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brutalist's avatar

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?

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Ben Recht's avatar

exactly this.

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Victor Ion Butoi's avatar

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.

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FourierBot's avatar

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😶

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Victor Ion Butoi's avatar

Very excited for the blogs to start up again

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Ben Recht's avatar

Thank you. I am also excited. Though I am already feeling the challenge of getting everyone on here excited about convex optimization...

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M Flood's avatar

Count at least one reader excited about convex optimization!

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