TechCrunch interviews Jeff Ma where he discusses his past experience on the MIT Blackjack team, the book Bringing Down the House and the movie 21, and his startup, Citizen Sports – which was sold to Yahoo! recently. He briefly alludes to him being whitewashed in the movie and pitches his book The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big In Business.
He essentially describes the book as a way to think unconventionally and sums up the premise with this John Maynard Keynes quote, “Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for the reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.” He wants to help people make better decisions, how to avoid group think, and separate good decision making versus outcomes (i.e. you can have a good process about making a decision, yet the outcome could be negative – and vice versa). After watching the interview, Ma clearly comes across as a very bright person and definitely makes me want to buy the book to learn from him.
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