Norm,
Although most simulations can work through millions or billions of rounds without taking so long they are untenable, it's a different story when you want to use them to find the answer to a specific problem such as:
When should I Hit and when should I Stand when I hold T,6 vs Dlr's 6 and the TC is +2? Also, how much should I wager in terms of my original wager. The answer should be given in terms of the range of the count. For example, it has to find that you need to Hit if the count is above 5 and stand if it's below 2 and if doubling is allowed, you should double when the count is between 2 and 5. I'm just trying to paint a picture of what's requred and I hope you get my meaning. The amount of processing required is monumental when you attempt to answer these kinds of questions over all card combinations and all values for the count.
I have written a full BJ simulation and have experience working with it. It was probably the most interesting project I ever produced.
To answer these kinds of questions, it takes much much longer and I think most people would try to find the answer for a single specific card holding for both player and dealer as well as a single count.
To answer this question for all card combinations over all possible counts still requires a huge amount of processing time.
I've never seen how other sims handle some of the processes that can be time consuming - such as shuffling or "fixing" the shoe so that all hands played will be played with the fixed count.
But I have developed some very fast algorithms for several of these processes.
For example my software takes 3 seconds to shuffle a shoe containing 6 decks ten million times.
The problem with running the kind of problem I've outlined above is that you want to play millions or billions of rounds for each question and it's much more time consuming that just playing a normal round. Why?
Because you have to "back up" for every round and "fix" the deck to contain the count you want. Then the next round has to be run assuming the players will Stand. Then the shoe has to be backed up and "fixed" again for the next action - namely assuming the players will Hit. Then again for Doubles (if applicable) and again for Splits (if applicable) and again for Surrender, etc.
The processing time to do this sort of thing is far greater than it is for running a sim where the cards are played straight through without ever "backing up".
In order to produce some software capable of answering these questions in a reasonable amount of time, it has to be designed in a highly efficient manner and from the get-go it has to be designed to do these kinds of things. It sounds to me as if you can use some of these existing simulations to get the answers you want. But you need to adjust things to handle a specific question. I suspect that if you try to answer these kinds of questions for every conceivable card combination and every conceivable count, it will just take too long. But I suppose I can't really be certain until I try it.
My guess is that the process has to be designed to do these kinds of things right from the beginning.
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