One of the authors of the paper, professor of physics Joseph Formaggio, says “It would require a very large investor, and my guess is, carrying a quantum computer in your backpack will probably tip the house. This probably won’t be used in casinos anytime soon, however. Surprisingly, this entangled system gave Alice and Bob a slight (very slight) advantage, but only when there were a small number of cards left in the deck. In this case, he doesn’t know Alice’s card directly, but he gains information from the quantum system. Then Bob can use the information from the quantum system’s output, along with what Alice did, to inform his own strategy. Third, they use a quantum system to help them to judge whether they should hit or stand.Īlice would go first, using the quantum system to inform her decision on whether or not she should pick a third card. (This would be the best-case scenario for Bob). Second, Alice simply showed Bob her card. They compared three strategies.įirst, Alice and Bob traditionally counted cards. The results of this entangled blackjack experiment, published in Physical Review A, describes two players - Alice and Bob - who are working together to beat the house, with Alice’s objective to help Bob win. Amusingly, they named their paper “Quantum Blackjack - or - Can MIT Bring Down the House Again?”
