Evolving strategies in blackjack

Blackjack is a casino game that affords the player an opportunity to have an advantage over the house. The player can play a "basic strategy" that offers an approximately break-even wager. When also taking the distribution of cards played in prior hands into account, the odds can favor the player. Well-known playing strategies have been developed by examining different situations in the game and computing the optimum play for each setting. However, the decisions made at one setting affect the probabilities of being in other settings during the course of play. Simulation provides the basis for optimizing blackjack strategies as a whole, as opposed to in a piecemeal fashion. This work reports on experiments conducted to evolve basic and counting strategies for blackjack.