eight preset staking plans (1 - 8) and room for eight User Defined plans (see next section). The eight preset Staking Plans. 1. Level Stakes: Stakes 5 units per bet every hand. 2. Happy Go Lucky: Stakes a random amount between 1 and 25 units per hand. (This one is for those who think all systems are a waste of time.) 3. Increase on Win: The starting stake is 3 units. After a win add 3 units to previous stake to the limit of 25 units. After a loss revert to a stake of 3 units. 4. Chase After Loss: The starting stake is 3 units. After a win reduce previous stake by 3 to a minimum stake of 3 units. After a loss add 3 units to previous stake to the limit of 25 units. 5. Chase Bank Losses: If player is in profit stake 6 units. If player is loosing use formula: Stake = Loss+6 divided by 4 To the maximum of 25 units. e.g. If loosing 30 units Stake = (30+6)/4 = 9. 6. Build Bank Winnings: Minimum stake 6 units. If player is winning use formula: Stake = Winnings+6 divided by 4 To the maximum of 25 units. e.g. If winning 43 units Stake = (43+6)/4 = 12.25 which is rounded to 12 units. 7. Double On Loss: Starting stake is 5 units. After win stake 5 units. After loss double previous stake. (This 'system' is probably the best known and probably the worst. It may look good on paper, but steer clear of it in real life. Even if you own three oil wells, the House Limit will get you in the end.) 8. Double On Win: Starting stake 5 units. After win double previous stake to the limit of 25 units. After loss revert to 5 units. (Basically this system is hoping for 4 or more consecutive wins.) In all the Staking Plans, except No.2, if a Draw was the outcome of the previous hand, the stake remains as it was. To assess whether a hand has Won, Drawn or Lost the computer examines the Bank. An increase means a Win, a decrease a Loss and no change means a Draw. This method was adopted to avoid errors where the second hand of a Split may win, but the total outcome may be a Draw or a Loss, or vica versa. USER DEFINED STAKING PLANS. --------------------------- Amos users can write their own staking plans. There are remarks in the source to guide you. Non Amos users, I'm afraid, will have to send me some money and their instructions. The price is: £2 plus £3 per Staking Plan. In return you will receive a fully personalised copy of BJ_Trainer and the grateful thanks of a hardworking hacker. NB. When submitting Staking plans to me please remember that I can only write routines using variables which the computer knows about. So if you system relies on whether the tide is in or out, or the result of the 2.30 at Chepstow, I can't help you. Examples of what it does know: The state of the Bank (+ or -) The result of the last hand. The amount of the last stake. The number of winning Blackjacks since the start of a session. The number of splits since the start of a session. Sorry, it does not count Aces or fives, although a later version might. Peter Cartwright, 68A Dornton Road, LONDON. SW12 9NE.