Description of the Simulator

This program simulates playing blackjack with the following rules: The dealer hits on 16 or less and stays on 17 or greater (soft 17 included). A four-deck shoe (shue?) is used. Since the simulator does not allow card counting strategies, this makes little difference, but is meant to be as close as possible to the way I remember the game being played (Harrah's, Reno, Summer 2000).

Questions / Answers

1. How come I always end up with more blackjacks than the dealer?

The dealer is not dealt his hand if you bust. On average, you would expect to be dealt an equal number of blackjacks as the dealer. However, the dealer never checks his hand if you bust. Therefore, the difference comes from those times when you bust and the dealer has a blackjack (but doesn't check it). The number of times you bust should always be greater than the difference between your number of blackjacks and the dealer's number of blackjacks. In fact, depending on strategy, these numbers may be very nearly equal. If you hit more promiscuously when the dealer has an ace or a ten value card (which is good strategy) then you have more of a chance to bust when the dealer may have a blackjack.

2. How come the results are always different, even when I use the same strategy?

The deck is shuffled differently each time using a random number generator. This method generates numbers with the same statistical properties as random numbers.