2020/12/07 by Persi Diaconis, Diaconis, Persi, Ron Graham +3 · 1 citation
Computer Science · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #60C05 #Artificial Intelligence in Games #Combinatorics (math.CO) #FOS: Mathematics #Probability (math.PR) #Sports Analytics and Performance
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2012.04019
openalex publication_date 2020/12/07 · openalex created_date 2022/09/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In simple card games, cards are dealt one at a time and the player guesses each card sequentially. We study problems where feedback (e.g. correct/incorrect) is given after each guess. For decks with repeated values (as in blackjack where suits do not matter) the optimal strategy differs from the "greedy strategy" (of guessing a most likely card each round). Further, both optimal and greedy strategies are far too complicated for real time use by human players. Our main results show that simple heuristics perform close to optimal.