Blackjack Software for Mac

Does anyone know if there are blackjack practice programs and simulators/optimal betting calculators, along the lines of Casino Vérité and CVData, available for the Macintosh? I have done several cursory searches online and was unable to locate anything aside from applications such as "Blackjack International" (in which, playing as the USA, one bets for cheeseburgers :laugh. Surely there have to be some Mac users among the blackjack elite out there!

Pelerus said:

Does anyone know if there are blackjack practice programs and simulators/optimal betting calculators, along the lines of Casino Vérité and CVData, available for the Macintosh? I have done several cursory searches online and was unable to locate anything aside from applications such as "Blackjack International" (in which, playing as the USA, one bets for cheeseburgers :laugh. Surely there have to be some Mac users among the blackjack elite out there!

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BJ international is a great app, though it used to be for $$$, not cheeseburgers....

your best bet is to use BootCamp/parallels and use windows to run apps. In all honesty that is what I do. I have one PC app, ok two: CVBJ and CVData, oh and Crysis plays ok on my mac book pro 2.4 duo with 256MB of VRAM

Seriously though, a PC is what you need. Before I had intel chips I just used decks of cards to practice counting and playing and the few random "trainers" online. After a year or so i needed more, and coincidentally work bought me a new Intel Mac. If you have an Intel chipset and a copy of windows you are in business.

if you don't have an intel mac, then what are you waiting for - sell you old mac and buy an Imac for $1100 or a mac book for similar. whatever you are using now will have some retail value on ebay.

Before the new MAC Intel configuration came along GeoC was running
CVSim on his Mac with a PCSimulator and he said it worked great. zg

there are also copies of virtual PC out there that should be CHEAP for non intel macs. Ebay! You don't need a super computer to run any of these programs.

500 MHz G4 or better will be sufficient. If you are running sims, 1GB of ram would be nice, and be prepared to run things for 1-2 hours, or even overnight. My 2.4 duo can crank out several million (or billion, i forget!) rounds in minutes.

I'm also a Mac guy looking for a way to run some sims. I've got a 2GHz Intel Core Duo, but am not familiar with Virtual PC or Bootcamp . Any advice on what program would be best for me to use to run these PC applications?

nismo said:

I'm also a Mac guy looking for a way to run some sims. I've got a 2GHz Intel Core Duo, but am not familiar with Virtual PC or Bootcamp . Any advice on what program would be best for me to use to run these PC applications?

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search apple for bootcamp
it is probably apple.com/bootcamp
next get and install a copy of windows
next buy some QFIT software

bootcamp is fairly straightforward to install as long as you follow apple's instructions. bootcamp is free.

Any version of Leopard, Mac OS 10.5 or later, has bootcamp on it already. It's built in.

Pelerus said:

Does anyone know if there are blackjack practice programs and simulators/optimal betting calculators, along the lines of Casino Vérité and CVData, available for the Macintosh? I have done several cursory searches online and was unable to locate anything aside from applications such as "Blackjack International" (in which, playing as the USA, one bets for cheeseburgers :laugh. Surely there have to be some Mac users among the blackjack elite out there!

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Yeah I use this cool lil application on my mac at the blackjack table. I have never used casino verite so idk the difference. cardhelper.net

The software tells me the running count plus how many of each card is left. I love it!:eyepatch:

Blackjack_Lover said:

The software tells me the running count plus how many of each card is left. I love it!:eyepatch:

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You could do that with a pencil and paper, or even in your head. That's the easy part. The hard part, which is what you would actually want the software to do, is to analyze that data to give you information about betting and playing strategies. If the software only keeps a running count it is pretty useless, especially since almost all online casinos shuffle after every hand. It would also slow down your play because you have to keep entering cards into the software. I don’t understand how this software is supposed to be helpful.

-Sonny-

I use VMWARE and run a stripped down XP machine for the CV products. Works great. That way I don't have to reboot to practice. I had to pay the $75 for VMWARE, but it's well worth it.

I am thinking about getting a small netbook and putting CV and CVCX on that so I can have it with me when I travel, but I do most of my practice at home (when I'm alone )

Now what we really need is CVCX and a slimmed down CV for the iPhone (the Drills in particular) :grin:

If you scout the deals, you can get VMWare or Parallels for less than $40. Then just run Norm's programs under the Windows emulated environment. You should just buy one of these anyway, in case you have a file that won't behave properly under OS X.

yeah at casinos they use that card shuffler thingy but some online casinos (live blackjack dealers not rng) don't. I like CH cause I don't have to write down ****. Plus It tells me the 5 side count. To each their own. luv u

And how would you know that ANY online site is giving you a fair deal ?

