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Advanced Lingo For Games
by Gary Rosenzweig

Chapter 19 Section 5

You really can't make any major changes to this game before it ceases to be blackjack. The rules are so well defined that any player wanting to play your blackjack game will quickly become upset if certain rules are not followed.

However, there are many variable rules and limitations that can be added to the game to make it resemble how the game is played in one casino or another.

Dealer Hits on Soft 17

As mentioned during the code listing, you can add another handler to the behavior to check to see if a hand is "hard" or "soft," the latter meaning that the hand contains an ace with a value of 11.

Limiting Splits and Doubles

Some casinos limit doubles and splits to certain combinations of cards. For instance, some casinos don't allow two aces to be split because the odds are too far in favor of the player. Implementing restrictions like this just requires the addition of a new handler to check for the situation, and then prohibiting the "Split" and "Double" buttons when they are clicked.

Cards and Background

Just like with the previous chapter, you can improve this game greatly over the example on the CD-ROM by making more colorful cards and a nice casino background. A dark green background color is pretty standard, because it matches the look of an actual casino table. Many tables also include payoff amounts written on them, such as "Insurance Pays 2 To 1."

Bets and the Wallet

Most casinos have a minimum and maximum bet. The code you've seen here just has a maximum bet of $5. However, you can raise this to something like $25, and then maybe have a minimum as well. You can even have the bet increments be $5 or something else, rather than $1.

Of course, if you are going to have higher bets, you will also want to have a higher starting wallet. You might even want to allow the player to go into debt, by allowing negative wallet amounts.

Chips

A clever Lingo programmer will be able to modify this game to use drag-and-drop casino chips rather than an "Add To Bet" button. You can have the player's chips appear as a stack on one side of the screen, and then they click on the chips to place a bet.

You can do this by simply making the stack of chips a button, and representing the playerŐs bet as another stack. If the view is top-down, then a stack with one chip looks just like a stack with many chips. That being the case, you will want to still show the playerŐs bet and wallet as text in addition.