Pushkin

It would be hard to think of a better example of a game of chance than roulette.

Beneath the romantic French terminology and the myriad rules of etiquette, each spin of the roulette wheel

is utterly random. The casinos advantage is small but it cannot be overcome.

The game is remorseless. Over the long haul, the only way to win is not to play.

Or is it? One day in August 1961, Claude and Betty Shannon stroll up to a roulette table

in Las Vegas, pretending not to know their companions, Ed and Vivian thought, Claude and the

ladies are nervous but they don't show it. Ed thought isn't nervous, he's excited.

He's still in his 20s, but he's an old hand in the casinos. Claude Shannon stands right by the wheel.

He's 45 years old, slim and good looking, with fine cheekbones and dark eyebrows.

He's misdirecting the attention of the floor manager by scribbling down numbers.

He looks like he's got some crazy system that will inevitably bankrupt him.

Thorpe is at the other end of the table, far from the wheel and far from Shannon.

He has dark hair, a round face and a smile. He's having fun, placing his bets with a confidence

of a man who knows the unbeatable game is about to be beaten.

This is a defining moment in a project that has been quietly ticking over for a year.

When it began, Thorpe and Shannon didn't know each other.

Edward O. Thorpe was a junior mathematics instructor at MIT.

Claude Shannon was the greatest computer scientist in the world.

Ed Thorpe had a plan to beat roulette and he needed Shannon to help him.

Systems to beat roulette are like blueprints for perpetual motion machines or formulas to turn lead into gold.

They're absurd. The pseudo-scientific obsessions of cranks.

...