Looking him up it looks like he managed to start and subsequently close (due to low returns) hedge funds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_O._Thorp#Stock_market
So it seems he was full of shit right? He was saying what he needed to say to get investors and when those investors fell for it he did not deliver.
Sold a lot of books though...
Thorpe is a dyed in wool information theory, probability theory academic who happens to be a super cool hacker at heart *.
Among his many accomplishments are, him obtaining a more general version of Black-Scholes model, independently and before Black, Scholes and Mertens had derived theirs. You may recall that got them the Nobel prize.
Managing money and breaking Las Vegas casinos were one of his, side, and mostly academic, entertainments.
There is a nice story of him visiting Shannon to discuss an information theory research paper that he, Thorpe, was writing. The meeting had taken a lot effort to schedule -- Shannon was a busy man, already a celebrity. But then they ended up over-extending their scheduled meeting, discussing, brainstorming with playful eagerness, different mathematical methods to break several popular gambling games, starting with Blackjack. Turns out Shannon was a sucker for such entertaining hacks. (This would be one of the first formulations of card counting [0]) Thorpe and his students would then try these out in Vegas.
*Taking things apart logically, to probe where things break, to understand how they work, that's as quintessentially an exercise in hacking as you can get.
Prof Thorpe wrote about and proved his strategies along with characterizing the assumptions under which they would and had worked.
Finally, you are you and then there is Prof. Thorpe.
It seems like the subject of nerd culture changed from waaay back when he was a kid being chemistry (you could make bombs), to electronics such as radio (you could do ham radio), to computers and then programming (video games).
Nowadays you won't find anyone who can tell you how chemistry works, and a few old guys will tell you how to solder your own electronics, but everyone will be able to tell you how to code a website.
On the otherhand, how can one not yield to the temptation of synthesizing some harmless nitrocellulose in the chemistry lab, or some flash powder.
"Experimenting" with the flash powder set my socks on fire while I was temporarily blinded. I was not expecting that. Fun times.
Yeah: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43742108
Was also perhaps career focused on latest tech?? For example my granddad did structural engineering, my father studied chemical engineering, I did electronic engineering
You have the market itself which is like the environment, it can go hot or cold based on broad trends, and if that's all their was fundamentals would likely work well.
The problem is there the dumb prey you feed on may adapt and remove your niche you fit in. Even worse is there is no shortage of predators watching you and waiting for you to make a mistake and they'll eat you alive.
All of the things he mentions are massive problems with making money from gambling. All of the large gamblers in the US use beards, it is time-consuming and you are generally dealing with gambling addicts who are unreliable. The situation in HK was unique (and the people Benter partnered with proved to be very unreliable anyway when they began making large amounts of money).
I understand why you think that. I am a small time gambler on sports, purely American football. I start each season with 10 bucks and end with 5k-20k.
And then I stop, until the next season starts.
Really fucks up my taxes.
There's no very specific situation where you're technically getting that money but you can't scale it up, your original statement gave an accurate impression, you're that good but don't want the money.
I don't know if you're lying to us or lying to yourself.