Quantum Blackjack or Can MIT Bring Down the House Again?

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quantum entanglement can provide strategic advantages in a simplified, communication-limited version of blackjack, demonstrating conditions and explicit strategies for quantum advantage.

Contribution

It introduces a quantum approach to a blackjack-inspired game, deriving conditions for quantum advantage and providing explicit quantum circuits for optimal strategies.

Findings

Quantum entanglement offers advantage in communication-limited blackjack.

Conditions for quantum advantage depend on game parameters.

Explicit quantum circuits for advantageous strategies are constructed.

Abstract

We examine the advantages that quantum strategies afford in communication-limited games. Inspired by the card game blackjack, we focus on cooperative, two-party sequential games in which a single classical bit of communication is allowed from the player who moves first to the player who moves second. Within this setting, we explore the usage of quantum entanglement between the players and find analytic and numerical conditions for quantum advantage over classical strategies. Using these conditions, we study a family of blackjack-type games with varying numbers of card types, and find a range of parameters where quantum advantage is achieved. Furthermore, we give an explicit quantum circuit for the strategy achieving quantum advantage.