Excellent review. Making money off your own risk is, even when you can do it successfully, for the “working stiffs” of the River: day traders, professional poker players, etc. The River’s true players, as you observe, get their edge by making money off other people’s risk: casino owners, Robinhood, Vanguard, DraftKings.
If expected value is the only lodestar for our decisions, then it’s impossible to say where the “honest” search for better odds ends and the exploitative construction of “house advantage” begins. The best bet is always one you can’t lose, right?
This is the insight that drives a PI to hire loads of Ph.D. students and give them riskier projects! Unfortunately have to spend some time as a working stiff first.
The only way to win the gamblings w/o 'luck' is to beat the math folks who structured the probabilities of the games? I was thinking of this when traveling in vegas. I tried to figure out the audience of casinos and why they got so addicted to those not-so-fun games. I didn't gamble at all but just collected the residual points which the gamblers left, and transacted about 30 dollars by end which was enough to find a good buffet place for a meal😶
Excellent review. Making money off your own risk is, even when you can do it successfully, for the “working stiffs” of the River: day traders, professional poker players, etc. The River’s true players, as you observe, get their edge by making money off other people’s risk: casino owners, Robinhood, Vanguard, DraftKings.
If expected value is the only lodestar for our decisions, then it’s impossible to say where the “honest” search for better odds ends and the exploitative construction of “house advantage” begins. The best bet is always one you can’t lose, right?
exactly this.
This is the insight that drives a PI to hire loads of Ph.D. students and give them riskier projects! Unfortunately have to spend some time as a working stiff first.
The only way to win the gamblings w/o 'luck' is to beat the math folks who structured the probabilities of the games? I was thinking of this when traveling in vegas. I tried to figure out the audience of casinos and why they got so addicted to those not-so-fun games. I didn't gamble at all but just collected the residual points which the gamblers left, and transacted about 30 dollars by end which was enough to find a good buffet place for a meal😶
Very excited for the blogs to start up again
Thank you. I am also excited. Though I am already feeling the challenge of getting everyone on here excited about convex optimization...
Count at least one reader excited about convex optimization!