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Edward Oakley Thorp (born August 14, 1932) is an American mathematics professor, author,
hedge fund A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as sho ...
manager, and
blackjack Blackjack (formerly Black Jack and Vingt-Un) is a casino banking game. The most widely played casino banking game in the world, it uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as Twenty-One. This fami ...
researcher. He pioneered the modern applications of
probability theory Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set o ...
, including the harnessing of very small
correlation In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics ...
s for reliable financial gain. Thorp is the author of ''Beat the Dealer'', which mathematically proved that the
house advantage Games available in most casinos are commonly called casino games. In a casino game, the players gamble cash or casino chips on various possible random outcomes or combinations of outcomes. Casino games are also available in online casinos, whe ...
in blackjack could be overcome by
card counting Card counting is a blackjack strategy used to determine whether the player or the dealer has an advantage on the next hand. Card counters are advantage players who try to overcome the casino house edge by keeping a running count of high and low ...
. He also developed and applied effective hedge fund techniques in the
financial market A financial market is a market in which people trade financial securities and derivatives at low transaction costs. Some of the securities include stocks and bonds, raw materials and precious metals, which are known in the financial markets ...
s, and collaborated with
Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American people, American mathematician, electrical engineering, electrical engineer, and cryptography, cryptographer known as a "father of information theory". As a 21-year-o ...
in creating the first
wearable computer A wearable computer, also known as a body-borne computer, is a computing device worn on the body. The definition of 'wearable computer' may be narrow or broad, extending to smartphones or even ordinary wristwatches. Wearables may be for general ...
. Thorp received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the
University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
in 1958, and worked at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
(MIT) from 1959 to 1961. He was a professor of mathematics from 1961 to 1965 at
New Mexico State University New Mexico State University (NMSU or NM State) is a public land-grant research university based primarily in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Founded in 1888, it is the oldest public institution of higher education in New Mexico and one of the state's tw ...
, and then joined the
University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...
where he was a professor of mathematics from 1965 to 1977 and a professor of mathematics and finance from 1977 to 1982.


Background

Thorp was born in Chicago, but moved to southern California in his childhood. He had an early aptitude for science, and often tinkered with experiments of his own creation. He was one of the youngest amateur radio operators when he was certified at age 12. Thorp went on to win scholarships by doing well in chemistry and physics competitions (one instance led him to meeting President Truman), ultimately electing to go to UC Berkeley for his undergraduate degree. However, he transferred to UCLA after one year, majoring in physics. This was eventually followed by a PhD in Mathematics at UCLA. He met his future wife Vivian during his first year at UCLA. They married in January 1956.


Computer-aided research in blackjack

Thorp used the
IBM 704 The IBM 704 is a large digital mainframe computer introduced by IBM in 1954. It was the first mass-produced computer with hardware for floating-point arithmetic. The IBM 704 ''Manual of operation'' states: The type 704 Electronic Data-Pro ...
as a research tool in order to investigate the probabilities of winning while developing his
blackjack Blackjack (formerly Black Jack and Vingt-Un) is a casino banking game. The most widely played casino banking game in the world, it uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as Twenty-One. This fami ...
game theory, which was based on the
Kelly criterion In probability theory, the Kelly criterion (or Kelly strategy or Kelly bet), is a formula that determines the optimal theoretical size for a bet. It is valid when the expected returns are known. The Kelly bet size is found by maximizing the expec ...
, which he learned about from the 1956 paper by Kelly.Understanding Fortune’s Formula by Edward O. Thorp Copyright 2007
Quote: "My 1962 book Beat the Dealer explained the detailed theory and practice. The “optimal” way to bet in favorable situations was an important feature. In Beat the Dealer I called this, naturally enough, “The Kelly gambling system,” since I learned about it from the 1956 paper by John L. Kelly."
THE KELLY CRITERION IN BLACKJACK, SPORTS BETTING, AND THE STOCK MARKET by Edward O. Thorp Paper presented at: The 10th International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking Montreal, June 1997
/ref>Discovery channel documentary series: ''
Breaking Vegas ''Breaking Vegas'' is a television series that premiered on The History Channel in the United States in 2004. The series covers the great lengths people have gone to make money, sometimes illegally, from casinos. Many episodes have to do with chea ...
,'' Episode: "Professor Blackjack" with interviews by Ed and Vivian Thorp
The Tech (MIT)
"Thorpe, 704 Beat Blackjack" Vol. 81 No. I Cambridge, Mass., Friday, February 10, 1961
He learned Fortran in order to program the equations needed for his theoretical research model on the probabilities of winning at blackjack. Thorp analyzed the game of blackjack to a great extent this way, while devising
card counting Card counting is a blackjack strategy used to determine whether the player or the dealer has an advantage on the next hand. Card counters are advantage players who try to overcome the casino house edge by keeping a running count of high and low ...
schemes with the aid of the IBM 704 in order to improve his odds, especially near the end of a card deck that is not being reshuffled after every deal.


