Calculated Bets by Steven Skiena, Cambridge, $49.85/拢37.50 ISBN
0521804264
MOST students of maths must at some time fancy their chances of making a
fortune from gambling. A deep understanding of probability and statistics,
surely has to be a better road to riches than the hunches of the average
punter.
Someone who holds fast to this belief is Steven Skiena, a professor of
computing science at the State University of New York. He is a long-time devotee
of jai alai, a Basque form of handball. Professional jai alai is played in some
American states that allow betting on the outcomes of its fast and furious
games. It is, Skiena says, 鈥渁 lottery with seats鈥�.
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Skiena made the news in the 1970s as a computer whizz-kid who could forecast
the results of football matches. He has spent the best part of 25 years trying
to develop a computer model that would tell him how to place winning bets on jai
alai. What makes this feasible is that the results of jai alai games are
determined as much by the subtleties of the scoring system as by the skills of
the players.
This funny and utterly compelling book is the story of how Skiena and his
students constructed an embarrassingly successful computer program called Maven.
Fed nightly on jai alai schedules downloaded from the Web, Maven placed
telephone bets of its own choosing the next morning. In the end, Maven鈥檚 wings
were clipped by 鈥渟oftware rot鈥� and the looming Internet Gambling Prohibition
Act. Readers may be reassured to know that Skiena gave all his winnings to
charity.