title: Reading from excel sheet a single cell
body: <p>I am simulating a Blackjack games, where decisions are made according to Basic Strategy. Each decision is made by reading value in one of the cells from <code>.xlsx</code> file. When trying to simulate lets say 100 000 games it takes a long time. I use these two lines to read the decision:</p>
  
  <pre><code>bs = pandas.read_excel('BasicStrategy.xlsx', sheet_name = 'Soft')
  decision = bs.iloc[player_result - 1,dealer_hand[0] - 2]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Since the decisions are just a number in table, what would decrease the time my program takes to execute? Since as I understand the whole sheet is being read every time a decision has to be made but I need only 1 value, how can I read only 1 value? Have not used numpy before but would it work in this case, and if so would it be faster? Any advice will be much appreciated.</p>