2003 William Jon McCann GNOME Documentation Project &legal; William Jon McCann

mccann@jhu.edu

&app; Manual V&manrevision; &date; William Jon McCann mccann@jhu.edu This manual describes version &appversion; of &app;. To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding the &app; application or this manual, follow the directions in the GNOME Feedback Page. &appname; mygnomeapp &app; is a multiple deck, casino rules blackjack game. The object of the game is to hold cards having a higher count than those of the dealer without going over 21. Here are a few important terms that are used in the game. Blackjack A hand whose first two cards total 21 Bust When the value of a hand exceeds 21; a losing hand Double down To double the initial wager and receive exactly one more card Hit To request another card to be added to the hand Insurance A side wager of 50% of the original wager that the dealer has a natural 21 (aka blackjack) that is offered when the dealer's face up card is an ace. If the dealer has a natural 21 then the player is paid double. Push When the value of the player hand and the dealer hand are equal and the original wager is returned to the player Split When a hand starts with two cards of the same value (or rank) it may be split to form two independent hands Stand To stop adding cards to a hand Surrender To give up half your wager to not complete the hand In blackjack, each card is assigned a value. An Ace can count as either 1 or 11. The cards 2 through 9 are valued as indicated. The 10, Jack, Queen, and King are all valued at 10. The value of a hand is the sum of the values of each card in the hand. The dealer must play his hand according to very specific rules. There are two basic rule variations that determine what hand total the dealer must draw to. Dealer stands on all 17s The dealer must continue to draw cards (hit) until the hand total is at least 17. Dealer hits soft 17 The dealer must continue to draw cards (hit) until the hand total is at least 17, except when the dealer has a soft total of 17 he must take another card. A soft total is one where an Ace card is counted as an 11. You can start &app; in the following ways: Applications menu Choose Games &app; . Command line To start &app; from a command line, type the following command, then press Return: blackjack When you start &app;, the following window is displayed.

Shows &app; main window. Contains titlebar, menubar, toolbar, playing area, and scrollbars. Menubar contains Game, Settings, and Help menus.

The &app; window contains the following elements: Menubar The menus on the menubar contain all of the commands you need to work with files in &app;. Toolbar The toolbar contains a subset of the commands that you can access from the menubar. Statusbar The statusbar displays information about current &app; activity and contextual information about the menu items. Playing area The playing area contains the dealer position, player position, player wager stack, and the player's chips. The menu bar, located above the game table, contains the following menus: Game This menu contains these items: Ctrl-N New game — This clears the table and starts a new game. Restart game — This clears the table and restarts the game. Hint — This will give you the computer's best suggestion for your move. Ctrl-Q Exit — This quits the game. Settings This menu contains these items: Show tool bar — This toggle switches the tool bar on and off. Preferences… — This opens the Preferences Dialog, allowing you to configure the game. Help This menu contains: Contents — Opens your help browser and shows this manual. About — Opens the About Dialog, showing basic information about &app; such as its version number and the names of its authors. The playing area (or table), located below the toolbar, contains the following elements: Dealer position This is where the dealer hand will be placed. It is located at the top of the playing area. On a clear table it will appear as a white outlined region. Player positions This is where the player's hands will be placed. Initially, there will be only one player position. More will be created if the player splits a hand. On a clear table they will appear as white outlines below the dealer position. Player wager stack The wager stack represents the initial wager on each hand. It consists of a stack of chips located directly to the left of each player position. Player chips The player's chips represent an infinite stack of chips for each of the chip values 100, 25, 5, and 1. These chips are used to modify the wager. To increase the wager for the hand: Double click on the player chip, located along the lower edge of the playing area, that you wish to add to your wager. Or, drag the desired chip onto your wager stack, located next to your hand. A new hand can be dealt when the table is clear or when play has finished on the current hands. To deal a new hand on a clear table, click in the white outlines that indicate the dealer or player positions. To deal a new hand after play has finished on the current hands, click once on any of the cards on the table. You may add cards to a hand until the hand total is 21 or over. To add a card to a player's hand, click once on any card in the hand. You may stop taking cards at any time after the first two cards have been dealt. To stop adding cards to a hand, click once on any other hand. For example, when there is only one player position (ie. you have not split a pair), click on the dealer's hand to stand. When you have split a pair, you may stand on the first player hand by clicking on the second player hand, or the dealer hand. To double down, double click on any of the player chips after the first two cards have been dealt. To split a pair, drag the top card of the hand off the player position and drop on any empty space on the table. Not yet implemented. At any time you may ask the game for a hint. To do this either click on the Hint button on the toolbar, or choose the Game Hint menu item. Most of the operations in the game can be controlled from keyboard input. ActionKeyDeal new handENTERHit / Add cardHStand / Finish handSDouble downDSplit handPSurrender handR To configure &app;, choose Settings Preferences . The Preferences dialog contains the following tabbed sections: Display hand probabilities Select this item to display dealer hand probabilities and expected values for the various player options. Quick deals Select this item to make the computer deal cards without a delay Select rule variations from the list. Customize the appearance of the playing cards. When the Show dealer probabilities option is selected in the Game tab of the Preferences dialog, the exact probabilities of each possible outcome of the dealer's hand are displayed over the table surface, to the left of the dealer's hand. The probabilities range from zero to one, where zero means impossible and one means certain. These probabilities take into account all cards dealt from the shoe. When the Show dealer probabilities option is selected in the Game tab of the Preferences dialog, the exact expected values (in percent of initial bet) of each available player option are displayed over the table surface, to the left of the dealer's hand. These values take into account all cards in your current hand and the dealer's face up card. For example, suppose the number displayed for standing is -12.345. This means that if you played out the current situation many, many times, standing each time, with a 1.00 initial wager, then on average you would lose 0.12345. &app; was written by William Jon McCann (mccann@jhu.edu). To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding this application or this manual, follow the directions in this document. This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public license as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. A copy of this license can be found at this link, or in the file COPYING included with the source code of this program.