There was a period of about eight years back in the 1990's when I spent most of my free time hanging out in casinos. It's a long story, one which ended with a friend a self-made millionaire and my house paid off, but that's not what I'm here to write about today. A long time ago a man sat across a table from me in a place that exists only in memories and photos thanks to Hurricane Katrina, and tried to talk me into playing video poker for him. I want to tell you the story he told me.
Nobody knew Einstein's real name, not even the people he paid to gamble for him. The smartest people I knew all admitted he was smarter than they were, and his feats of advantage play math wizardry were legend.
Einstein had the easy contempt some smart people have for people who aren't of their caliber, and I tend to avoid people like that. But along the way enough people told him that I was the real deal myself that one day he approached me. His conversation was pleasant but very directed; he wanted to know for real if I knew math, if I knew programming, if I knew information theory, if I really believed in probability theory enough to put the money out in a high count even during a losing streak. A lot of his probing was in the form of little jokes that you wouldn't get if you didn't have a certain insight or knowledge. I must have passed his test because he asked me to play for him.
I have what they call a "real job." I've had it for 25 years, and plan to retire from this small company. But he gave me the full pitch, including his own history.
"Have you ever heard of the Rasmussen Report? he asked me.
"Yeah, my Dad was a physicist and I studied engineering."
Einstein allowed as to how, while nobody knew it, he might have once been an actuary for the sort of consulting firm that did that kind of work. And he said that, around the time Rasmussen was compiling WASH-1400, he himself had been assigned to assemble a team and do a similar study.
"But there was a difference," Einstein said. "Rasmussen assumed that all the rules and safety procedures would be followed, and that only normal hardware failures might contribute to accident risk. I was asked to use an 'angry operator' model which assumed that, at any given time, one employee might for some reason not follow the rules."
I took a sip of my pina colada. (This happened at the joint formerly known as the Isle of Capri in Biloxi, MS. There was also a Polynesian themed stage show going on behind us as we talked. I can remember it all as if it were yesterday.)
"And...?"
"My conclusion was that there would be a major incident, on average, every ten years."
I blinked, and he nodded. "Three Mile Island," I said.
"Almost ten years to the day. They buried my report and dispersed my team and of course we'd all signed NDA's. I went on to other projects. Then, ten years later, there's TMI melting down. I know you know now, but then they weren't even admitting it to themselves. But you look at what went down, if you know the industry the way I'd learned it, there was no way they didn't melt core."
Once again I took a sip and waited for him to continue. "So what then?" I finally asked.
He looked at me, his face suddenly brightening. "I said fuck it. I did my job and gave them what they needed, and they threw it away because they didn't like it. Well fuck them and fuck that. I decided I would never use my talents to make a positive contribution to the human race ever again. It being a significant thing in my line of work I had a copy of Beat the Dealer. I quit my job, drove to Las Vegas, and never looked back."
"Wow. I can see being a bit upset about that," I said, trying to be neutral, but he saw right through my shock.
"People will fuck you when they can. Machines will break. But math does not lie. Not many people really understand that, and I know you do. If you ever want to join my team, I'll have a spot for you." And with that he downed the last of his beer and departed.
Having a Real Job (where I do contribute, I hope, some small positive thing to my species once in awhile) I never took Einstein up on his offer. But as the years unfolded it became clear he was a pretty damn smart guy, and he might have had a point.
I lost track of Einstein when my friend's card counting project took off and we entered the high roller world for a few years, before industry consolidation and security paranoia gradually made play impossible and we drifted completely away from the whole casino scene. But these days I'm thinking of him a lot. I hope he's sitting in some video poker parlor waiting for the progressive jackpot to get high, drinking a Budweiser and laughing his ass off because he figured out one game was rigged and got out of it, as any smart gambler would instinctively do.
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P.S. Yes, I know this diary basically amounts to a story a guy I don't know once told me in a casino. Nobody knew Einstein's provenance. But one thing everyone agreed on was that, in any given room, he would probably be the smartest guy there. There were other mathematicians and computer people in this circle. That's the kind of cred you don't get unless you are really very, very smart. I can't say for certain or prove that he wasn't punking me with this story; but I can say he didn't have to. In that circle merely being acknowledged as a worthy individual by Einstein was noticed and unusual. I saw Einstein regularly over the course of three years or so, and to be blunt I believe his story because I saw no other indication that he was the kind of fame-seeking sociopath who would make up something like this.