An interdisciplinary capstone course on luck, skill, and the games of everyday life, combining mathematics, literature, and philosophy. Practical activities to include playing blackjack, chess, and writing Monte Carlo simulations. Reading lists to include…

Required readings

Edward Thorp, Beat the Dealer — classic about blackjack
John Nunn, Learn Chess — or maybe just have students sign up for a membership on Chess.com and crank through the video lessons?
Jörg Bewersdorff, Luck, Logic, and White Lies — semi-mathematical treatment of a continuum of games as a combination of probability, logic, and bluffing; an alternative might be Epstein The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic which is a bit more textbook like, but doesn’t cover logic/bluffing style games in depth
Luke Rhinehart, The Dice Man — cult classic novel about a psychologist who decides to let dice throws govern his life choices
Stefan Zweig, Schachnovelle / The Royal Game —take a guess.
Asa Hoffmann, The Last Gamesman — autobiographical memoir of New York Chess player and master of Backgammon, Poker, Scrabble, Bridge, and Horse handicapping
Adam Kucharski, The Perfect Bet — popular book on the history of probability and its relationship to gambling
Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity — a molecular biologist’s take on Heraclitus’ dictum that “Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity”

Optional readings

Presh Talwar, The Joy of Game Theory — essays about game theory topics for a popular audience
Ken Binmore, Playing for Real: A Text on Game Theory –advanced undergraduate course on game theory for economists and social scientists
William Poundstone Fortune’s Formula — popular work on the Kelly criterion, with a side helping of Edward Thorp and Claude Shannon
Poker?
Modern approaches to beating roulette sourced from a (Bloomberberg 2023 article)—cross ref to books The Eudaimonic Pie and Follow the Bouncing Ball
Relative role of chance and skill in sports. SIAM News summary, links back to a 2018 SIAM Review article analyzing fantasy sports. Core idea is to use the difference in win rates in the first and second half of the season to quantify skill. Interesting connection to the law: gambling laws apply when chance prevails, and so this has a regulatory consequence.

Field trips:

Union Square Park / Washington Square Park—to play chess hustlers
A casino (Atlantic City? Maybe they’ll be in NYC by the time this course happens?)—to play blackjack