alt Hacker NewsYhe initiator of the scheme, Edward O. Thorp, was also a father of modern blackjack card counting, and wrote the definitive book about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_counting#History_of_blackj... . "The Invention of the First Wearable Computer" http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/graphics/courses/mobwear/resourc... is Thorp's paper about the blackjack-computer scheme.
(Another famous '70s card counter, Ken Uston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Uston ended up writing one of the very earliest video game guides, Mastering Pac-Man (it came out in 1981, the same year as Tom Hirschfeld's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Master_the_Video_Games .) Apparently one of its readers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semyon_Dukach discovered Uston's blackjack books as a result, got into blackjack and so ended up on the later, late-'70s-to-early-2000s MIT Blackjack Team led by J.P. Massar .)
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Thorp is alive and in his 90s.
Here’s an interview with him from a few years ago.
A great reference, thanks! I can imagine both Thorp and Shannon desperately trying to solder loose wires in a toilet booth could make a great awkward scene in a future film
Yes Thorp had secured a hard to schedule meeting with Shannon regarding his research. Turned out Shannon was more interested in the analysis of a few gambling games that Thorp had thrown in the conversation.
The wide interest in things that Shannon held from weird gadgets to possibly the most famous Masters thesis dissertation, Shannon has me in awe and respect. Had he been a good storyteller, I suspect, people would have been as familiar with his name as Feynman.