RoyalDoyle -- Who we are and why.

RoyalDoyle was started in January 2005 as a result of the need to build a better blackjack application.  At the time, RoyalDoyle team members were just a group of individuals that themselves enjoyed going to casinos and playing blackjack.  We all had our own personal styles of blackjack play and executed different strategies with varying degrees of success.  Since not one of us could PROVE that our strategy was the best, we decided that we would purchase an on-line blackjack application that would put our strategies to the test.

We did the normal act that most of us do which is to perform an on-line search for blackjack applications.  Not to our surprise, there where a number of blackjack applications that were currently developed and marketed.  In addition, we found that there were a number of free blackjack applications that could readily be downloaded.  We even downloaded some of them and played around.

To our surprise, though, we found that the current array of blackjack application available on-line basically fall into two categories: Basic Blackjack Applications, and Expert Blackjack Applications.

The Basic Blackjack Applications encompass mainly all the free-ware application that have no fees associated with them.  The problem with these applications was that they would allow you to play basic blackjack, but did not provide any tools to allow us to capture probability and statistical information about our style of play.  In addition, most of these applications did not even allow the ability to use standard blackjack strategies such as a Wagering Strategy or a Card Counting Strategy.  So basically, these applications did not fit our needs.  We did not want a blackjack application that would allow us to play blackjack, we wanted a blackjack application that would allow us to evaluate our blackjack play.

The Expert Blackjack Applications encompass the smaller set of blackjack applications for purchase.  These applications did seem to fit our needs and some were nice, but we ran into two distinct problems.  The first problem was that these applications typically have so many features to them that you basically have to be a Rocket Scientist to use them.  They were cumbersome and overwhelming and we got confused quickly.  In addition, we found that 60% of the extraneous features where things that we did not even care about.  The second problem was that these applications were not cheap.  Some cost in the upwards of $200.  Way too expensive for our needs.  So again, we were stuck.  Why pay so much money for something that is too difficult to use?

And then it happened.  Since we all are a group of software engineers with strong probability and statistics backgrounds, we decided to build our own blackjack application.  At first we had no intention of selling our application on-line, we just wanted to develop an application that would allow us for-once-and-for-all to determine who's style of play was better.  Egos were at stake.  We might even be able to take a little bit from each individual's style of play and produce a hybrid, "silver bullet" strategy. 

But, as we started development, we realized that we were actually having fun.  So once the core functionality was completed we decided to go back and add the "bells" and "whistles" necessary to produce a professional grade application that would be useful to others too.  We were striven to produce an easy-to-use interface that provided enough functionality  to be a solid statistical and analysis tool, but  not so much that it was overwhelming and confusing.  Basically, we tried to follow the KISS approach (Keep It Simple Stupid!!!).

RoyalDoyle -- The Team

Professionally, we are a group of software engineers that actively  work in the software engineering  field.  We all have college degrees and all have experience with developing software for major software companies.  Many of us are lead engineers for the software projects that we work on. 

In being engineers, we all have a strong background in probability and statistics and know how to develop software correctly.  Professionally, we have seen every software trick in the book and as a result are able to apply our experiences to develop a correctly engineered blackjack application.  RoyalDoyle Blackjack was developed following an engineering process, so the quality of our product is greater than an application developed by some arm chair programmer that develops code as a hobby.

Since RoyalDoyle Blackjack is developed using some the latest technologies available to the engineering community (Java programming language, Eclipse development environment, etc.)  Many of the engineers who have contributed to the application do so free of charge in return for being able to work with new technologies that will ultimate allow them to beef up their technical resumes.  After all, during the development phase, we weren't making any money so there was nothing to pay anyone with!

Even though engineers shuffle in and out, there still remains a core engineering team committed to the maintenance and enhancement of RoyalDoyle Blackjack.  We strive to provide the utmost quality in RoyalDoyle Blackjack while providing it at a cost that is right around the cost of one hand of blackjack at a casino on a Saturday night.