Building a Console-Based Blackjack Game in C# – Card Rendering, Clean Code and a Simple AI Bot

Damian Beldegrin — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 22:23:53 +0000

I've been working on a small but complete side project in C# – a playable Blackjack game that runs entirely in the console.

What started as a practice run to sharpen my .NET and clean coding skills turned into a minimal but functional card game, with some extra flair like card rendering and a basic AI bot.

Here's a breakdown of the project and what I learned along the way.

🔍 Screenshots

🎴 Title Screen

🃏 Example Round

🎮 Key Features

Console-based, cross-platform (runs on .NET 9)
Unicode card rendering (text-based but visually clear)
Fully playable: hit, stand, dealer logic, win/loss detection
Simple AI bot using true count (Hi-Lo style)

🧠 Code Architecture

The code is split into logical components:

Program.cs: main game loop, player input, win/loss handling
Cards.cs: deck generation, card drawing, visual rendering
Bot.cs: AI logic — currently uses a basic running count to decide whether to hit or stand

The goal was to keep the structure clean and extensible, so it’s easy to maintain and improve.

📂 GitHub Repo

You can find the full source code here:

🔗 https://github.com/porzeraklon/blackjack

It's open-source and self-contained — no dependencies besides the .NET runtime.

💬 Feedback & Ideas

I'm open to suggestions and contributions — especially around:

Improving bot intelligence (more advanced strategy, more diversified behavior)
Game configuration options (e.g. changing stakes, betting)
GUI version later down the road

If you check it out, feel free to leave feedback or open an issue. Hope it inspires someone else working on a similar idea.

Thanks for reading!

Forem: Damian Beldegrin