One can often hear that the best piece of GClub advice given by a mathematician to a lover of gambling games is an assertion which lies in the fact that the best strategy in gambling games is complete abstention from participation in them.
A lot of mathematicians consider that the most which the theory of probability and the theory of games can give a gambler are the strategies following which he won't lose too much.
It is difficult to predict whether the American mathematician Edward Thorp shared this view, when once spending winter holidays in Las-Vegas, he, having entered a casino, decided to try his luck in the game of twenty-one. As it turned out, "Dame Fortune" was extremely unkind to him.
We do not know for sure what amount of royal1688 casino money this teacher of mathematics of one of American universities lost that winter night at the end of the 50-s – the beginning of the 60-s of the last century, however, judging by the following events the amount was not small. Otherwise, how can we account for the fact that development of an optimal strategy of this game became for a number of years an "idte fixe" of our hero. Besides, the matter was not only in the quantity of money lost by the mathematician.
Perhaps, Thorp was simply an extremely venturesome person, and his pride both of a gambler and an expert-mathematician was hurt. Besides, he could suspect a croupier of dishonesty, since, as he had noticed, cards were not shuffled after each game. Though, during the game itself it did not make him very uneasy.
However, afterwards, having visited casinos a number of times, he noticed that as the rules did not presuppose obligatory shuffling of cards after each game, so it was difficult to accuse a croupier of anything. Anyway, he managed to develop a winning strategy in the game of twenty-one.
This strategy among other things was based on the same very aspect which had put a defeated mathematician on his guard – cards were not shuffled too often. At that, this, apparently, as a rule, was done not because of some evil design, but in order to avoid, so to say, unnecessary slowdowns in the game.
The results of his studies Edward Thorp put forth in a book published in 1962 (Thorp E.O Beat the dealer. A winning strategy for the game of twenty one. - New York: Blaisdell,1962.) which made owners of gambling houses in the state of Nevada essentially change the rules of the game of twenty-one. But let's not ride before the hounds.
