Turbo 21
Many years ago, when I was a postdoc in Seattle, I got hooked on a game called Turbo 21, one of the many dumb, but often addictive, online games on Pogo.com.
The premise of the game is laughably simple: you place the cards of a standard 52-card deck, one by one, into one of four slots. The goal is to make combinations adding up to exactly 21, by the rules of blackjack, in which all face cards are worth 10, and aces are either 1 or 11. Anything over 21 is a “bust”. You have to add every card to one of the slots, so sometimes you can’t help going bust. The more 21s you get, the more tokens you win. (All solitaire games on Pogo.com pay out tokens, which you can redeem for an infinitesimal chance to win cash prizes.)
It may sound easy in principle, but the strategy is surprisingly deep. What I called a “perfect game”-forming all eighteen possible 21s in the deck-is very, very difficult to achieve. I became obsessed with figuring out how to score a perfect game as often as possible. A perfect game nets you a whole raft of tokens, and you get a high score announcement that impresses everyone in the room. I didn’t care about the tokens, and though a few of the regulars got to know me I didn’t really put a lot of stock in impressing them. But mastering Turbo 21 was a superb bit of quasi-mathematical game theory, and I did care deeply about that.
I eventually quit Pogo.com, because (1) once I went back to school, my life began to suck far less, so I didn’t need an hour or two of mindless repetitive tasks to help me wind down after work every evening; (2) I was far busier in graduate school than in my postdoc, in part because I began to have a social life again, having found new friends among my classmates; and (3) when I started school I wised up about computer security and activated my firewall and all that-and found that Pogo.com wouldn’t work when my firewall was active. The site apparently wanted me to take down all my defenses to use it. Nowadays, the thought makes my skin crawl.
Just two night ago it occurred to me to try getting on Pogo.com to see whether they ever figured out how to let people play their games without opening their computers up to any nasty infection that might come crawling down the cables. As it happened, my old account still existed-and I could play Turbo 21 again! It took me most of an evening to refresh my skills, but I did score several perfect games. I doubt I’ll keep playing; I have better things to do with my time these days.
Anyway, after I originally worked out my strategy, people started asking me how I could score perfect games so often. I wrote a bare-bones summary of the essential and e-mailed copies to anyone who wanted one. I’m posting it here not because I think it makes fascinating reading, but because it might prove helpful to other Turbo 21 enthusiasts. I checked just now and found several Turbo 21 strategy guides scattered about the Web, but I find them overly long and detailed. On the other hand, my strategy guide assumes familiarity with Turbo 21, and is only concerned with perfect games, so beginners would be better off looking elsewhere for entry-level advice.
Turbology 101: A Compendium of Useful Tips for Scoring Big on Turbo 21
©2001 by 6 < bleen < 7 Productions (Version 1.1)
This tutorial describes a fairly simple method for scoring “perfect games” in Turbo 21. A general understanding of game play and scoring in Turbo 21 is assumed.
Shorthand: I will call any singlecard whose value is ten (10 through K) a “10,” and any ace or two small cards (2-9) totaling eleven an “11.” (Note: This case does not include more than two cards totaling 11. A couple of the variations below include hands with three cards totaling 11, but that is nonstandard.) A combination of cards totaling 21 (a “hand”) will appear in boldface, as in 10-A. I will always count an ace as 11, even though it also counts as 1 in blackjack, since it is only possible to get a perfect game if all four aces count as 11.
A. The General Strategy
The most straightforward perfect game is what I call the “standard game.” It consists of eighteen 21s, formed as follows:
You don’t need to keep track of the other cards too closely-just try to match face cards with 11s, as you already know. Just remember to match up a pair of 5s (plus an 11) and a pair of 6s (plus a 9) sometime during the game.
B. Variations on the Standard Game
That sounds easy enough-but the cards don’t usually like to cooperate, as you are no doubt aware. Most of the time you have to abandon the standard game at some point. But all is not lost-sometimes you can still salvage your perfect game by changing your strategy. There are a number of variations on the standard game above, and I don’t think I’ve found all of them. Listed below are those I’m aware of. Any hands not mentioned in each variation are of the form 10-11.
Of course, the variations on the standard strategy require that you keep track of more of the cards. Don’t spend too much energy trying to master all these variations if you find it difficult. The first four are the most useful and easiest to memorize, since they are all similar, and among them allow you to play, one time, any two cards together that add up to 10.
