Professional blackjack player and author Ed Thorp was a successful card-counter. Too successful, many would argue, as his ability at the tables of Las Vegas’ biggest casinos lead to the implementation of multiple decks and the start of a war on card-counting.
Despite his expertise as a professional gambler – he published two books on the subject – he attributed the majority of his success to a staking formula created by mathematician John Kelly Jr. “Playing strategy is maybe a third to a quarter … of what you’re going to get out of it. Betting strategy may be two thirds or three quarters”.
Of course, it’s easy to say that a betting strategy is important. But what makes a useful strategy? With influence from Alex Bellos’ Alex’s Adventures in Numberland, we mapped the success of five betting strategies over a series of 500 bets: