Five Best Books on Gambling - WSJ.com
These books on gambling are sure bets, says Joseph Mazur
1. The Compleat Gamester
By Charles Cotton
1674
When "The Compleat Gamester" was published, gamblers were only just beginning to realize that mathematics could be useful to predict the behaviors of chance?it would be a few more decades before the first serious mathematical theory of probability appeared in print. Gambling was not yet a business that could provide professionals with a guaranteed advantage. So this guide, by the English poet Charles Cotton, gives us a picture of gambling at a time when there were more tips on cheating than on odds, because the whole idea of chance was considered a matter of providence. Cotton advocates for gaming while cautioning gamesters to beware of cheaters' ruses, in particular "when the company grows thin and your eyes dim with watching, false dice." This is the place to learn of the card games, such as picket, basset and hazzard, that we read about in 19th-century English novels. In 1970, the Imprint Society issued an edition of "The Compleat Gamester" that preserved the charm of the book's antique spelling.
2. Scarne's Complete Guide to Gambling
By John Scarne
Simon & Schuster, 1961
Most of the countless gambling books published each year are "how to" guides that don't improve on this one by John Scarne (pronounced Scarney), who until his death in 1985 was considered by many of his peers the world's foremost gambling authority and the greatest card magician of his time. The book is an encyclopedic discussion of almost every aspect of gambling?its history, rules and winning strategies, a bit of gambling mathematics, and even methods of cheating. There are also plenty of beguiling anecdotes, like the one about the time gangsters Bugsy Siegel and Willie Moretti bet $5,000 on which fly would land on which of two sugar cubes.
3. Roll the Bones
By David G. Schwartz
Gotham, 2006
With "Roll the Bones," David Schwartz, the director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, produced more than just a history of gambling. It is an account of how gambling has affected society ever since our primordial ancestors had to decide whether it was safe to leave the cave when the gambling edge lay with the hungry tigers lurking outside. Gauging risk was a survival tool. The book is a bountiful guide to the origins of dice, playing cards, lotteries and other gambling pastimes. It's filled as well with colorful vignettes of the famous at their gaming?among them Voltaire, outsmarting an 18th-century lottery and winning nine million francs, and Dostoevsky at the German resort in Baden-Baden, going broke at the casino.
4. The Biggest Game in Town
By Al Alvarez
Houghton Mifflin, 1983
In "The Biggest Game in Town," Al Alvarez, a distinguished poet, author and literary critic, puts us at the poker tables of Vegas with the high-rolling big guys and also lets us peep at the casino world as if through the wide-angle zoom lenses of the house surveillance cameras. The lens captures mad men willing to bet suitcases of money on single rolls of the dice, addicts who refuse to believe that luck is beyond their control, and losers who never learn. Then there is the gangster who loses all his money at poker, leaves to rob a bank and returns to the game?and then loses his entire heist. The three weeks that Alvarez spent covering the 1981 World Series of Poker for The New Yorker provided him with the material for his remarkable account. For some, Alvarez says, Las Vegas is "a land of milk and honey, and for the rest it is a burial ground."
5. Lay the Favorite
By Beth Raymer
Spiegel & Grau, 2010
In this honest yet almost too-crazy-to-be-true memoir, we get a rare glimpse inside the sports-gambling underworld, at the bookies' harmless "pay and collect" agents (the author spent four years in the job), the hustlers, buffoons, fringe crooks and rogues of the trade. Every addicted gambler has a wish to lose, Beth Raymer says. "And as for the rare professionals who are talented enough to beat the house, rest assured they will go to whatever lengths necessary to surround themselves with people who will lose their money for them." Young, in need of guidance at the start, Raymer experiments with life and emerges a sports-gambling expert.
