The first visits to the casino in 1983/1984

So my team mate and chess friend Thomas Grzesik had sent me Edward Thorpe’s book on Black Jack. I read Tile about it and, realising that the rules were American or outdated, unceremoniously started to work it all out myself. That’s what the days were for. Of course, my fingers were itching. I wanted to…

First steps

1) Roulette 2) Chess When I discovered chess at the age of 13, I was immediately addicted to the game. It was also 1972, the year in which the legendary match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spasski took place. I immediately got myself chess books and studied them all attentively. Then I gradually ran out…

First Real Bets

If you don’t want to listen, you have to pay? So, in 1990, I had the ultimate idea of how to approach the problem of predicting the probabilities of football matches in principle. The programme had also matured quite a bit in all-night (because I still had my SEL job during the day) work. The…

EM 1988

As usual, the European Championship took place in June. In another section (“Jackpot-Pauli”) you can read (or even pre-read) how I spent this month. Namely with winning. It may be that too much luck makes you reckless, but I think I had a good chance to put my betting skills to the test. Not only…

A Strand

A summer fairy tale 1) Preparation The summer of 1985. The realisation that backgammon was “my game”, that my (imagined) skills could be perfectly combined there, I had long since gained in boundless overconfidence. I had read through all the available books and developed another feeling: in a previous life I must have been a…

A true prophet

1) A true prophet So once again I had a very bad time. All the people in the world seemed to know how the games were going to turn out. This information was not available to me. Self-doubt gnawed at me. My partner at the time then had an idea, as he told me during…

Own swings

A few stories worth remembering There’s a question I’m often asked and love to hear, “What was your biggest win?” Not quite as interesting seems to be the question, “What was your greatest loss?” However, I have a simple explanation for the reluctance to answer this question: diplomacy. One would like to know, also to…

Dormund – London

Summer 1980 Like every summer in these years, 1980 was no exception: I spent the winter semester with good intentions and mainly at university, as a good student. I probably wanted to encourage my father’s oft-quoted saying: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions. For in the summer semester there were plenty of…

The personal history of numbers

1) I already had this affinity for numbers (at an early age) and this certain talent, which one can mention, but which also seems to be present in this way (by quotation or in the text). I was often given arithmetic problems that were absolutely not age-appropriate (like 7 times 17, at pre-school age), but…

Harley Man

There are stories that are so unbelievable that a novelist would first think twice about writing them that way. Or was I just drawn into a novel by chance? In any case, the following happened authentically: I had just become a proud “backgammon pro” and was always on the lookout for a “good game”. This…