This book presents a series of exercises to build simulations of the common, popular casino table games: Roulette, Craps and Blackjack. Each simulation can be extended to include variations on the player's betting system. With a simple statistical approach, we can show the realistic expectations for any betting system. Each of these games has a separate part in this book. Each part consists of a number of individual exercises to build the entire simulation. The completed project results in an application that can provide simple tabular results that shows the average losses expected from each betting strategy.

The interesting degree of freedom in each of the simulations is the player's betting strategy. The design will permit easy adaptation and maintenance of the player's strategies. The resulting application program can be extended by inserting additional betting systems, which allows exploration of what (if any) player actions can minimize the losses.

For Roulette, we proceed slowly, building up the necessary application one class at a time. Since this is the simplest game, the individual classes reflect that simplicity. We focus on isolation of responsibilities, creating a considerable number of classes. The idea is to build skills in object design by applying those skills to a number of classes.

The first chapter of the part provides details on the game of Roulette and the problem that the simulation solves. The second chapter is an overview of the solution, setting out the highest-level design for the application software. This chapter includes a technique for doing a “walk-through” of the design to be confident that the design will actually solve the problem.

Each of the remaining sixteen chapters is a design and programming exercise to be completed by the student. Plus or minus a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section, each chapter has the same basic structure: an overview of the components being designed, some design details, and a summary of the deliverables to be built. The overview section presents some justification and rationale for the design. This material should help the student understand why the particular design was chosen. The design section provides a more detailed specification of the class or classes to be built. This will include some technical information on Java or Python implementation techniques.

For Craps, we build on the design patterns from Roulette. Craps, however, is a stateful game, so there is a more sophisticated design to handle the interactions between dice, game state and player. We exploit the State design pattern to show how the design pattern can be applied to this simple situation.

The first chapter is background information on the game of Craps, and the problem that the simulation solves. The second chapter is an overview of the solution, setting out the highest-level design for the application software. This chapter also provides a “walk-through” of the design.

Each of the remaining eleven chapters is an exercise to be completed by the student. Each chapter has the same basic structure: an overview of the component being designed, some design details, and a summary of the deliverables to be built.

The most sophisticated game that we cover here is Blackjack. The game states are more sophisticated than Craps since the available betting opportunities can change with split hands. Further, the player has two kinds of choices: betting opportunities, plus play opportunities. This makes the player's strategy considerably more complex. In casino gift shops, you can buy small summary cards that enumerate all possible game states and responses. The more advanced student can tackle these sophisticated betting strategies. For the less advanced student we will simplify the strategies down to some simpler conditions.

The first two chapters are background information on the game of Blackjack, the problem that the simulation solves, and an overview of the solution, setting out the highest-level design for the application software. Each of the remaining six chapters is an exercise to be completed by the student. Since this is more advanced material, and builds on previous work, this part has many simple deliverables compressed into the individual chapters.