There are many others. Ed Thorp, who is essentially the "father of card counting", was a math professor at UC Irvine. He went on to start a fund specializing in options hedging, and has been extremely successful at it. Another guy who turned a successful gambling career into a highly successful business career is Bobby Baldwin, who won the prestigious World Series of Poker No Limit Hold 'em championship in the mid 70's. He was the CFO of Mirage prior to their acquisition by MGG, and now is the President (I believe) of Bellagio within MGG. John Strzemp, who was the COO of Treasure Island, placed 2nd in the World Series of Poker (losing to the late, great Stu Unger when the later filled an inside straight on the "river" in the finals to win) in 1997. Michail Shadkin, who is an SI regular, is another highly successful poker player and trader. Obviously, Buffett is a pretty fair bridge player, but whether that constitutes gambling or not is subject to debate, since you don't have to put actual capital at stake to play.
There are LOTS of successful poker players in particular who are world class traders as well (on the other hand, there are lots of clownish investors who are crappy poker players, as witnessed by my informal survey of the low limit hold 'em games in Scottsdale<G>). There's a common skill set involved, I'll post about it later tonight. |
