At The Black Jack Table At The Black Jack TableThe Card Shark casino black jack analyzer system takes out all the guess work in playing the perfect game versus the casino. It is a feature rich program which relies on the speed of your computer to play up to 1,000,000 rounds for you to test if your black jack system is the winning one.
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All options and moves available in Casino Black Jack are covererd by Card Shark including:
All different parameters for a Casino Black Jack game can be set including:
Here's the front panel of the Card Shark program. All of the above mentioned options can be easily set by just selecting the specific option with your mouse. No need to worry about setting an option wrong. The Card Shark program is robust and will go back to default settings automatically if a setting value can't be used.
The Card Shark program can be run on two different modes:
With automatic game play simulation, you can set a play strategy (recommended) and let the computer zip through up to as many rounds as you want! The strategy table as shown below allows you to customize your play strategy to as many different combinations of options and moves as you want. In automatic play the Card Shark program will follow your play strategy exactly and flawlessly with each and every round. At the end of the simulation the results of each round will be saved into a file named "bjresults.out". In addition, a summary of the entire Black Jack game simulation will also be saved to file and also displayed to you in a message box. The round result information is easy to understand and will be explained in later sections of the manual.
Each line in the game summary means the following:
There are also options for saving the results to a file for later study. You can view the results of each round of play or decide to skip that and just save the summary. You might want to skip from saving the round results when the simulation runs to a million rounds which would result in a very large file. You can also decide to save only the results of one simulation instead of appending the results of every one. You can do this by unchecking the Append To Result File check box.
There are also betting options and strategies that you can choose from.
These include:
The simplest and quickest bet strategy for recovering losses is to double the amount of your last bet on a loss of a round. By doing this, if you win you recover whatever amount you lost from the previous round and win your original wager. With Card Shark automatic betting feature this tactic is made simple for you as your bet will be automatically placed at the start of each round taking into account any previous losses.
With automatic betting turned on, all your bets will be automatically placed by Card Shark following your specified bet strategy. If no strategy is selected (Double Next Bet On Loss unchecked) then the automatic betting feature will keep placing the minimum bet amount at the start of each round.
Besides being an automated Casino Black Jack strategy analyzer, Card Shark also doubles as a Casino Black Jack game trainer program when you run it in manual play mode. When the manual play checkbox is checked and you click on the Run button on the front panel, the Black Jack game play form will be shown as displayed below.
As you can see, it simulates the Casino Black Jack game perfectly down to having up to seven (computer controlled) multiple players play at the same table. Also note the split hands as a result of a split pair of fives. Card Shark can handle an arbitrary number of multiple hands resulting from splits. Even in the unlikely situation in which more than four hands results from splits Card Shark handles it by allowing you to scroll up and down between your hands with scroll buttons automatically appearing for the special situation. Note also that each hand have 22 card slots. This is done purposely to cover all circumstances, so that even in the least likely case in which 21 consecutive Ace cards are drawn the program will still be able to handle it and not crash. An additional card slot is added in case the player wants to intentionally bust after 21 aces, so when I mean all circumstances are covered I mean ALL circumstances are covered.
Note also the cards shown for the other players. This is for the initially dealt cards only. It gives more realism to the game as well as more information for veteran Black Jack Game players to make a better decision. The card counters out there would also love this feature too. Note: we do not endorse card counting ;-)
The controls and displays as shown in the game play form are pretty much self-explanatory to any experienced Black Jack player, but for novices to the game a quick reference of the various game moves buttons as well as the game information dialog boxes are available by placing the mouse pointer over the specific button or display box. Tool tips which shows a mini help message box whenever the mouse pointer is placed over a graphical element (buttons, display boxes, etc..) are available for all of the buttons and display boxes.
The Auto Play button allows you to let Card Shark play a move for you following your set strategy (or just the default basic strategy if none is specified). This is very useful for players wanting to train on using a set strategy in the game. The Auto Play feature is a good training tool to prompt the player in case he or she forgets their particular strategy for a specific card combination.
