I give up.

Mason

You may want to reach out to Thomas DiLorenzo. Seems like he’s right up your alley.

Hi Everyone:

It looks like I've found the historian to work with. As soon as it becomes official, I'll be back with more information.

Best wishes,
Mason

Virtually every historical act of war, appeasement, neutrality, alliancing, negotiating, candidacy, adventure (Lewis and Clark, and all the rest), leadership/politics, etc. exist within a risk-reward "gambling" scenario. You'll have no shortage of material or examples. It is so ubiquitous you might include something about that in the subtitle or descriptive sentence on cover, something like "Just a Few of the Countless Examples of Risk-Taking in History."

I don't agree with this. Many of the events in history such as what you're describing should have a low variance. Thus it's not a gamble by the criterion that we're going to use since the outcome is fairly certain.

Best wishes,
Mason

Very excited about hearing who it is.

Against all the teachings of Sun Tzu, probably the great military gamble in history was Hannibal crossing the Alps with his Elephants.

And the even more amazing thing about it was, he didn't play poker.

A number of great gamblers didn’t play poker, but that didn’t stop them from making poker plays. For instance, I’ve never seen a reference to Robert E. Lee playing poker, but he certainly understood the right concepts and turned what should have been a short war into an all consuming one.

Best wishes,
Mason

Then I guess you are focusing on long shot plays, or when long shot plays had unexpected value in historical events. Hitler invading Russia, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn provide some examples of radical risk (by conventional viewpoint) upside and downside sometimes going busto.

This is so vague. Not to be dismissive, but I don't see how this will be anything but a surface level examination of historical events that are already researched/documented better elsewhere. It's not like biographical studies don't already include this type of "gambling theory" examination.

It feels like the only thing your book would add is some specific gambling terminology to such examinations.

You’re making an assumption that 2+2 books are carelessly done, and that’s not our history. Also, some of this material already appears in my Gambling Theory book and it was written many years ago meaning I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. So, you may want to look at my GT book before you start reviewing what hasn’t been written yet.

Mason

Hi Everyone:

This is all very early in the process and everything I'm about to say could change. But this is the way I see this book.

1. An Introduction

2. Part One: Initial Ideas. This will include definitions of variance and gambling. As well as a discussion of Non-Self Weighting Strategies and why expert gamblers use them as opposed to self-weighting strategies.

3. Part Two: Expert Gambles. Chapters on expert gambles such as how Athenian General Themistocles defeated Persian King Xerxes in 480 BC by gambling that Xerxes wanted a quick and glorious victory instead of a slow sure thing.

4. Part Three: The Role of Luck. Chapters on how luck impacted some important events in history including the luckiest man who ever lived, Hernan Cortez.

5. Part Four: Poker Plays. Chapters that will feature poker plays such as how Confederate General obert E. Lee used a semi-bluff to defend the city of Richmond early in the Civil War.

6. Part Five: Foolish Gambles. Not everyone who gambled throughout history knew what they were doing. One of the chapters will be about how middle weight champion Stanley Ketchel got flattened by a Jack Johnson punch in 1909.

7. Part Six: Self-Weighting Disasters. Here we'll look at events where one or sometimes both sides used self-weighting strategies. This will include why the Cowboys never had a chance against the Earps in the Shootout at the O.K. Corral

Anyway, a lot of work needs to be done and we're just getting started, and hopefully can complete the book.

Best wishes,
Mason

Looking forward to the book.

Here's an article on gambling in the Civil War: https://www.pokernews.com/news/2016/...-lee-25582.htm

US General Grant was a big fan of poker while Confederate General Lee thought poker was a vice.

Hannibal’s greatest gamble

+1

Sounds interesting, Mason.

Historical fiction might work a little better in today's market:

Hi batair:

I don’t see it. Usually for there to be a gamble the side that gambles has to offer more than one strategy option to their opponent and one of these strategy options. if their opponent seizes it, will cause the side that offers it to be a sure loser. But the gamble is that the side that can become a sure winner either doesn’t see the strategy or for some reason decided not to adopt it which in turn gives the other side a chance to win when they shouldn’t have one.

Looking at Hanibal’s battle, it seemed that he used superior battle tactics to gain a victory which is not a gamble by the way I define it.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hannibal's entire campaign is one of the greatest gambles in ancient history: Going against oligarchic support to attack Rome on their own soil, the crossing of the Alps, reliance on a multitude of mercenary soldiers to make up the majority of his army, coordinating said soldiers speaking a dozen different languages, unique campaign strategy that never included sieging Rome itself, insane tactical gambles in nearly every battlefield encounter...

You're also discounting the varied strategies and gambles that Rome's leaders took to combat the Carthaginian threat.

Edit: Just ask your historian for their opinion

J There’s a lot of history I don’t know and (hopefully) the historian will lead us to many events which will qualify under the different criterion we’ll be using.

As for Hannibal, his reliance on mercenary soidiers may be where his gamble was because when he first meets up with them there was no guarantee they would join his army.

I don’t view crossing the alps as a gamble. If he has things figured right his expectation is positive with a small variance. If he has things figured wrong, his expectation would be negative but the variance still small. And by my definition, for a true gamble to take place the standard deviation needs to be large compared to the expectation.

Mason

I am too Maybe these ladies can help you.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Th...cnUwb2JlWmgwaw

To take a more recent example, could both Cameron's and May's behaviour re: Brexit be considered from the gambling theory perspective? Might increase the reach of the book to readers interested in current events.

Nixon financed his first campaign from the proceeds of poker play in the South Pacific

The entire US space program in the 60s was a huge gamble. Looking back on it now general consensus has the moon landings as somewhat routine, but they were anything but that. If the program failed it would have been a huge black eye on US technology position in the world. I imagine Europe would have had a good laugh at how the US could have postulated that landing men on the moon was even remotely feasible.

IMO it was Grant who turned the Civil War into a drawn out affair, as he was certain the Union would prevail under those conditions.