Applied research in casinos

Thorp decided to test his theory in practice in
Reno Reno ( ) is a city in the northwest section of the U.S. state of Nevada, along the Nevada-California border, about north from Lake Tahoe, known as "The Biggest Little City in the World". Known for its casino and tourism industry, Reno is the c ...
,
Lake Tahoe Lake Tahoe (; was, Dáʔaw, meaning "the lake") is a Fresh water, freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra Nevada of the United States. Lying at , it straddles the state line between California and Nevada, west of Carson City, Nevad ...
, and
Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...
,
Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...
.It's Bye! Bye! Blackjack
Edward Thorp, the pensive professor above, is shaking the gambling world with a system for beating a great card game. He published it a year ago, and now the proof is in: it works David E. Scherman January 13, 1964 pp. 1–3 from SI Vault (beta)(CNN) Quotes: "The unlikely trio was soon on its way to Reno and Lake Tahoe, where Thorp's horn-rimmed glasses, dark hair and fresh, scrubbed face hardly struck terror into the pit bosses. (p. 1)", "But Edward Thorp and his computer are not done with Nevada yet. The classiest gambling game of all—just ask James Bond—is that enticing thing called baccarat, or chemin de fer. Its rules prevent a fast shuffle, and there is very little opportunity for hanky-panky. Thorp has now come up with a system to beat it, and the system seems to work. He has a baccarat team, and it is over $5,000 ahead. It has also been spotted and barred from play in two casinos. Could it be bye-bye to baccarat, too? (p. 1)" and "But disguises frequently work. Thorp himself now uses a combination of wraparound glasses and a beard to change his appearance on successive Las Vegas visits. (p. 3)"
Thorp started his applied research using $10,000, with
Manny Kimmel Emmanuel Kimmel (April 14, 1896 – July 18, 1982) was a notable underworld figure between the 1930s and 1960s and the founder of the Kinney Parking Company, a chain of parking lots and garages which evolved into the media conglomerate Warner Com ...
, a wealthy professional gambler and former bookmaker,Breaking Vegas “Professor Blackjack.”
Biography channel Rated: TVPG Running Time: 60 Minutes Quote: "In 1961, lifelong gambler Manny Kimmel, a "connected" New York businessman, read an article by MIT math professor Ed Thorp claiming that anyone could make a fortune at blackjack by using math theory to count cards. The mob-connected sharpie offered the young professor a deal: he would put up the money, if Thorp would put his theory to action and card-count their way to millions. From Thorp's initial research to the partnership's explosive effect on the blackjack landscape, this episode boasts fascinating facts about the game's history, colorful interviews (including with Thorp), and archival footage that evokes the timeless allure and excitement of the thriving casinos in the early `60s. "
providing the venture capital. First they visited Reno and Lake Tahoe establishments where they tested Thorp's theory at the local blackjack tables. The experimental results proved successful and his theory was verified since he won $11,000 in a single weekend. Casinos now shuffle a long way before the end of the deck is reached as a countermeasure to his methods. During his Las Vegas casino visits Thorp frequently used disguises such as wraparound glasses and false beards. In addition to the blackjack activities, Thorp had assembled a
baccarat Baccarat or baccara (; ) is a card game played at casinos. It is a comparing card game played between two hands, the "player" and the "banker". Each baccarat coup (round of play) has three possible outcomes: "player" (player has the higher score ...
team which was also winning. News quickly spread throughout the gambling community, which was eager for new methods of winning, while Thorp became an instant celebrity among blackjack aficionados. Due to the great demand generated about disseminating his research results to a wider gambling audience, he wrote the book ''Beat the Dealer'' in 1966, widely considered the original guide to card counting, which sold over 700,000 copies, a huge number for a specialty title which earned it a place in the ''New York Times'' bestseller list, much to the chagrin of Kimmel whose identity was thinly disguised in the book as Mr. X. Thorp's blackjack researchA favorable strategy for twenty-one. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 47 (1961), 110-112 is one of the very few examples where results from such research reached the public directly, completely bypassing the usual academic
peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...
process cycle. He has also stated that he considered the whole experiment an academic exercise. In addition, Thorp, while a professor of mathematics at MIT, met
Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American people, American mathematician, electrical engineering, electrical engineer, and cryptography, cryptographer known as a "father of information theory". As a 21-year-o ...
, and took him and his wife Betty Shannon as partners on weekend forays to Las Vegas to play
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 ...
and blackjack, at which Thorp was very successful. His team's roulette play was the first instance of using a wearable computer in a casino — something which is now illegal, as of May 30, 1985, when the Nevada devices law came into effect as an emergency measure targeting blackjack and roulette devices. The wearable computer was co-developed with Claude Shannon between 1960 and 1961. It relied on a pair of operators, where one would watch the wheel and use his toe to input the cadence of the wheel, and the other would receive a message in the form of musical tones through a hidden earpiece. By betting on groups of neighboring numbers on the wheel they could gain a sufficient advantage to make a profit. The final operating version of the device was tested in Shannon's home lab at his basement in June 1961. Based on his achievements, Thorp was an inaugural member of the
Blackjack Hall of Fame The Blackjack Hall of Fame honors the greatest blackjack experts, authors, and professional players in history. It was launched in 2002, and its physical premises are in San Diego, California. History The Blackjack Hall of Fame is housed at the ...
. He also devised the "Thorp count", a method for calculating the likelihood of winning in certain endgame positions in
backgammon Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice on tables boards. It is the most widespread Western member of the large family of tables games, whose ancestors date back nearly 5,000 years to the regions of Mesopotamia and Pe ...
. ''Edward O. Thorp's Real Blackjack'' was published by Villa Crespo Software in 1990.