C. Imperfect Games-Should You Stay with a Sinking Ship?
Even with ideal strategy, most of the time the cards will fall in such a way that a perfect game is impossible. To get as many perfect games as possible, you should hit “New Game” as soon as it becomes clear your game can’t be perfect. But that’s kind of silly: it means you either get 1900+ tokens or very few, and if you have a dry spell you can go for an hour without winning more than a couple hundred tokens, which is not much fun at all.
A nice compromise, and one that maximizes the number of tokens you win, is to keep playing if you can still get a near perfect game. When is it worth finishing an imperfect game? I decided, somewhat arbitrarily, that I would continue to play as long as I could still get at least sixteen 21s (usually worth 442 tokens plus the spin), and if I was down to the last few cards, I’d play as long as I got a spin.
There is some strategy to keeping a game as close to perfect as possible without actually achieving perfection, and I’m still working on what it should be. Here are a couple of pointers:
You can still get seventeen 21s if you combine two 10s (or a 10 and two 5s) with an A. (You’ll have an 11 and a 2 left over. You can do this twice and still get sixteen 21s.)
You can still get seventeen 21s if you use the combination 2-8 in place of a 10, as in A-2-8. (You’ll have two 10s and a 3 left over.)
Avoid going bust, if you can. If you must bust, good combinations are 10-10-2 and 10-6-6, since there is an extra 2 in the deck, and so all the 9s can still be incorporated into 21s. Also, you won’t have to remember what cards you lost in the busted hand. An otherwise perfect game with a busted hand like these will score sixteen 21s with an 11 and a 2 left over. However, the best bust hand is 10-10-3, because of you later use a 2-8 in place of a 10, you can still get seventeen 21s.
Good luck in all your Turbo 21 endeavors!
The premise of the game is laughably simple: you place the cards of a standard 52-card deck, one by one, into one of four slots. The goal is to make combinations adding up to exactly 21, by the rules of blackjack, in which all face cards are worth 10, and aces are either 1 or 11. Anything over 21 is a “bust”. You have to add every card to one of the slots, so sometimes you can’t help going bust. The more 21s you get, the more tokens you win. (All solitaire games on Pogo.com pay out tokens, which you can redeem for an infinitesimal chance to win cash prizes.)
It may sound easy in principle, but the strategy is surprisingly deep. What I called a “perfect game”-forming all eighteen possible 21s in the deck-is very, very difficult to achieve. I became obsessed with figuring out how to score a perfect game as often as possible. A perfect game nets you a whole raft of tokens, and you get a high score announcement that impresses everyone in the room. I didn’t care about the tokens, and though a few of the regulars got to know me I didn’t really put a lot of stock in impressing them. But mastering Turbo 21 was a superb bit of quasi-mathematical game theory, and I did care deeply about that.
I eventually quit Pogo.com, because (1) once I went back to school, my life began to suck far less, so I didn’t need an hour or two of mindless repetitive tasks to help me wind down after work every evening; (2) I was far busier in graduate school than in my postdoc, in part because I began to have a social life again, having found new friends among my classmates; and (3) when I started school I wised up about computer security and activated my firewall and all that-and found that Pogo.com wouldn’t work when my firewall was active. The site apparently wanted me to take down all my defenses to use it. Nowadays, the thought makes my skin crawl.
Just two night ago it occurred to me to try getting on Pogo.com to see whether they ever figured out how to let people play their games without opening their computers up to any nasty infection that might come crawling down the cables. As it happened, my old account still existed-and I could play Turbo 21 again! It took me most of an evening to refresh my skills, but I did score several perfect games. I doubt I’ll keep playing; I have better things to do with my time these days.
Anyway, after I originally worked out my strategy, people started asking me how I could score perfect games so often. I wrote a bare-bones summary of the essential and e-mailed copies to anyone who wanted one. I’m posting it here not because I think it makes fascinating reading, but because it might prove helpful to other Turbo 21 enthusiasts. I checked just now and found several Turbo 21 strategy guides scattered about the Web, but I find them overly long and detailed. On the other hand, my strategy guide assumes familiarity with Turbo 21, and is only concerned with perfect games, so beginners would be better off looking elsewhere for entry-level advice.
