title: Is there an elegant way to deal with the Ace in Blackjack?
body: <p>My kiddo had a homework assignment to write Blackjack in Java. I helped him a little but for the most part he did it all himself and it actually plays pretty well. He even caught an error I didn't see in how it was calculating hand values. However, there is a snag that he hasn't dealt with and every solution I can think of is really complicated and way beyond what he's going to be able to easily code up with his still rudimentary Java skills.</p>
  
  <p>The Ace. In fact, not just one Ace, there's four of them and you could possibly get all four of them in a single hand. How do you elegantly deal with calculating the value of a hand of cards when there's one or more Aces, each of which might be valued at one or eleven. I feel like there should be a graceful algorithm for it, but I'm not seeing it. Of course, part of it could just be that I'm tired, but maybe you can help.</p>