Monaco - A program to determine probabilities, especially in dice and card games

Introduction

Over the last few years I have created, for my own use, a program I call Monaco. Its purpose is to determine some probabilities, especially in dice and card games. Note that, despite that the name Monaco suggests approximate answers through Monte Carlo simulation, exact answers to many problems are also available, often very quickly. A recently added capability can provide results from processes that transition between states in a regular pattern, known as Markov chains.

It is possible that there may be others who would be interested in the program. So I have created a presentation (also available as PowerPoint) that provides an introduction, and a tutorial for the program. A followup second tutorial is also available.

In addition I also have two documents that show how Monaco can address - sometimes fully, sometimes partially, occasionally not at all - sets of probability problems that have been collected (not by me). The first is a set of 76 dice problems that can be found here. The second is a set of 20 probability problems that can be found here. The explanations of the solutions using Monaco are more detailed in the latter case, but both using features of the program that are beyond those explained in the two tutorial documents.

If interested after seeing those (which may well prove to many people that they are not interested after all) then drop me a line at the address below and I can let you have a copy, together with the full program documentation - which is not included here as it is rather lengthy. It is needed to fully understand some of the solutions in the two problem documents referred to above.

Contact information

Currently I am christopher.dearlove@gmail.com. My web site is at http://www.mnemosyne.uk

Last modification: 19th September 2023 (updated to version 2.26).