The Eudaemonic Pie
by Thomas A. Bass · first published 1985
72% recommend28% neutral
Why HN recommends it
True story of UC Santa Cruz physics students who built shoe-mounted computers to beat roulette. Fascinating hacker history with chaos theory; suits readers of gambling, physics, or early computing tales.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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The book about that group, The Eudaemonic Pie, is a great read: http://www.amazon.com/Eudaemonic-Pie-Thomas-Bass/dp/05951423... Recently I ran across another book about the same group, "The Predictors: How a Band of Maverick Physicists Used Chaos…
on “Tell us your naughty stories” ↗Change to roulette, chaos theory, and physicists -- using 8bit hardware in shoes -- and you get the fascinating book "The Eudaemonic Pie" by Thomas Bass. Highly recommended.
on “Russians Engineer a Slot Machine Cheat that Casinos Can't Fix” ↗Not quite about surveillance, but a great hacker book: "The Eudaemonic Pie" is a 1985 book by American author Thomas A. Bass, about a group of University of California, Santa Cruz physics graduate students (known as the Eudaemons) who in the late 1970s and early 1980s designed…
on “Little Brother” ↗Also, Eudaemonic Pie (the "American" version): https://www.amazon.com/Eudaemonic-Pie-Thomas-Bass/dp/0595142...
on “Exposing high-end poker cheating devices” ↗I am not a quant. The Eudaemonic Pie — Thomas A Bass No theory, just a fascinating history. edit: More of a pre-history. It seems that amazon says nothing about Farmer and what he went on to do. One of the characters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Doyne_Farmer
on “Ask HN: Calling all quants – What's your essential quant reading list?” ↗The article mentioned the book The Eudaemonic Pie by Thomas Bass. This was recommended to me back in the late 80s by my favorite professor in undergrad. It is quite good, a rare book that I go back and read every year or two.
on “The Gambler Who Beat Roulette” ↗Also, there is J. Doyne Farmer [1], who was part of a group that used computers in their shoes, early 1980s, to "game" roulette tables in Los Vegas. Story is told in Thomas Bass's interesting book, "The Eudaemonic Pie". [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Doyne_Farmer [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eudaemonic_Pie
on “Prediction and Entropy of Printed English – Claude Shannon (1950) [pdf]” ↗I know roulette is random enough but here is a fun book by some physics whizzes who tried to make money off the game. The Eudaemonic Pie is a non-fiction book about gambling by American author Thomas A. Bass. The book was initially published in April 1985 by Houghton Mifflin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eudaemonic_Pie The book…
on “Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story” ↗…book about this by Thomas Bass, which I adored as a teenager in the early ’90s. My British copy (which I still have) is entitled The Newtonian Casino, but I gather the original US edition was called The Eudaemonic Pie. I’ve often wondered why this book isn’t better known. I would recommend it.
on “Claude Shannon built a machine to game roulette (2017)” ↗Also good: The Eudaemonic Pie http://books.google.com/books?id=Q9aOedEfOMMC&dq=eudaemo...
on “"21", Movie about MIT Las Vegas Card Counters Opens Tomorrow” ↗Being an engineer is a creative job, despite some people trying to bogart the term. Read the book The Eudaemonic Pie for tales of dope-smoking uber-geeks. Also Fire in the Valley might be a source, though I've not yet read it.
on “Ask HN: Is there any famous hackers / programmers that smoke marijuana?” ↗…asking for the authors to change their style. We both simply appreciate that there's a way to skip the drama and get to the crux of the matter. Thanks OP. (For what it's worth, I really enjoyed "The Eudaemonic Pie", dealing with the same topic of beating the house. That was well written.)
on “The Man Who Broke Atlantic City” ↗…a bunch of UC Santa Cruz physicists and computer scientists decide that roulette is, in fact, beatable with computational assistance and build wearable computers to help them do it -- and Tom Bass's "Eudaemonic Pie"[2](referenced somewhat obliquely by the linked article) is an excellent book. Indeed, Bass's book forms something of a trinity for me with Kidder's "Soul of a New Machine" and Levy's "Hackers" as painting…
on “Roulette Prediction Project (1984)” ↗You might want to look for a book called "The Eudaemonic Pie." It's about a bunch of chaos theorists who analyze roulette and figure out how to gain a statistical edge.
on “Fuller House: Exposing high-end poker cheating devices (2016)” ↗…using slight tilts in roulette wheels which increased the probability of the ball falling in specific sectors the wheel. http://physics.ucsc.edu/people/eudaemons/eudaemons.html Or see the 1985 book, The Eudaemonic Pie
on “A Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code (2018)” ↗