?Mr. Mazur is the author of "What's Luck Got to Do With It? The History, Mathematics, and Psychology of the Gambler's Illusion" and professor emeritus of mathematics at Marlboro College.Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W12
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...2043582667662.html?mod=WSJ_hp_editorsPicks_17
- FIVE BEST
- SEPTEMBER 11, 2010
These books on gambling are sure bets, says Joseph Mazur
1. The Compleat Gamester
By Charles Cotton
1674
When "The Compleat Gamester" was published, gamblers were only just beginning to realize that mathematics could be useful to predict the behaviors of chance?it would be a few more decades before the first serious mathematical theory of probability appeared in print. Gambling was not yet a business that could provide professionals with a guaranteed advantage. So this guide, by the English poet Charles Cotton, gives us a picture of gambling at a time when there were more tips on cheating than on odds, because the whole idea of chance was considered a matter of providence. Cotton advocates for gaming while cautioning gamesters to beware of cheaters' ruses, in particular "when the company grows thin and your eyes dim with watching, false dice." This is the place to learn of the card games, such as picket, basset and hazzard, that we read about in 19th-century English novels. In 1970, the Imprint Society issued an edition of "The Compleat Gamester" that preserved the charm of the book's antique spelling.
2. Scarne's Complete Guide to Gambling
By John Scarne
Simon & Schuster, 1961
Most of the countless gambling books published each year are "how to" guides that don't improve on this one by John Scarne (pronounced Scarney), who until his death in 1985 was considered by many of his peers the world's foremost gambling authority and the greatest card magician of his time. The book is an encyclopedic discussion of almost every aspect of gambling?its history, rules and winning strategies, a bit of gambling mathematics, and even methods of cheating. There are also plenty of beguiling anecdotes, like the one about the time gangsters Bugsy Siegel and Willie Moretti bet $5,000 on which fly would land on which of two sugar cubes.
3. Roll the Bones
By David G. Schwartz
Gotham, 2006
With "Roll the Bones," David Schwartz, the director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, produced more than just a history of gambling. It is an account of how gambling has affected society ever since our primordial ancestors had to decide whether it was safe to leave the cave when the gambling edge lay with the hungry tigers lurking outside. Gauging risk was a survival tool. The book is a bountiful guide to the origins of dice, playing cards, lotteries and other gambling pastimes. It's filled as well with colorful vignettes of the famous at their gaming?among them Voltaire, outsmarting an 18th-century lottery and winning nine million francs, and Dostoevsky at the German resort in Baden-Baden, going broke at the casino.
4. The Biggest Game in Town
By Al Alvarez
Houghton Mifflin, 1983
In "The Biggest Game in Town," Al Alvarez, a distinguished poet, author and literary critic, puts us at the poker tables of Vegas with the high-rolling big guys and also lets us peep at the casino world as if through the wide-angle zoom lenses of the house surveillance cameras. The lens captures mad men willing to bet suitcases of money on single rolls of the dice, addicts who refuse to believe that luck is beyond their control, and losers who never learn. Then there is the gangster who loses all his money at poker, leaves to rob a bank and returns to the game?and then loses his entire heist. The three weeks that Alvarez spent covering the 1981 World Series of Poker for The New Yorker provided him with the material for his remarkable account. For some, Alvarez says, Las Vegas is "a land of milk and honey, and for the rest it is a burial ground."
5. Lay the Favorite
By Beth Raymer
Spiegel & Grau, 2010
In this honest yet almost too-crazy-to-be-true memoir, we get a rare glimpse inside the sports-gambling underworld, at the bookies' harmless "pay and collect" agents (the author spent four years in the job), the hustlers, buffoons, fringe crooks and rogues of the trade. Every addicted gambler has a wish to lose, Beth Raymer says. "And as for the rare professionals who are talented enough to beat the house, rest assured they will go to whatever lengths necessary to surround themselves with people who will lose their money for them." Young, in need of guidance at the start, Raymer experiments with life and emerges a sports-gambling expert.
?Mr. Mazur is the author of "What's Luck Got to Do With It? The History, Mathematics, and Psychology of the Gambler's Illusion" and professor emeritus of mathematics at Marlboro College.Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W12
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...2043582667662.html?mod=WSJ_hp_editorsPicks_17
