Deriving Perfect Strategy for Blackjack
In this blog post, I will discuss the algorithmic techniques needed to derive perfect strategy for the game of blackjack. Perfect strategy utilizes knowledge of the exact composition of cards remaining in the deck. No human can execute perfect strategy in practice since it requires keeping track of the count of 13 different cards simultaneously. It’s theoretically possible to use a technique like this to gain a slight advantage in online live dealer blackjack via software, and this strategy does provide a positive EV game, although as we will see later, the advantage is quite small. Nevertheless, it is quite an interesting algorithmic problem, and I had fun solving it. This will be the topic of this blog post. The Wizard of Odds has a great YouTube video showing how you can derive basic strategy for a simplified game with an infinite deck of cards. This is a great starting point for understanding this way of thinking. There are two main questions we ultimately want to answer