Turbology 101: A Compendium of Useful Tips for Scoring Big on Turbo 21
©2001 by 6 < bleen < 7 Productions (Version 1.1)
This tutorial describes a fairly simple method for scoring “perfect games” in Turbo 21. A general understanding of game play and scoring in Turbo 21 is assumed.
Shorthand: I will call any singlecard whose value is ten (10 through K) a “10,” and any ace or two small cards (2-9) totaling eleven an “11.” (Note: This case does not include more than two cards totaling 11. A couple of the variations below include hands with three cards totaling 11, but that is nonstandard.) A combination of cards totaling 21 (a “hand”) will appear in boldface, as in 10-A. I will always count an ace as 11, even though it also counts as 1 in blackjack, since it is only possible to get a perfect game if all four aces count as 11.
A. The General Strategy
The most straightforward perfect game is what I call the “standard game.” It consists of eighteen 21s, formed as follows:
- Sixteen 21s with a 10 and either an ace or two small cards totaling 11 (also called a “10-11”)
Examples: 10-A, 10-4-7, 10-2-9 - One 21 with two 5s and an 11 (a 5-5-11)
Examples: 5-5-A, 5-5-3-8, 5-5-5-6 - One 21 that is 6-6-9
You don’t need to keep track of the other cards too closely-just try to match face cards with 11s, as you already know. Just remember to match up a pair of 5s (plus an 11) and a pair of 6s (plus a 9) sometime during the game.
B. Variations on the Standard Game
That sounds easy enough-but the cards don’t usually like to cooperate, as you are no doubt aware. Most of the time you have to abandon the standard game at some point. But all is not lost-sometimes you can still salvage your perfect game by changing your strategy. There are a number of variations on the standard game above, and I don’t think I’ve found all of them. Listed below are those I’m aware of. Any hands not mentioned in each variation are of the form 10-11.
- Play 5-5-11 and 6-6-9 (standard strategy)
- Play 4-6-11 and 5-7-9
- Play 3-7-11 and 4-8-9
- Play 2-8-11 and 3-9-9
- Play 6-7-8, 3-4-4-10 and 5-7-9
- Play 2-4-5-10, 5-7-9 and 6-6-9 (this one is handy if you can’t get rid of a 2)
- Play 3-3-5-10, 5-8-8 and 6-6-9 (handy if all the 3s and 8s pile up together)
- Play 3-3-6-9 and 5-8-8
- Play 6-7-8 and 3-4-5-9
Of course, the variations on the standard strategy require that you keep track of more of the cards. Don’t spend too much energy trying to master all these variations if you find it difficult. The first four are the most useful and easiest to memorize, since they are all similar, and among them allow you to play, one time, any two cards together that add up to 10.
C. Imperfect Games-Should You Stay with a Sinking Ship?
Even with ideal strategy, most of the time the cards will fall in such a way that a perfect game is impossible. To get as many perfect games as possible, you should hit “New Game” as soon as it becomes clear your game can’t be perfect. But that’s kind of silly: it means you either get 1900+ tokens or very few, and if you have a dry spell you can go for an hour without winning more than a couple hundred tokens, which is not much fun at all.
A nice compromise, and one that maximizes the number of tokens you win, is to keep playing if you can still get a near perfect game. When is it worth finishing an imperfect game? I decided, somewhat arbitrarily, that I would continue to play as long as I could still get at least sixteen 21s (usually worth 442 tokens plus the spin), and if I was down to the last few cards, I’d play as long as I got a spin.
There is some strategy to keeping a game as close to perfect as possible without actually achieving perfection, and I’m still working on what it should be. Here are a couple of pointers:
You can still get seventeen 21s if you combine two 10s (or a 10 and two 5s) with an A. (You’ll have an 11 and a 2 left over. You can do this twice and still get sixteen 21s.)
You can still get seventeen 21s if you use the combination 2-8 in place of a 10, as in A-2-8. (You’ll have two 10s and a 3 left over.)
Avoid going bust, if you can. If you must bust, good combinations are 10-10-2 and 10-6-6, since there is an extra 2 in the deck, and so all the 9s can still be incorporated into 21s. Also, you won’t have to remember what cards you lost in the busted hand. An otherwise perfect game with a busted hand like these will score sixteen 21s with an 11 and a 2 left over. However, the best bust hand is 10-10-3, because of you later use a 2-8 in place of a 10, you can still get seventeen 21s.
Good luck in all your Turbo 21 endeavors!