A review by charliemudd
Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street by William Poundstone

4.0

I started and quit this book a while back. I picked it up again after reading "Trading Bases" because I remembered that it offered an explanation of the Kelly betting strategy. I think the reason that I didn't like it the first time was twofold: 1) The Kelly criterion seemed over-simplified and maybe even wrong; and 2) I had nothing to apply it to at the time. Now that I understand it, and have more active interests in investing (and possibly building a betting model for baseball), it is more alluring. The book covers the 20+ people that were involved in coming up with, critiquing, and arguing against the Kelly criterion; in fact, it was too many people to keep up with and made many of the personalities blur together. I would have liked more about the theory and its practical applications and less about the myriad of people that were peripherally involved. However, it still keep my interest and I enjoyed it on my second try.