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The Eudaemonic Pie
''The Eudaemonic Pie'' is a non-fiction book about gambling by American author Thomas A. Bass. The book was initially published in April 1985 by Houghton Mifflin. Overview The book focuses on a group of University of California, Santa Cruz, physics graduate students (known as the Eudaemons) who in the late 1970s and early 1980s designed and employed miniaturized computers, hidden in specially modified platform soled shoes, to help predict the outcome of casino roulette games. The players knew, presumably from the earlier work of Shannon and Thorp, that by capturing the state of the ball and wheel and taking into account peculiarities of the particular wheels being played they could increase their odds of selecting a winning number to gain a 44 percent advantage over the casinos.''The Eudaemonic Pie'', page 59. Authors Guild backprint edition, 2000. British edition A British edition was published under the title ''The Newtonian Casino''. Sequel The major players in ''The Eudaem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Bass
Thomas Alden Bass (born March 9, 1951) is an American writer and professor in literature, journalism, and history. Biography Bass graduated with an honors A.B. from the University of Chicago in 1973 and earned his Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness from the University of California Santa Cruz in 1980. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Blue Mountain Center, the Regents of the University of California, and the Ford Foundation. He has taught literature and history at Hamilton College and the University of California and is former director of the Hamilton in New York City Program on "Media in the Digital Age." In 2011 he taught a lecture class at Sciences Po Paris on "The Political Economy of the Media." Currently Bass is a Professor of English and Journalism at University at Albany, State University of New York. Bass has appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, NPR, BBC, and other venues to promote his books. He is the author of numerous a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Houghton Mifflin
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as star (as, for example, in ''the A* search algorithm'' or '' C*-algebra''). In English, an asterisk is usually five- or six-pointed in sans-serif typefaces, six-pointed in serif typefaces, and six- or eight-pointed when handwritten. Its most common use is to call out a footnote. It is also often used to censor offensive words. In computer science, the asterisk is commonly used as a wildcard character, or to denote pointers, repetition, or multiplication. History The asterisk has already been used as a symbol in ice age cave paintings. There is also a two thousand-year-old character used by Aristarchus of Samothrace called the , , which he used when proofreading Homeric poetry to mark lines that were duplicated. Origen is kn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the campus lies on of rolling, forested hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Founded in 1965, UC Santa Cruz began with the intention to showcase progressive, cross-disciplinary undergraduate education, innovative teaching methods and contemporary architecture. The residential college system consists of ten small colleges that were established as a variation of the Oxbridge collegiate university system. Among the Faculty is 1 Nobel Prize Laureate, 1 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences recipient, 12 members from the United States National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, 28 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and 40 members o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eudaemons
The Eudaemons were a small group headed by graduate physics students J. Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard at the University of California Santa Cruz in the late 1970s. The group's immediate objective was to find a way to beat roulette using a concealed computer, but a loftier objective was to use the money made from roulette to fund a scientific community. The name of the group was inspired by the eudaimonism philosophy. History During a summer the two students started doing their own research on a roulette wheel which they had bought. Using instruments including a camera and an oscilloscope to keep track of the motion of the roulette wheel, they eventually figured out a formula involving trigonometric functions and four variables, among them the period of rotation of the roulette wheel and the period of rotation of the ball around the roulette wheel. Since the calculations were very complicated, they decided to build a computer customized for the purpose of being fed data about ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roulette
Roulette is a casino game named after the French word meaning ''little wheel'' which was likely developed from the Italian game Biribi''.'' In the game, a player may choose to place a bet on a single number, various groupings of numbers, the color red or black, whether the number is odd or even, or if the numbers are high (19–36) or low (1–18). To determine the winning number, a croupier spins a wheel in one direction, then spins a ball in the opposite direction around a tilted circular track running around the outer edge of the wheel. The ball eventually loses momentum, passes through an area of deflectors, and falls onto the wheel and into one of thirty-seven (single-zero, French or European style roulette) or thirty-eight (double-zero, American style roulette) or thirty-nine (triple-zero, "Sands Roulette") colored and numbered pockets on the wheel. The winnings are then paid to anyone who has placed a successful bet. History The first form of roulette was devised in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bringing Down The House (book)
''Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions'' is a 2003 book by Ben Mezrich about a group of MIT card counters commonly known as the MIT Blackjack Team. Though the book is classified as non-fiction, the ''Boston Globe'' alleges that the book contains significant fictional elements, that many of the key events propelling the drama did not occur in real life, and that others were exaggerated greatly. The book was adapted into the movies '' 21'' and ''The Last Casino''. Synopsis The book's main character is Kevin Lewis, an MIT graduate who was invited to join the MIT Blackjack Team in 1993. Lewis was recruited by two of the team's top players, Jason Fisher and Andre Martinez. The team was financed by a colorful character named Micky Rosa, who had organized at least one other team to play the Vegas strip. This new team was the most profitable yet. Personality conflicts and card counting deterrent efforts at the casinos eventually ended ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Busting Vegas
''Busting Vegas'' (stylized as ''Busting Vega$'') is a 2005 book by Ben Mezrich about a group of MIT card counters and blackjack players commonly known as the MIT Blackjack Team. The subtitle of the original, hardcover edition was ''The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees'', but the subtitle of the subsequent paperback editions was ''A True Story of Monumental Excess, Sex, Love, Violence, and Beating the Odds''. While represented as non-fiction by Mezrich, the book contains significant fictional elements. The book is a sequel to '' Bringing Down the House''; however, the team discussed in ''Busting Vegas'' were primarily active prior to the team discussed in ''Bringing Down the House''. Synopsis The book's protagonist, Semyon Dukach, is recruited by team leader Victor Cassius while attending MIT to play on a highly specialized blackjack team. They employ advanced advantage play strategies like card steering and Ace sequencing. The team deals with the crises of s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Straight Flush (book)
''Straight Flush: The True Story of Six College Friends Who Dealt Their Way to a Billion-Dollar Online Poker Empire—and How It All Came Crashing Down'' is a book by Ben Mezrich. The text was published on May 28, 2013, by William Morrow and Company. ''Straight Flush'' tells the story of a group of University of Montana students who turned their weekly poker game into AbsolutePoker.com, one of the largest online gambling companies in the world. Reception ''Straight Flush'' received mixed to scathing reviews. James McManus wrote in ''The Wall Street Journal'' that ''Straight Flush'' was "not just a book about clueless adolescent venality, 'Straight Flush' is that sorry thing itself, and in spades." Haley Hintze, a writer who helped uncover the Absolute Poker scandal, labeled the book a "literary fraud" in an eleven part series. Don Oldenburg writing in ''USA Today'' notes one of the book's problems is "how much Mezrich himself seems in awe of" the sordid activity he is descri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
