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editor
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 Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2005 2:00 pm Post subject: Texts on Gambling |
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Texts on Gambling:
WELCOME!
| Quote: | By texts, we mean long, serious, fact-based studies, reports and collections of essays or stories on the subject of gambling -- research manuals, basically. As a way of introduction, we should say that we've initiated this section of The Roll & Shuffle because there are so very many of the things and likely to be more if the industry continues its journey skyward, but also, frankly, because the ones we've found so far are so readable. And useful.
We will place them simply in the order we find them on public library shelves, though we'll try to provide Amazon icons where possible. Sometimes it's not. Book stores or publishers may have considered certain works of too limited an appeal for much of a press run. Who knows how these decisions are made.
What we will try to do for visitors is to provide a very brief overview of the contents of each title without opinion. "Opinions are like assholes," said Dirty Harry Callahan, "Everyone's got one." Agreed. |
The Dirty Harry Collection
DVD
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editor
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| Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2005 2:21 pm Post subject: |
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Gambling in Canada:
Golden Goose or
Trojan Horse?
A Report from
the First National Symposium
on Lotteries and Gambling
May 1988
Edited by Colin S. Campbell and John Lowman
Published by the School of Criminology,
Simon Fraser University
Please see e-mail on how to download this text under Further reading at the bottom of Canadian Gaming Law Overview.
Very complete. Trawls the gambling history, success and regulatory schemes in provinces throughout Canada as well as the impact of U.S. gambling. Discusses legal and ethical issues and compares trends in gambling around the world. Entire article on commercial gambling in Great Britain. Even a lengthy comparison of gambling in Canada and Australia. Many (if not all) the experts writing here continue to be authorities in their respective areas. Several are listed along with their work at the Canadian Dept. of Justice online.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2090#2090
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editor
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| Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2005 2:33 pm Post subject: |
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Bookies and Bettors
Two Hundred Years of Gambling
Hardcover
By Richard Sasuly
(1982: Holt, Rinehart and Winston)
From the Prologue: The Bookmaker's Genie:
| Quote: | The story of bookmaking as told here begins, properly, in England. Further developments in British bookmaking will be treated in later parts of the book. The rest of the story concerns bookies, and their customers, in America.
For the most part, this book deals with people not generally reckoned among society's leaders. It is in some respects private, or even more or less secret, history. It deals often with covert transactions undertaken by unknowns. Bookmakers, or gamblers in general, have not as a rule recorded their views in Hansard or the Congressional Globe or Record. Few, if any, among them have been known for their diaries or memoirs. It is authentic history for all that. And history of this kind casts light into byways and thereby does its bit to help illuminate the shape of society and its changes. |
Also includes as Epilogue: Nevada and the Future of Legal Gambling. Here's an excerpt:
| Quote: | | How the individual bears his gain or loss is the capstone of the whole arrangement -- and, again, far beyond the reach of law or righteousness. On the surface, casino play seems irrational. The house margin is fairly low. It is probably somewhat over 5 per cent overall -- varying greatly with the mix of games offered and the kinds of players. On a given day, with a small house edge, the player may nearly as easily be a winner as a loser. The house rewards the player with diversion, or excitement, for accepting the margin against him. In the long run, though even a small house edge grinds away inexorably. But, as has been seen, a form of logic supports some players even in the long run. They absorb small losses, without serious damage. Ocassionally they score, they win big -- beyond the piddling amounts they can save against everyday pressures. And they have done it, excitingly, by beating a machine -- instead of hoarding a few dollars at a time, depriving themselves daily. The mathematics of this process are described somewhat by the Friedman-Savage curve. They are illustrated more graphically in Felicia Campbell's interviews with elderly and working-class gamblers. (-- p. 241) |
An extensive bibliography, too.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2091#2091
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editor
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| Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2005 4:00 pm Post subject: |
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The Sociology of Gambling
The Gambling Theory and Research Series Vol. II
Paperback
By Mikal Aasved
| Quote: | | This series therefore represents a synthesis of the major ideas and findings of leading theoreticians and researchers in their quest to discover and explain the human propensity for gambling. It is evident that just as many writers in the field of alcohol studies often fail to distinguish among drinking, drunkenness, and alcoholism, so do many writers in the field of gambling studies fail to acknowledge that there are also different degrees of gambling involvement. It is therefore extremely important to distinguish among normative or moderate recreational gambling which is harmful to none, heavy or immoderate gambling which may or may not be harmful to a particular gambler, and compulsive or pathological gambling which is generally harmful not only to all those who are afflicted with it but also to their families, friends, and sometimes even to the greater society in which they live. Addressing primarily the etiological issues related to both normative and excessive gambling, this series includes the speculative thoughts of armchair scholars as well as the empirical findings of front-line scientific researchers in all disciplines including the behavioral, social, and medical sciences. (Preface to the Series, p. vii) |
