Lucky Devils

‘Lucky Devils is a fabulous book, perfect for the current moment. Readymade for the movies, its tale of the brilliant eccentrics who outsmarted the system offers vicarious thrills of the most satisfying kind, especially as dealt by the dexterous hands of Kit Chellel, whose prose is as kinetic as a ball on a roulette wheel. You can’t keep your eyes off it.’ – Julian Sancton * New York Times bestselling author of Madhouse at the End of the Earth *‘Ever wonder what it’s like to make your fortune as a winning gambler? Lucky Devils takes you there.’ – Edward O. Thorp * best-selling author of Beat The Dealer and A Man for All Markets *‘Cheating at poker and other gambling games has been around forever, but this diabolically entertaining new book brings us up to the minute-to the nanosecond, even.  In highbrow streetwise prose, Chellel reveals how the cunning designers of AI-powered algorithms threaten to make normal human betting decisions quaintly passé.’ – James McManus * New York Bestselling Author of Positively Fifth Street and Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker *‘A fascinating insight into the audacious, obsessive world of those who have used science to beat the house. Kit Chellel has uncovered astonishing stories about the luckiest people you’ve never heard of. From home-made computers to billion-dollar winnings, Lucky Devils brilliantly reveals what it takes to challenge the seemingly impossible and come out on top.’ – Adam Kucharski * author of The Perfect Bet *‘No one writes about gambling like Kit Chellel. Lucky Devils tells the story of three legendary advantage players, brilliant outsiders who devoted their lives and talents to disproving the adage that the house always wins. At turns insightful, hilarious and surprisingly moving, it’s a stone-cold classic. The best book about gambling I’ve ever read.’ – Liam Vaughan * author of Flash Crash (2020) *‘There’s simply no one better at chronicling the shady, hackable, and wildly anarchic world of gambling, and with Lucky Devils, Kit Chellel spins what amounts to an exuberant origin story. It’d be a suckers bet not to read this book.’ – Brad Stone * New York Times bestselling author of The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound *‘With its colourful cast and levelheaded look at the arms race between gamblers and casinos, this is an addictive profile of the rule breakers who anticipated gambling’s data-driven future. Readers will be thrilled.’ * PUBLISHERS WEEKLY *

‘Cheating at poker and other gambling games has been around forever, but this diabolically entertaining new book brings us up to the minute-to the nanosecond, even.  In highbrow streetwise prose, Chellel reveals how the cunning designers of AI-powered algorithms threaten to make normal human betting decisions quaintly passé.’

Kit Chellel is an investigative reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek and co-author of Dead in the Water: A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy alongside Matthew Campbell, published in the UK by Atlantic in 2022. The book was the winner of the True Crime Awards Book of the Year 2023 and shortlisted for the FT Business Book of the Year Award. It was also a Waterstones Best Books of 2022 pick and selected as a Book of the Year by The Financial Times,, The Times and The Economist. Dead in the Water is in development as a limited series on a major streaming platform. Kit lives in West London with his three children.

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