Nice game. I'm glad you identified the major problem in many online blackjack toys - that they've got a scummy vibe to them - and done a clean break from that.
Some ideas:
* Keyboard shortcuts would be welcome - the click targets are grouped together on desktop and are not very large.
* Upscaling the game on desktop would be helpful for usability, it's quite small currently.
* I know it's just a hobby project, but it seems the action buttons are not in the tab order - was this deliberately removed? This seems like it would be a really easy step to take for at least minimal accessibility. Currently, a mouse is required on desktop due to this problem.
From the about page: Towards the end of 2017, I found myself wanting to play a quick game of something while I was working. That something turned out to be blackjack. I tried a few web-based games and downloaded a bunch to my phone. All of them either felt kinda scammy, were hard to look at, or just played way too slow. I like making things, so I made Blackjack Break. I hope it's a fun diversion for you like it is for me.
I was impressed by the online casinos using real dealers and those scannable oversized cards. I don’t think I would have gone that route but great that people are employed and I guess that puts to bed any discussion about algorithms or if the computer is dealing under to itself. Wizard Of Odds is an amazing guy, I love the articles on his site.
It would be nice if it told you after finishing a hand if you deviated from basic strategy. Also would be nice if some of the more common rule variants where settable (DAS, S/H17, etc.).
Is there something like this, but for poker? The issues described by the author with most of the already existing offers are the exact same ones i have. I just want a poker game that isn’t slow, doesnt feel scammy with tons of dark patterns and microtransactions, and has a clean and simple UX.
Great job btw, i definitely dig the overall feel of the app.
For people not very into BJ - there are rules available with pretty binary decisions trees (depending on rules). Quick google search brought https://www.blackjackapprenticeship.com/blackjack-strategy-c... but there are plenty of other resources. Essentially, I believe there is always a perfect strategy available that should guarantee profit (given unlimited cash available to play unlimited game)
Without counting (which is not possible with this version since there is no shoe or deck to count from), optimal (basic) strategy will guarantee a loss in the long run. If there was a basic strategy which guaranteed profit for the player, no casino would offer this game.
With the set of rules implemented here, including early surrender and double after split, it seems perfect basic strategy, even without counting, gives a very minimal edge to the player.
Also, this version lets you count cards, since it uses a single deck and displays shuffles.
Is this open source? I kinda want to try training a Blackjack AI, and the clean minimal design for here could help if I try giving the game state to the AI as an image.
Also it would be fun to play with data of everyone's games if you're collecting them.
If your AI is any good it will refuse to play because it’s realized the house always wins.
I spent a few hours watching card counting videos on YouTube to see if there was anything to it - didn’t matter who it was, they spent the entire time belly-aching because other players were getting “their” cards. Amazing how all these card counting schemes depend on everyone else playing perfect basic strategy.
Card counting schemes have almost nothing to do with the cards of others. I have no idea who you were watching but they sound like frauds. It's trivially easy to verify that counting systems work in theory. If you have a sufficiently good counting system, you will know exactly the cards remaining in the deck (Suppose I knew only 8s were left in the deck. I just never hit and let the dealer bust continually). Even the best human-capable counting systems only have an edge of 1-2%, meaning that you still need to get lucky or have a ton of time and a near infinite bankroll (minimize risk of ruin).
Having more players at the table hurts the efficiency of the count because more cards come out between when you place your bet, and when you receive both of your cards. This means that the correlation between the count when you place your bet, and the hand you receive, decreases.
House edge at good casinos is normally below 1%, and you're telling me an AI with perfect information couldn't beat a dealer whose moves are incapable of changing given new information?
If your playing with a six deck shoe and the casino is cutting at deck and a half, how much of an edge can you really get? Even if your the only player.
Depends on your betting spread and table rules. But at a deck in a half you're probably looking at around 0.75% for a pretty standard ruleset [1]
The casino I usually play at cuts at under a deck and also has a side bet (Over Under 13) with even better odds than the blackjack game if you use a different count. It can also be gamed many other ways (they give $5 and $2.5 chips, but don't pay quarters, so if you bet $7.50 for your hand, they pay $11.50, essentially improving your odds even further).
A good question might be why they are not all rich if card counting is such an easy win. I’m pretty sure the best way to get rich on Wall Street is to teach people how to get rich on Wall Street. Maybe the same thing holds true for blackjack. If anyone was winning big on a consistent basis I’m sure the casinos would change things up to stop that ie table limits, six deck shoes, continuous shuffle machines.
Card counting is an "easy win" only in that it's relatively easy to master. With a bit of practice, you can gain a consistent (but small) edge. The problem is, the variance is enormous. You need a large bankroll to sustain the wins, and you need to put in a lot of hours to get into the long run. That's a major reason most successful counters play in teams.
Of course you're right in that once a casino notices you winning, you're a target for closer observation. A six-deck shoe isn't much of an obstacle, though. In Atlantic City, they'll flat-bet you (adjust the table limits so you can't vary your bet). In Las Vegas, they'll just outright ban you from playing.
Very nice. Any plans on open-sourcing this? I'm a newbie at blackjack and have been wanting to build a similarly minimalistic version adding a "strategy feedback" mode to help me memorize basic strategies.
I've got a simple blackjack program[1] in bash that I occasionally play; it's ugly code, but it's pretty straightforward.
More directly, I wrote (perl) a blackjack tester[2] to quiz myself, as well as a simple output of basic strategy[3]. I haven't touched these in half a decade, but seem to work fine!
This is really nice! It reminds me of a similar site I played on ages back that supported online play for several different card games - it had a similar minimal, clean design. (Wish I could find it again.)
I agree, often I look for a card games online, but they are mostly bloated, full of ads, require accounts, really spammy.
A bit relevent to this subject matter is a redesign of blackjack I finished awhile ago. I wanted to make game characters out of the cards and put the player in a dungeon-like environment rather than the generic game table.
Still working on v2, mainly updates to the graphics.
I put it on itch.io and you can download it for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
* Add short instructions on how to play Blackjack. Im familiar with twenty-one but not with Blackjack so it'd be nice to have it there. I had to read Wiki page to play it
Would be awesome if you could turn on basic strategy suggestions for each hand to help teach it. How many decks
is this based off, or is it random from a single deck each deal?
Some ideas:
* Keyboard shortcuts would be welcome - the click targets are grouped together on desktop and are not very large.
* Upscaling the game on desktop would be helpful for usability, it's quite small currently.
* I know it's just a hobby project, but it seems the action buttons are not in the tab order - was this deliberately removed? This seems like it would be a really easy step to take for at least minimal accessibility. Currently, a mouse is required on desktop due to this problem.