A big, heavy bastard of a book that appears to have covered all the groups you might expect plus a few new ones.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2093#2093
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| Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 9:35 am Post subject: |
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Something for Nothing
Luck in America
Hardcover
By Jackson Lears
| Quote: | | Still, despite the international dimensions of controversy over gambling, the recurrent furor has a peculiarly American resonance. Debate about gambling reveals fundamental fault lines in American character, sharp tensions between an impulse toward risk and a zeal for control. Those tensions between an impulse toward risk and a zeal for control. Those tensions may be universal, but seldom have they been so sharply opposed as in the United States, where longings for a lucky strike have counterbalanced by a secular Protestant Ethic that has questioned the very existence of luck. That conflict is the subject of this book. It is not a history of gambling per se, but a history of conflicting attitudes toward luck. Contemporary gambling games recall ancient rituals -- attempts to divine the decrees of fate, and conujure the wayward force of luck. Those rituals were (and are) rooted in a distinctive world view, based on a certain respect -- even reverence -- for chance. This outlook contrasted sharply with what became an American creed: the faith that we can master chance through force of will, and that rewards will match merits in this world as well as the next. For me, writing about luck is a way of eavesdropping on a contentious conversation at the core of our culture -- a conversation that raises fundamental ethical, philosophical, and even religious issues. (-- p. 2) |
Casts a wide net over history and culture the world over in a scholarly yet readable effort to answer the question, why do people gamble? Fully annotated plus an unexpected bonus of black and white artwork throughout, including photos, posters and paintings of gambling paraphernalia. For more by and about this award-winning author, click here and scroll down.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2100#2100
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| Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2005 11:00 am Post subject: |
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Legalized Gambling
For and Against
Paperback
Edited by Rod L. Evans and Mark Hance
| Quote: | | This collection of writings for and against legalized gambling captures all the main arguments on both sides; in a long-running controversy like this, it is unlikely that any fundamentally new arguments will appear in the future. We have tried in each part to balance at least one forceful statement on one side with at least one equally persuasive statement to the contrary. We were able to do this in most cases, but not all. (From the Preface signed by both authors). |
Similar format to Golden Goose, Trojan Horse essay collection above. Fully annotated. Complete bibliography and index. An especially novel chapter on tribal gaming, which documents the two killings over gambling at Akwesasne.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2103#2103
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 9:42 am Post subject: |
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Chance
A Guide to Gambling, Love,
the Stock Market & Just
About Everything Else
Hardcover
By Amir D. Aczel
| Quote: | Letters to a Young Gambling Addict
The essence of the mathematical theory of probability emerged in France in the 1600s as a result of an unusual partnership between a gambler and a mathematician. The gambler was the Chevalier de Mere, who wanted to find out how to win in the casinos of Europe. The mathematician was none other than the famous philosopher, physicist, and mathematician Blaise Pascal. De Mere came to Pascal and asked him about the probability of winning at two different complex games popular in Europe at that time (we will see them later). Pascal wrote to an older mathematician, the famous Pierre de Fermat, and through their correspondence, the mathematical rules of probability were derived. These rules, as expanded through the centuries, are the subject of this book. (From Introduction at p. xiii) |
Very brief, lucidly illustrated explanation of probability theory by a Berkeley math whiz who tested these gamibling theories on himself and won.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2136#2136
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editor
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| Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2005 10:54 am Post subject: |
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Dummy Up And Deal
Inside the Culture of Casino Dealing
Hardcover
By H. Lee Barnes
| Quote: | | This book is narrative nonfiction. What is contained in these pages does not and cannot fit into the confines of theory, thesis, and proof. I conducted no surveys to conform a general representation of attitudes. I have no statistics at my disposal to establish or imply that dealers are more or less unhappy or more or less cynical than other workers -- or the opposite, for that matter. I talked to and listened to people and recorded episodes from their and my experience. The weight of this book is carried by stories because they are the interpretive data of daily life and express humanity in a way that cannot be rendered in cold numbers. (From the Preface) |
A thin tome exactly as the preface describes. A must-read for anyone considering a career in Vegas.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2190#2190
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 5:18 pm Post subject: |
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The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior
Hardcover
By John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern
| Quote: | Is that a real bluff?
