MGP's BJ Combinatorial Analyzer

MGP

Well-Known Member
#2
Thanks Ken for posting this. I'll try and answer questions if there are any. It should be mostly self-explanatory. Below are a few comments:

Real-time analysis:

1) I don't remember if it works with bonuses post-split and don't think it does with suited bonuses.

2) When playing with it on Yahoo BJ I found that it takes too long to enter other people's hands individually so you can actually just type them all into one other player box and ignore the total and it still works.

Speed:

1) The speed is relatively fast but won't be the fastest CA you run across because of all the anlaysis that's performed.

2) If you allow the dealer probs files to be used it's faster the second time you run any given deck type.

3) Eventually with real-time, it can actually slow things down because it'll begin to take a long time to load the huge file so you can either delete the file and start it over or use the option to not use it.

Future Changes:

1) There won't be any... I haven't touched the program for years and am not aware of any bugs except as below so if they exist they're small. It's written in VB.Net 2003 and that doesn't work on window 7 64-bit and compiling it in that screws up all the alignment so it would basically ruin it.

Features:

1) Most are self-explanatory

2) If you click on a particular strategy in the grid the ev's popup.

3) EOR's are calculated one set at a time since they take a long time unless you choose all.

4) You used to be able to export to Excel which would give all the values in a spreadsheet. Unfortunately that part seems to be broken and I have no idea how to or desire to fix it. It's the only bug I know of.

Sincerely,
MGP
 

sagefr0g

Well-Known Member
#3
MGP said:
.....
4) You used to be able to export to Excel which would give all the values in a spreadsheet. Unfortunately that part seems to be broken and I have no idea how to or desire to fix it. It's the only bug I know of.

....
worked for me. :)
 

KenSmith

Administrator
Staff member
#5
zengrifter said:
Question for MGP - Does this analysis program have any practical application? If so what? Any real or hypothetical examples? zg
I have used it for many things, often involving promotion analysis.

I used it a couple of weeks ago to determine the house edge for a game I was playing that offered 7-card charlie as well as some other unusual rules.

Browse around in the tabs and there's a lot of info in there. For example, the Exceptions tab will allow you to see every composition-dependent deviation from the basic strategy.
 

MGP

Well-Known Member
#8
Here's a more thorough answer to your question zengrifter

I found an old description of the options and I'm pretty sure there are some newer features but it's not worth going through every little thing to figure out what's missing:

It does the following:

1) Rules including:

OBO, ENHC, OBBO, BBO, any variation of dealer checking a/10 only and payoff
as above (i.e. takes
all or busted bets)

S17/H17

Set Dealer BJ payoff to anything you want.
BJ Bonus after split with split Aces and/or Tens
BJ Suited Bonuses

DAS/NDAS
ANY set of doubling rules based on 2/multi-card total you want with buttons
for the more common.
Double soft of all totals or just 19 count as hard.

LS/ES
Set Surrender value to anything you want
Surrender Bonus against BJ (i.e. it can be set to 0 to indicate surrenders
push BJ)
Any combination of Late/Early surrender based on upcard you want with
buttons for the most common.
Macau Surrender for 2-10 and/or Ace
SAN
SAS

Exact values for SPL1-3
CDZ-, CD-P, CD-PN values for OBO,ENHC
Limit splits to any subset of paircards you want (i.e. it's compatible with
England rules)
SMA/HSA/DSA/SSA

Player-Dealer Tie payoffs can be set to anything based on total/BJ

Shoe can be any finite number of decks (arbitrary cut-off at 500), infinite
or forced to have any combination of cards including specific suits combinations (not specific
tens though).
Infinite decks can be forced to have any proportion of cards.

Bonuses can be:
BJ Always Wins
Based on any total/ncards/composition
Based on suit
Based on upcard
Can play through or automatically play or have to win
Can pay specific value including loss/push or anything else against BJ (ace
and/or ten up)
Suited

2) Strategies including CD/TD/2C/NCard and Forced. e.g. BJA3 values can be
reproduced using the forced
strategy forcing post-split exceptions to the 2C strategy (although the 2C
strategy gives a higher
EV since it is rules specific).

The Forced strategy fills in the best strategy for non-forced hands and can
be any n-card dependent.
It allows forcing of any individual or combination of hands based on
total/upcard or specific composition of cards.

3) You can:
Save Forced Rules/Bonus Rules/Other preferences
Colors for strategies can be specified using the Windows .Net pallette.
Limit the upcards for which the strategies are calculated
Save Dealer probs in a dictionary/hash table for re-use or just go from
scratch every time.
Choose which strategies to calculate including the TD/2C/Forced

4) Once the results are obtained from the calculation:
Results based on Upcard/First Player Card and Net EV are given
The rules are displayed
Strategy tables are given. If you click on any single strategy you get the
EV's in a pop-up
You can get the EVs/strategies for any player hand vs any upcard
Strategies and EVs based on the number of cards are broken down
Exceptions are listed and can be analyzed
All split EVs that are calculated are given
The forced strategy can be changed and recalculated (this is much faster
than redoing the whole
thing and allows exploration of various changes and helps with EORs below)
EORs can be calculated based on a Fixed Forced Strategy, a card removed
dependent TD strategy and
CD strategy. All or just one EOR can be calculated.
EORs analyis is given for any player hand
EORs analysis based on total/upcard is given.

5) Realtime strategy can be used and the best strategy for the given hand is calculated based on the current shoe.
 

Nynefingers

Well-Known Member
#9
I think the answer is no, but... Is there a way to make the dealer stand after a specific number of cards? Specifically, can I make the dealer always stand on 6 cards if they have not yet reached a hand total of 17?
 
#11
Nynefingers said:
I think the answer is no, but... Is there a way to make the dealer stand after a specific number of cards? Specifically, can I make the dealer always stand on 6 cards if they have not yet reached a hand total of 17?
Old Jedi mind trick? zg
 
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