post music: luv.ly - jazz crusaders (full beattape)
Okay so this isn't tech-related and so is technically outside the scope of this blog, but I think it's bizarre enough to include anyway.
Blackjack is a classic casino/gambling card game. The objective is to draw cards to get the total count as close to 21 as possible without going over. If you don't know about blackjack, God bless your innocent soul, I'll make this quick:
At the beginning of the game all players are dealt two cards, one card is face up, the other is face down and to be kept secret by the player. At this point you may either hit (draw a card) or stand (stop drawing cards). The value of the card is the number shown on the card. Face cards are worth 10. Aces can be either one or 11. Closest player to 21 without going over wins.
Blackjack is a pretty solved game by this point. Card counting is most beneficial in blackjack, and the odds are well-known. For a traditional deck, anyway. And a traditional deck makes blackjack still a classic house game as well as a mainstay in the gaming world. The spread of cards across the spectrum of numbers from 1 to 11 makes for a great game of probability and risk.
So now I'm going to ruin it. How ruined would blackjack be with a Pinochle deck?
A traditional deck consists of one of each of 2-10, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace in each of the four suits of Spades, Clubs, Diamonds, and Hearts. It has variety. A Pinochle deck does not have this variety; it contains only two of each of 9 and 10, the face cards, and Ace for every suit. This does not make for an interesting game in practice due to the lack of low-value cards, but does make for an interesting gameplay analysis.
Take a blackjack winning starting deal. It requires an Ace and a card with a value of 10. From a full traditional deck (which will never happen in a real game, but simplifying to this makes the numbers easier), the odds of an Ace is 1 in 13-- there are 4 Aces in the 52-card deck. The odds of a card valued 10 is 4 in 13-- 10s, Jacks, Queens, and Kings are all valued 10. Finally, the total odds of both cards is a little bit more than 1%. This makes the odds doable without being too OP.
Getting a winning start is ridiculous on a Pinochle deck. Firstly, the Ace odds are bumped from 1 in 13 to 1 in 6-- having only six card values will more than double the odds for an Ace. But then there's the 10-value cards. The odds of a 10-value card is two-thirds. 10-valued cards make up two-thirds of the deck. Putting this all together, the odds of a starting 21 is about 19%. Which sounds like great odds compared to the traditional deck. Until you realise the odds of getting a 20 start more than half.
Tens are so overwhelmingly common that the next most common starting hand after 20 is a ten and some non-ten card, making either 21 with the Ace or 19 with the nine. The only other starting hands possible are 18 (two nines) and 12 (two Aces), and they're not even good hands. If you start with two nines you're probably losing anyway because there's so little odds to draw an Ace to get closer. If you start with two Aces you can at least hit a couple time to try and draw a nine to make 21. Hitting is only worth it with two Aces and maybe an Ace-Nine 20 if you're feeling spicy. The odds to not go over are so low there is no point otherwise.
Now, despite the low spread in starting hands, technically speaking with the right odds it's possible to hit to every value between 13 and 18.... you just have to draw every Ace in order to do so. The only possible way to get 13 is to draw three Aces, four Aces makes 14, and so on up to 18 with all eight Aces. With Ace being the only low card in the deck, it becomes an Ace-dependent game. Starting with double nines? Hope you can draw three Aces in a row. It's not likely, but it's possible if you want to take that risk.
Moral of the story is don't play blackjack with a Pinochle deck.