It is so perfectly easy to cheat (with complete impunity) on-line.

Forewarned is forearmed. Enough said.

StandardDeviant said:

Now what we really need is CVCX and a slimmed down CV for the iPhone (the Drills in particular) :grin:

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Love to, but I will not deal with Apple. It is the most closed tech company in the world. And their iPhone policies border on the criminal. Anything you sell they demand 30% or so of the gross. Can you imagine if Intel or MS demanded that every software company in the world give them 30% of their gross? And you can't distribute yourself. So, you can't give updates without a long process and approval. And they ban development tools that aren't theirs.

Funny thing, they have been running these ridiculous ads claiming PCs are black & white and run no software and other nonsense for years. MS ran an ad modeled after Apple's showing that Apple's are expensive (which everyone knows is true.) Apple immediately threatened to sue MS saying they had no right to make fun of Apple.

QFIT said:

Funny thing, they have been running these ridiculous ads claiming PCs are black & white and run no software and other nonsense for years. MS ran an ad modeled after Apple's showing that Apple's are expensive (which everyone knows is true.) Apple immediately threatened to sue MS saying they had no right to make fun of Apple.

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This is too funny! Although I am pro-Mac simply cause I never have to deal with viruses or blue-screen-of-death. I've had my iMac for about 5 years now and it still runs as fast as it used to. Similarly, I have many friends who went through 2 - 3 PCs in the same amount of time.

Love to, but I will not deal with Apple. It is the most closed tech company in the world.

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Norm, I love your software, and your contributions here, but the above is not true.

Yes, their iPhone software screening is egregious. But their Mac OS software is built in large part on BSD Unix, which is as free as a bird. One can run a large portion of the Mac OS by running (Dead link: http://developer.apple.com/Darwin/) _Darwin_, which is completely free software. Many of the APIs that operate above that BSD core are themselves given back to the world under Apache or BSD licenses. Not all, but more than, say, M$oft.

I agree. Norm, you are simply mistaken. I was president of an Apple chartered M.U.G. (Mac User Group) for several years and did a smattering of Mac consulting. I do not crunch code but it is common knowledge that Apple provides the A.P.I.'s that they prefer software developers use.

As noted above the Apple O.S. is a G.U.I. shell. The kernel is BSD, The Berkely System Distribution of UNIX.

Grisly Dreams said:

Norm, I love your software, and your contributions here, but the above is not true.

Yes, their iPhone software screening is egregious. But their Mac OS software is built in large part on BSD Unix, which is as free as a bird. One can run a large portion of the Mac OS by running (Dead link: http://developer.apple.com/Darwin/) _Darwin_, which is completely free software. Many of the APIs that operate above that BSD core are themselves given back to the world under Apache or BSD licenses. Not all, but more than, say, M$oft.

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Well yes, they certainly have made use of other people's free software. But Apple's policies are as closed as you can find.

Everyone and his brother has built a PC. You can't count the number of companies that have built PCs. Build Macs and you will get to know the Apple lawyers personally. Apple has spent a fortune shutting out competition.

Apple supports a tiny fraction of existing hardware. Disk drives, DVD drives, video cards, sound cards, etc. PCs will support most anything and you can buy from a huge number of sources. Connect it to a Mac and even if you can get it to work, your warranty is void.

As for software, 95% of software in the world won't run on Macs (the opposite of what they claim in their ads). Mac users yell at Windows software makers for not supporting Macs. Why don't they yell at Apple? The mountain isn't going to come to Mohammad. Why doesn't Apple add an emulator option or OEM Windows as an option? Then they could run most any software and their ads wouldn't be lies.

I think Apple would be in a vastly better position today if years ago they hadn't decided to shut out competition, reduce flexibility and keep prices way too high.

As for iPhone policies, I smell a class-action lawsuit.

And there was the problem original iPod buyers found. If you dared switch to another brand, you could lose the rights to your music.
And the original iPhone users. You had to pay a penalty to your current network supplier and switch.
And then there is NS Basic. They have been in the business of supplying development tools for handheld devices for 16 years. They supply a cheap development environment for many PDAs with an IDE that is familiar to over a million Windows developers. They have a product that can be used to develop iPhone apps that could allow very quick migration of other PDA apps to iPhones. Only one problem: Read the text at http://www.nsbasic.com/iphone/info/faq.html (Archive copy)