A friend of mine has to do An essay on this and I thought this was a great place to ask. In the movie: the main character is seen reading a lot of books which he calls simple arithmetic instead of fancy mathematics.
My question is the following.What sort of mathematics are used in this kind of problem.I am assuming combinatorics, rifling, graphs etc. Which books is the actual character reading and what should one read.
In terms of learning and applying the strategies, it is simple arithmetic. You count cards and memorize rules that adapt your strategy to the count. For designing the strategy, you can do some with combinatorics, but the bulk is done with simulation-let the computer play lots of hands following alternate strategies and see what works, then publish that in the rules.