Regular players at his Friday night, low-stakes poker games tell him that learning poker has helped them negotiate raises and sell houses at inflated prices, writes Dr. Raj Persaud in The Daily Telegraph. He cites the landmark book The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, which devotes a chapter to poker strategy. "Through mathematical modelling, they point out that most people make a central mistake when it comes to poker if they believe it's about a game of bluff...Actually, the most profitable strategy occurs where your opponent believes you to be weak, though pretending to be strong...so the key deception is even deeper than a classic bluff - it is, in fact, a case of pretending to be bluffing when you aren't." (From Social Studies, a daily miscellany of information, by Michael Kesterton in The Globe & Mail Jan. 4/06 at p. A16) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2364#2364
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 5:44 pm Post subject: |
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Essays on Cooperative Games
Hardcover
Edited by Gianfranco Gambarelli
| Quote: | 1.4 The Fourth Pardigm
Finally, man realizes that he is interacting, and in competition, with other individuals who are, themselves, aware of this. Thus he must
(a) outsmart others,
(b) learn from others' behavior,
(c) co-operate with others,
(d) bargain with others.
(From The Coming of Game Theory at p. 3) |
While we are relatively new to the wonders of the university math library, there was much to consider in this historical perspective on game theory, the subject of of the first of this collection of brief essays on game theory. Harvesting more than this requires a reader with at least an understanding of what is meant by a Newtonian discipline called calculus. It's precisely there that we part company but certain astute gamblers will no doubt benefit from perseverence.
Here's what the boys had to say about the previous text:
| Quote: | | It is fashionable nowadays to say that 1944's The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior was merely a recompilation of previous work and contained no new results. In fact, while no new, profound theorems are proved in this book, there are some very important developments. First, the introduction of information sets led to a formal definition of strategy, and thus allowed for the reduction from the extensive to the normal form of the game. In dealing with cooperative games, the treatment of coalitions introduced the characteristic form (admittedly a misnomer) and gave a formal definition to the very important concept of imputation. The introduction of von Neumann-Morgenstern solutions led down a blind alley, but nevertheless included the idea of domination, which would eventually lead to the important concept of the core. The second edition of TGEB (1947) gave a strict development of utility theory. (From The Coming of Game Theory, p. 6) |
Link to this entry
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 9:44 am Post subject: |
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The Poker Face of Wall Street
Hardcover
By Aaron Brown
| Quote: | One would tend to think that gambling is a sterile activity that is meant to occupy those who have not much else to do and others when they have not much else to do. You would also think that there is a distinction between "economic risk-taking" and "gambling," one of them invested with respectability, the other treated as a vice and a product of parasitic activity.
This book shows that the distinction between what is called purely gambling and "productive economic activity" is one of those socially constructed ones that remain sticky in our minds. While many may disagree with the point (our economics culture is vitiated by these mental boundaries between activities), it remains that gambling injects currency into economic life in the form of the expectation of future cash transfers and that, and not just narrowly defined "productive" activities, may make the world advance. We may not accept it because economics is a narrative discipline and this appears to be the wrong narrative. It is not that gambling imitates economic life, but that economic life is largely modeled after gambling. That was the idea of the original thinker John Law, made infamous with his bankruptcy; Aaron Brown, another original thinker, revives it and takes it further. (From the Foreword by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, p. xi) |
Careless errors scattered throughout the text escaped the notice of editors, which always begs the question, what else did they miss? Nevertheless, an entertaining read, with clear, logical analogies and gambling/investment lessons.
Fooled by Randomness:
The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and Markets
Hardcover
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
| Quote: | ...Much has been written about our biases (acquired or genetic) in dealing with randomness over the past decade. The rules while writing the first edition of this book had been to avoid discussing (a) anything that I did not either personally witness on the topic or develop independently, and (b) anything that I have not distilled well enough to be able to write on the subject with only the slightest effort...I tried to use no quote that did not naturally spring from my memory and did not come from a writer whom I had intimately frequented over the years (I detest the practice of random use of borrowed wisdom - much on that later). Au tace aut loquere meliora silencio (only when the words outperform silence).
These rules remain intact. But sometimes life requires compromises: Under pressure from friends and readers I have added to the present edition a series of nonintrusive endnotes referring to the related literature. I have also added new material to most chapters, most notably in Chapter 11, which altogether has resulted in an expansion of the book by more than a third. (Preface, pgs. vii-viii) |
An honest work of true genius, according to the boss, admittedly an enthusiastic fan of slapstick and other low comedy. We'll weigh in later on this one.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2825#2825
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| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 1:04 pm Post subject: |
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London
The Biography
Hardcover
By Peter Ackroyd
| Quote: | The first evidence of gambling in London can be adduced from the Roman period, with the excavation of dice carved out of bone or jet. The unexpected turns of life, as then experienced, are also revealed in the elaborate equipment of a fortune-teller found beneath Newgate Street. In the early medieval period Hazard was played in taverns and other low houses, together with another dice game known as Tables. In medieval brothels, too, gambling and drinking were part of the service. Quarrels over a game were sometimes fatal and, after one round of Tables, 'the loser fatally stabbed the winner on the way home'. There was plentiful scope for fraud, also, and there are reports of the gaming was everywhere. An excavation in Duke's Palace revealed 'a piece of medieval roof-tile shaped into a gaming counter', according to a report in The London Archaelogist, and as early as the thirteenth century, there were rules in Westminster for the punishment of any schoolboy found with dice in his possession. A stroke of the rod was delivered for every 'pip' on the dice.