Stock market

Since the late 1960s, Thorp has used his knowledge of
probability Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an Event (probability theory), event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and ...
and
statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...
in the stock market by discovering and exploiting a number of pricing anomalies in the
securities market Security market is a component of the wider financial market where securities can be bought and sold between subjects of the economy, on the basis of demand and supply. Security markets encompasses stock markets, bond markets and derivatives mar ...
s and has made a significant fortune. Thorp's first hedge fund was Princeton/Newport Partners from 1969 to 1989 based on
Market Neutral An investment strategy or portfolio is considered market-neutral if it seeks to avoid some form of market risk entirely, typically by hedging. To evaluate market-neutrality requires specifying the risk to avoid. For example, convertible arbitrage a ...
Derivatives Hedging. His second hedge fund was called Ridgeline Partners and it ran from August 1994 through September 2002 based on
Statistical arbitrage In finance, statistical arbitrage (often abbreviated as ''Stat Arb'' or ''StatArb'') is a class of short-term financial trading strategies that employ mean reversion models involving broadly diversified portfolios of securities (hundreds to thousan ...
. This hedge fund was closed largely because the return of the statistical arbitrage strategies had been low since 2002. He is currently the President of Edward O. Thorp & Associates, based in
Newport Beach Newport Beach is a coastal city in South Orange County, California. Newport Beach is known for swimming and sandy beaches. Newport Harbor once supported maritime industries however today, it is used mostly for recreation. Balboa Island, Newport ...
, California. In May 1998, Thorp reported that his personal investments yielded an annualized 20 percent rate of return averaged over 28.5 years. In 1991, Thorp was an early skeptic of
Bernie Madoff Bernard Lawrence Madoff ( ; April 29, 1938April 14, 2021) was an American fraudster and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, worth about $64.8 billion. He was at one time chairman of the NASDA ...
's supposedly stellar investing returns which were proved to be a fraud in 2008.


Bibliography

* Edward Thorp, (1964) ''Beat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One'', * Edward O. Thorp, Sheen T. Kassouf, (1967) ''Beat the Market: A Scientific Stock Market System'',
online pdf
retrieved 22 Nov 2017) * Edward O. Thorp, ''Elementary Probability'', 1977, * Edward O. Thorp, ''The Mathematics of Gambling'', 1984, (online versio
part 1part 2part 3part 4
* The Kelly Capital Growth Investment Criterion: Theory and Practice (World Scientific Handbook in Financial Economic Series), , February 10, 2011 by Leonard C. MacLean (Editor), Edward O. Thorp (Editor), William T. Ziemba (Editor) * (Autobiography) Edward O. Thorp, (2017)

' *
William Poundstone William Poundstone is an American author, columnist, and skeptic. He has written a number of books including the ''Big Secrets'' series and a biography of Carl Sagan. Early life and education Poundstone attended MIT and studied physics. Personal ...
(2005) ''Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street''


See also

* Black–Scholes *
Gaming mathematics Experiments, events and probability spaces The technical processes of a game stand for experiments that generate aleatory events. Here are a few examples: * Throwing the dice in craps is an experiment that generates events such as occurrences of cer ...
*
Kelly criterion In probability theory, the Kelly criterion (or Kelly strategy or Kelly bet), is a formula that determines the optimal theoretical size for a bet. It is valid when the expected returns are known. The Kelly bet size is found by maximizing the expec ...
* Proebsting's paradox *
Richard A. Epstein Richard Allen Epstein (born April 17, 1943) is an American legal scholar known for his writings on torts, contracts, property rights, law and economics, classical liberalism, and libertarianism. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at ...


References


Sources

* Patterson, Scott D., ''
The Quants ''The Quants'' is the debut New York Times best selling book by Wall Street journalist Scott Patterson. It was released on February 2, 2010 by Crown Business. The book describes the world of quantitative analysis and the various hedge funds t ...
: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It'', Crown Business, 352 pages, 2010. vi
Patterson and Thorp interview
on
Fresh Air ''Fresh Air'' is an American radio talk show broadcast on National Public Radio stations across the United States since 1985. It is produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The show's host is Terry Gross. , the show was syndicated to 6 ...
, February 1, 2010, including excerpt "Chapter 2: The Godfather: Ed Thorp"


External links

*
Edward O. Thorp official site

Thorp, Edward entry, Wilmott Wiki

Edward O. Thorp & Fortune's Formula
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thorp, Edward Oakley 1932 births American blackjack players American gambling writers American male non-fiction writers 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American hedge fund managers American investors American money managers American stock traders Living people University of California, Irvine faculty New Mexico State University faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty