How the three sons of a famous Texan oil billionaire tried to corner the global silver market in the 1970s, and brought the entire financial system close to collapse.
The Hunt brothers great silver gamble
Tag: gambling
Gambling isn’t a free lunch. Far from it, the longer you gamble, the more certain you are to lose, so why is gambling so popular?
The strangest lotteries you’ve never heard of
Have you heard about the US Conscription lottery that randomly selected who went to war or the Taiwanese Receipt lottery trying to improve its tax take? There’s even a new breed of lotteries trying to form habit loops to nudge beneficial behaviours and lotteries using crypto to rework 19th savings schemes. Welcome to the world’s strangest lotteries.
What is survivorship bias?
Survivorship bias explains why big Lottery wins are always accompanied by an image of the ecstatic winners popping champagne and gripping a giant oversized cheque. The salient image encourages us to focus on the outcome – the smiling winner- and ignore the process – millions of losing tickets. Understanding survivorship can help you make better decisions, and there’s no better place to start learning than the Mountain of Hell Downhill Bike Race.
How Stefan Mandel took on the lotteries & won
Read the amazing story of Stefan Mandel, a Romanian economist who used elementary maths to win 14 lotteries worldwide.
What is expected value? How it can improve decision making
The most effective way to weigh up decisions that involve quantifiable risk is through a calculation called expected value, or EV for short. So, it’s worth spending 10 minutes understanding how to calculate expected value.
Dogecoin – A Trojan Horse not just a cute dog
Is Dogecoin the ultimate illustration of the crassness of crypto, or is there a more meaningful side to the Shibu meme-coin?
Titanic Thompson – Hustler, gambler, killer
Titanic Thompson, the man who’d bet on anything, is one of America’s greatest hustlers. A pro-level golfer, he preferred gambling, staging bizarre proposition bets, winning and losing millions; he died penniless, leaving five dead men in his wake.