Note also that you can change some of your game and player options at mid-play. These include:
To change your options settings, you can bring up the options panel as shown below by clicking on the Options button.
If you turn off automatic betting. A bet form will be displayed at the start of every round. The form will be filled out with the bet amount that the program will normally put into play when automatic betting is turned on, but this can be over written by any amount you want to bet instead.
Automatic game play is very simple. All you need to do is set up the
game options and your play strategy,
uncheck the Manual Play check box then click the
Play button and let'er rip!
You can run the automatic Black Jack Game simulation for as many rounds as you want to test out if your strategy is a winning one over the long run.
Here is what the contents of the results file look like if the Show Round Results game option was checked. This information shows the round result and hand information for each player at the table. Although it may look complicated it is actually very easy to understand. The game result file is in plain text format so it could be loaded into any simple file editor like WordPad. To view this file simply click on the Show Results File button.
All information for each round of play is contained in a single line with different types of information separated by a colon ":". The first piece of information is the round number which is displayed as Round=(the round number). After that is the amount won or loss which is displayed as Win, Lose, Push followed by the amount won or lost. Next to be displayed is the house hand followed by the player's hand. Each hand to be displayed follows a standard format which goes like this: The player which could be one of: House, You, Guest1...Guest6 for guest players 1 to 6. This is then followed by information inside the brackets which is for the hands held by the respective players. The format of the hands information is as follows: Hand1...Hand(hand number) followed by two equal signs == then the card count. Note for the card count all suit cards are displayed as 10's to make it easier for manual counting. Each card held in the hand is separated by a comma. After the cards of the hand are displayed the effective total value of the hand is displayed which means the highest value attainable by the hand without busting, so if an Ace card with a value of eleven busts the hand it is counted as one instead. The effective total value of the hand and the card count is separated by a single = equal sign. There also may be a letter beside the hand total to indicate some special status. Each letter if they should appear indicates the following: s indicating a surrendered hand, b indicating a busted hand, j indicating a Black Jack and d indicating a double downed hand. If the player happens to hold multiple hands as a result of splits then each hand is separated by a colon ":"
The following is an annotated syntax line of the information appearing in each line of the
game results file:
Round=(the round number):
Win or Lose or Push (Amount Won or Lost):
House or You or Guest1...Guest6=
(Hand(Hand Number)==(Card Count)=(Card Total)busted or surrendered or
black jack or double downed:...
<repeat same pattern for another hand if split>)
In summary each element in a line of the results file means the following:
This shareware version of the Card Shark Casino Black Jack Analyzer
program is limited to 5 rounds each of:
The registration fee for the full registered version of the Card Shark Casino Black Jack Analyzer is:
$25 U.S. or $30 Canadian per copy
If you have an unregistered version of this software and would like to
pay for the registered version you can do this through PayPal: www.paypal.com
OR you can go to my software page and use my PayPal
shopping cart from there.
Include in the payment form: the program serial number.
The program serial number is the 8-digit number displayed on the
first page of the registration script.
The registration script is started by clicking on the register menu
item under the Card Shark Black Jack Analyzer menu.
To pay through PayPal sign into your account and click on the send money
link displayed on the PayPal website.
The e-mail address to send your payment to is: toplineconsulting@yahoo.ca
Include in the comment block of your payment: the program serial number.
The program serial number is the 8-digit number displayed on the
first page of the registration script.
The registration script is started by clicking on the register menu
item under the Card Shark Black Jack Analyzer menu.
If you do not have a PayPal account you can easily set one up by clicking on
Sign Up in the PayPal website.
Here is the direct link:
PayPal account registration
Follow the instructions on the sign-up page to have your account set up.
A personal account should be adequate for payment purposes.
Once your payment is confirmed, a registration number will be sent to you
through e-mail.
To register the software click on the register menu item under
Card Shark Black Jack Analyzer menu to start the registration script then enter the
registration number sent to you.
A message box will pop up to notify you if registration was successful.
toplineconsulting@yahoo.ca