Suppose you had to pick one of the following two options:

(A) A guaranteed $1,000,000

or

(B) A %10 chance of getting $2,500,000, an %89 of getting $1,000,000, and a %1 chance of getting $0.

Which option would you pick?

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Here’s a good book for gambling fans – perhaps even as a stocking stuffer for your fellow gambling fans…

“Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions,” by Ben Mezrich.  It’s an exciting read, and gives you some sense from the “inside” of card counting, Vegas and high stakes gambling.

Basic story:

Students from MIT use card counting and working in teams to win at blackjack in Vegas.  The drama comes as the casinos get smarter - and more violent - trying to stop the team from using their MIT brains to the casinos’ disadvantage.  One of the students in the story has misgivings about his double life as an upstanding student at MIT, fulfilling his family’s dreams, and a professional, quasi-legal card player.

The book is easy-to-read, and the story moves forward quickly.  Their card counting system is explained at the end, for those of you who’d like to try it!  Although not a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, if the story is ture, the team could certainly pay for a few of the million dollar loot bags that go along with those Nobel Prizes.

Has anyone read the book yet - what did you think of it?

Is online poker really poker? 

This question is one that David R. Koepsell considers and gives an answer to in his essay “Is it Bluffing when No One Sees you Blink”, one of the essays in the collection of essays called ”Poker and Philosophy: Pocket Rockets and Philosopher Kings”, edited by Eric Bronson.  To see my comments about another essay in this collection read this.

Koepsell writes, “Online poker is not poker - it is a subset of the game, lacking features we necessarily consider to be part of the game.  These are the social features which we most frequently associate with poker’s portrayal in novels and movies.”  Koepsell goes on to say that these social features, which are “moot” with respect to online poker, involve “rules of etiquette”, such as “not acting out of turn, not splashing the pot, not touching otherpeople’s cards or chips, not raking the pot, and so on.” 

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