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Nice to know the odds don't always favor the house

Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 3:29 pm
by Turdacious
Don Johnson won nearly $6 million playing blackjack in one night, single-handedly decimating the monthly revenue of Atlantic City’s Tropicana casino. Not long before that, he’d taken the Borgata for $5 million and Caesars for $4 million. Here’s how he did it.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... _page=true

Re: Nice to know the odds don't always favor the house

Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 12:00 am
by DrDonkeyLove
Reminds me of the Taleb's Black Swan. The house relied on a bell curve based on tens of thousands of hands, not expecting a sharp guy who negotiated better rules and who played a short term streak perfectly.

95% of the Black Swan was beyond me but the ludic fallacy comes to life here.

Re: Nice to know the odds don't always favor the house

Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 12:40 am
by Turdacious
DrDonkeyLove wrote:Reminds me of the Taleb's Black Swan. The house relied on a bell curve based on tens of thousands of hands, not expecting a sharp guy who negotiated better rules and who played a short term streak perfectly.

95% of the Black Swan was beyond me but the ludic fallacy comes to life here.
That book has been officially added to my reading list. Thanks Doc!

Re: Nice to know the odds don't always favor the house

Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 1:19 pm
by DrDonkeyLove
Gladwell's, "What The Dog Saw" has a good article on Taleb and explains him and his view on investing more clearly than Taleb himself does to my tiny mind.

It's also a very interesting book in its own right.