We started by creating blackjack using the Deckofcards API in node.js. Pain and suffering and a little bit elbow grease.

All games are stored on the cloud using AWS S3 so the functionality to resume games can be built in the future. Once a player busts or is satisfied with their card total, Alexa announces the cards she drew and distributes any winnings earned by the players. Alexa goes around, asking for player commands (hit or stand). The cards are seen on the player's device, along with the dealer's cards and the chip count for the respective player. Once all of the players join, Alexa asks for bets (similar to a real blackjack table) and then each player is dealt two cards. What it doesĪlexaBlackJack allows multiple users to connect to an online game of blackjack from their phones (hosted by Amazon Web Services) by opening a browser and going to alexablackjack.tech and joining the room that Alexa directs them to. During this hackathon, we built AlexaBlackJack, a blackjack card game which allows people to connect to an online game (set up by Alexa) from their phones. We saw the Amazon Echo being used for other games, and realized we'd be able to use it for the card games that we know and love. Also, when we played blackjack, one of us would always have to be dealer and that role was not very fun.

We'd spend nights playing blackjack and poker and realized how time-consuming it is to deal and shuffle cards. Our initial motivation and inspiration to begin this project stemmed from our love for table card games.

Playing blackjack with friends