Playing cards were imported into London in the fifteenth century, and their use became so widespread that in 1495 Henry VII 'forbad their use to servants and apprentices except during the Christmas holidays.' Stow records that 'From All hallows Eve to the day following Candlemas-day there was, among other sports, playing at cards, for counters, nails and points, in every house'. They were found in every tavern, too: packs of cards had the names of various inns imprinted upon them. Their merits were widely advertised. 'Spanish cards lately brought from Vig. Being pleasant to the eye by their curious colours and quite different from ours may be had at 1/- [one shilling] a pack at Mrs Baldwin's in Warwick Lane.' The business in cards became so mid-seventeenth century an annual income of five thousand pounds which meant that 'some 4.8 million packs of cards' must have been traded.
Fulham earned a reputation as early as the sixteenth century for its dubious traffic in dice and counters; it is evoked by Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor, where
For gourd and fullam holds
And 'high' and 'low' beguile the rich and poor.
A fullam in this context was a loaded die...
... Gaming was declared illegal but, despite nightly raids upon certain selected hells in the city, it continued to flourish. There was always 'assembled a mixed crowd of gentlemen, merchants, tradesmen, clerks and sharpers of all degrees and conditions', ready to play at Hazard, Faro, Basset, Roly-poly and a score of other games involving dice and cards. Into these hells came the puffs, the flashers, the squibs, the dunners, the flash captains with a regiment of spies, porters and runners to give notice of approaching constables. At Almacks, a famous gaming club in Pall Mall, the players 'turned their coats inside out for luck'; they put on wristbands of leather to protect their lace ruffles and wore straw hats to guard their eyes fro the light and to prevent their hair from tumbling. Sometimes, too, they put on 'masks to conceal their emotions'. At Brooks's, the twenty-first rule stated that there whould be 'No gaming in the eating room, except tossing up for reckonings, on penalty of paying the whole bill of the members present'. There were othedr less agreeable occasions for a wager, as recorded in London Souvenirs. A prospective player once dropped down dead at the door of White's; ;the club immediately made bets whether he was dead or only in a fit; and when they were going to bleed him the wagerers for his death interposed, saying it would affect the fairness of the bet'.
... The traditions of public gaming were continued into the nineteenth century by such places as the Royal Saloon in Piccadilly, the Castle in Holborn, Tom Cribb's Saloon in Panton Street, the Finish in James Street, and Brydges Street Saloon in Covent Garden otherwise known as 'The Hall of Infamy' or Old Mother Damnable's'. On the other side of London, in the East End, there were gambling rooms and gambling clubs, to such an extent that one minister working among the poor of the area informed Charles Booth that 'gambling presses drink hard as the greatest evil of the day... all gamble more than they drink'. The street urchins gambled with farthings or buttons, in a card game known as Darbs, and betting on boxing or horse-racing was carried on through the agency of tobacconists, publicans, newsvendors and Booth's survey of the East End, 'Women as well as men...men and boys tumble out in their eagerness to read the latest 'speshul" and mark the winner.'
And then there was the lottery. It was first established in London in 1569... (From Chapter 42, A Turn of the Dice, at pgs. 381-385) |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 1:47 pm Post subject: |
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The Immortal Game
A History of Chess
or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated
Our Understanding of War, Art, Science, and the
Human Brain
Hardcover
By David Shenk
| Quote: | | Lionel) Kieseritzky, a former math teacher from Estonia, had traveled from Paris, where he dominated the chess scene at the Cafe de La Regence, giving lessons and playing games fro five francs an hour. His specialty was defeating lesser players even after removing one or more of his pieces at the game's start. (This is known as "giving odds." Playing without one of your Knights, for example, is giving Knight odds.) In 1849 Kieseritzky had founded his own chess journal, naming it La Regence after his favorite haunt. In 1851 he traveled to London as one of the leading favorites to win the tournament. (Move I, p. 26) |
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http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3341#3341 |
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