TheSnapper

Current Bank: $382,03
Mr.Kelly's Bank: $22,79

I spent the past few days checking data trying to figure out why Feb. has been so low on profits, and I think I have now fixed the problem. The problem was that I had dropped the number of bets, and increased the stakes. This created more volatility and exposed me more to a losing period.

The solution to reducing volatility is to 1) increase the number of bets and 2)reduce the individual stake size per bet.

I did that this weekend with good results.

The stats since 20.02 are as follows:

Liability: $203,94
Profit: $27,40
Profit%: 13,4%

So, I am plesed to have that turned around in the right direction again. It goes to show that small mistakes in staking have a serious impact on profits in the long-term.
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Mr. Kelly is also smiling again. He is back into profit over the weekend and is now up to $22,79. He has been over $50 and under $15 in volatility. I have been getting the chart ready and should have it updated this week.

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An IBM computer program "Watson" recently defeated two champion-level humans at the quiz show Jeopardy. That's a hell of an achievement, considering the match was played like a regular match. Watson had to understand the spoken question, come up with an answer and even, physically, hit the buzzer with a "hand" and then use sythesized speech to say the answer out loud, just like the humans. Quite an advance in artificial intelligence. Well-done, IBM!

But probably, I suspect, the real, hidden, deeper cause of it's victory was not only its vast reams of data, but its betting prowess. Knowing how much to wager, depending on how certain it was of its answer. I am sure that Watson used the Kelly Criterion to maximize its profits far better than the humans did.

During the Double Jeopardy! Round, Watson displayed a few Jeopardy! affectations for which its human players are known, such as requesting a new dollar amount in the "same category" and stating "I'll take a guess" before giving a Daily Double response in which it had a low confidence. It also demonstrated complex wagering strategies on the Daily Doubles, with one bet at $6,435 and another at $1,246. Gerald Tesauro, one of the IBM researchers who worked on Watson, later discussed Watson's wagering algorithms in a weblog post.[34]