Ruby Blackjack

Requirements

For this weekend project, you will create a one-player-against-the-computer game of blackjack. The game should be playable from the terminal.

The following restrictions apply to your game:

• The game should start the player with $100 and bets are $10.
• The only valid moves are hit and stand.
• Allow the player to keep playing as long as they have money.
• The dealer uses one deck in their shoe and reshuffles after each round.

Traditionally in blackjack, the dealer has one card visible. Implementing this can be considered optional.

Getting user input

One thing you will have to do in this project is get user input from the command line. In Ruby, the gets method will let you do this. An example:

irb(main):001:0> name = gets
Keelan
=> "Keelan\n"
irb(main):002:0> name
=> "Keelan\n"
irb(main):003:0> name.chomp
=> "Keelan"

.chomp removes a final newline from a string if there is one. You will need this when getting input from users. One more example, this time of a function that handles getting a yes or no from a user:

def get_yes_or_no
  # loop until you get a good answer and return
  while true
    print "Please enter (y)es or (n)o: "
    answer = gets.chomp.downcase
    if answer[0] == "y"
      return true
    elsif answer[0] == "n"
      return false
    end
    puts "That is not a valid answer!"
  end
end

Sample transcript

Here is a sample transcript of game play. It ends after three rounds for brevity, but would continue in actual play. Your game does not have to have the same text, but play will be similar.

Hello and welcome to the game of blackjack! Let's begin.

You have $100 and bet $10.
You have a 9 and a 8 in your hand. Your total is 15.
Do you want to (h)it or (s)tand? H

You hit. You now have a 9, 8, and 4 in your hand. Your total is 19.
Do you want to (h)it or (s)tand? S

You stand. Your total is 19.

The dealer hits.
The dealer stands. The dealer has a total of 20. You lose!

---

You have $90 and bet $10.
You have an A and a 7 in your hand. Your total is 18.
Do you want to (h)it or (s)tand? H

You hit. You now have an A, 7, and 9 in your hand. Your total is 17.
Do you want to (h)it or (s)tand? H

You hit. You now have an A, 7, 9, and 5 in your hand. Your total is 22.
You bust!

---

You have $80 and bet $10.
You have a 5 and a 5 in your hand. Your total is 10.
Do you want to (h)it or (s)tand? H

You hit. You now have a 5, 5, and A in your hand. Your total is 21.

The dealer stands. The dealer has a total of 19. You win!

---

You have $90 and bet $10.
...

Files

Starter files have been provided in the starter_files folder. In that folder you'll find only a set of directories, a Rakefile, and a blackjack.rb file. You may add additional files for other classes. To start your game, run ruby bin/blackjack.rb.

You can reuse or build upon the code you wrote for your lab assignment on Card and Deck classes.

No tests are provided, but you can consider writing tests to help you along the way. This is optional!

References

• Rules of Blackjack
• More rules of Blackjack
• And more rules
• Getting started with Minitest
• Minitest documentation