Sublime

In the modern casino game of blackjack, the player can gain a consistent advantage over the house by using the strategy presented in this book. Based on the mathematical theory of probability, this strategy was worked out with an electronic computer by the author and others. It is fortunate and perhaps surprising that the system reduces to a few si

Understanding and dealing correctly with the trade-off between risk and return is a fundamental, but poorly understood, challenge faced by all gamblers and investors.

I finally decided to go to Nevada, partly to silence that irritating jeer often leveled at academics, “Well, if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” As a matter of personal pride and honor I felt that I owed my readers proof that the theory really worked, despite scoffs from casinos that my claims were ridiculous. The clincher was the casino spok

I started with the fact that the strategy I had used in the casino assumed that every card had the same chance of being dealt as any other during play. This cut the casino’s edge to just 0.62 percent, the best odds of any game being offered. But I realized that the odds as the game progressed actually depended on which cards were still left in the

While at New Mexico State, I invested money from book royalties and gambling winnings in stocks. But I was ignorant of the market as well as unlucky. The results were poor. I wanted to do better. Investments presented a new type of uncertainty, but the theory of probability might help me make good choices.

The IBM 704 had done a thousand man-years of hand calculations in just ten minutes of computer time. I looked at these results with great excitement, for they would very likely either prove I was right or dash my hopes. The result was a player disadvantage of 2.72 percent with all the Aces gone—2.51 percent worse than the overall 0.21 percent casin