If anyone is familiar with the article by McLean,Ziemba, and Blazenko in 'Management Science'of November 1992, Vol. 38, No. 11, titled 'Growth Versus Security in Dynamic Investments Analysis', are its findings applicable to blackjack money management? Thanks for any help.
Cheers,
Burnt Card
I haven't read the article in question, but Professor Ziemba is a very highly respected authority on both risk management in the securities industry AND gambling.
There is, of course, a connection betweem risk-adjusted return measures in the stock market (such as Sharpe Ratio) and measures such as DI and SCORE, which I describe in my book.
Don
Ziemba has done work with Thorp. Since Thorp went bad he has written quite a bit, but always outside the field he used to teach in. Remember, mathematical models are as useful for money management as card counting is in playing winning blackjack. THEY ARE NOT SCIENCE. Business is not a science, any professor will tell you that. It is a STUDY not a SCIENCE. Ziemba appears to be at the "technical analysis" end of things rather than the "fundamantal analysis" end of things. You may have extraordinary success with his ideas. But don't put it down to science. A rock is always a rock and does not change regardless of how many books are written about it. On the other hand write about human behavior and people will read the book and the following week the behavior of people will be different.
I call myself a vegetarian when a technical analyst offers me a roast beef sandwich. But I'll have a beer with him!
This too often gets accepted as an answer rather than the actual content and merit. I haven't read the article either, but this response is typical of what is wrong here and on other boards, on technical topics.
Once I did a list of breakthroughs by those with little or NO education. I omitted the obvious such as Edison etc., but the list included the discovery of Pluto, one of the designers of the implossion assembly for the Plutonium A-bomb, the non-degreed biker who inspired the Snake Pliskin character in Escape from New York, who is now on the board of Boeing, who fixed the cargo door design of the L-1011, and the computer joint access data base used by Boeing for design of the 777 (he first worked at Lockhead as an upholsterer), both claimed inventors of the IC.....
These responses would have burried them all!
Clarke, the fact that there are (and have always been) "inventors" without degrees nor any prior "respect" does NOT denigrate those who are in possession of both educational degrees and respect! The one is not some sort of refutation of the other. If the comments made by Don were made about an unknown article written by Thorp, a god we all apparently acknowledge, you would not feel the same urge to denounce Don, so readily, probably, possibly...
--Cyrus
PS: More on that biker?
Don,
Thanks for the reply. I only know of the article second-hand, but I thought you might be aware of it. The authors apparently make a claim for the superiority of fractional Kelly betting over full Kelly for various types of games. If you ever come across it, you opinion would be valued.
Cheers,
Burnt Card
Didn't he score some heavy coin on the CBOE while in the joint? I don't believe his academic credentials are extensive.
Cheers,
Burnt Card
Karel Janecek is one of the more extreme, in my opinion, suggesting something like 1/8 Kelly. I have trouble recalling anyone suggesting attempting full Kelly in the real world. Kelly is mostly a useful study model that is the basis for SCORE, optimal spreads, risk averse play strategy, and a variety of other theoretical problems that are used to construct more useful real world strategies.
Table minimums
Table maximums
Rounded unit sizes ($5, $10, $25, etc.)
Mistakes
Early shuffles
Cover bets
Varying playing conditions
Different games available at different stakes
All these factors and more are reasons why betting fully Kelly has to be overbetting in the real world.
"Karel Janecek is one of the more extreme, in my opinion, suggesting something like 1/8 Kelly. I have trouble recalling anyone suggesting attempting full Kelly in the real world."
Even 1/8 Kelly might be too much the way Karel Jenecek calclulates one�s bankroll. (It so happens that this is what I do too, exactly.) By "bankroll", we should be defining the whole net present value of all our cash inflows which can be disposed towards investing in advantage play. And that can be, in most cases, a pretty hefty sum!
Cyrus, you don't understand. Clarke is obsessed with me. He wakes up in the morning thinking about me and goes to sleep at night dreaming about what stupid thing he can write to attempt to denigrate me.
He leaves these boards for a month and then comes back and picks up where he left off, as if he had never gone away. "Oh, and by the way, the Schlesinger clones are all wrong about the ROR formula"! It's so pathetic, it's almost laughable.
He can't write a single post without invoking my name about five times -- no matter WHAT the topic is.
Sad.
Don
You need to be careful when you quote Karel's 1/8 Kelly, because Karel also defines your blackjack bankroll as every cent you have in the world!
Don
"Since Thorp went bad"
This means what, exactly?
Don
say the same about you.
"Clarke is obsessed with me. He wakes up in the morning thinking about me and goes to sleep at night dreaming about what stupid thing he can write to attempt to denigrate me."
"Seems like he could say the same about you."
Unfortunately, Schlesinger seems to be right: Clarke�s posts contain a reference to Don, usually a disparaging one too, whatever the topic may be. One can�t say the same thing about Don�s posts, by any stretch of the imagination: Don rarely, if ever, mentions Clarke in his own postings. He also doesn�t make a point of always responding to a Clarke thread/post, while you�re a cinch to find Clarke in a Don thread.
I think this senseless, baseless and destructive vendetta should end, for the benefit of all of us - plus Don�s ulcers and Clarke�s health.
Just my message in a bottle.
i don't know the whole story but it seems like they are both always at each other.
anyways, no big deal.
if you think i'm against Don, lemme put it this way:
my three most valuable possessions in this world
are 1) my left not 2)my right nut 3) BJA2
honestly, that book is priceless. i just won 160 units last night and that book was by far my best learning source and reference.
but just cause Don is one of the BJ theory gods don't mean he should bully people and everyone always on his side.
I could do as badly as Thorp.
Is Down Under talking about our Edward O. Thorp, or is there another Thorp we don't know about?
He recently put out the Montreal Kelly paper that covers Kelly for BJ, Sports Betting, and the stock market. He manages a hedge fund for wealthy individuals and is very wealthy himself.
I agree with you. And, for the record, you simply don't know the whole story. The furthest thing from the truth in the world is that I am "bullying" Clarke.
He is paranoid about me and has carried on a vendetta for several years. And, yes, he is obsessed with me and is insanely jealous.
As for me, CC's existence is entirely immaterial for me, except for the fact that, occasionally, his rampant, outright, vicious lies and distortions become a minor thorn in my side.
But, I've kept my sanity, which, judging from his posts, is much more than one can say for Clarke.
Don
