Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
From the statisticians forecasting sports scores to the intelligent bots beating human poker players, Adam Kucharski traces the scientific origins of the world's best gambling strategies.
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Spanning mathematics, psychology, economics and physics, Adam Kucharski reveals the long and tangled history between betting and science, and explains how gambling shaped everything from probability to game theory, and chaos theory to artificial intelligence.
Adam Kucharski is a Lecturer at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where his research focusses on the dynamics of infectious diseases, particularly emerging infections. Prior to this, he got a degree in mathematics from the University of Warwick, received a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Cambridge and had a post-doc position at Imperial College London.
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From the statisticians forecasting sports scores to the intelligent bots beating human poker players, Adam Kucharski traces the scientific origins of the world's best gambling strategies.
---
Join this channel to get access to perks:
youtube.com/channel/UCYeF244yNGuFefuFKqxIAXw/join
Subscribe for regular science videos: bit.ly/RiSubscRibe
---
Spanning mathematics, psychology, economics and physics, Adam Kucharski reveals the long and tangled history between betting and science, and explains how gambling shaped everything from probability to game theory, and chaos theory to artificial intelligence.
Adam Kucharski is a Lecturer at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where his research focusses on the dynamics of infectious diseases, particularly emerging infections. Prior to this, he got a degree in mathematics from the University of Warwick, received a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Cambridge and had a post-doc position at Imperial College London.
---
The Ri is on Twitter: twitter.com/ri_science
and Facebook: facebook.com/royalinstitution
and TikTok: tiktok.com/@ri_science
Listen to the Ri podcast: podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ri-science-podcast
Donate to the RI and help us bring you more lectures: rigb.org/support-us/donate-ri
Our editorial policy: rigb.org/editing-ri-talks-and-moderating-comments
Subscribe for the latest science videos: bit.ly/RiNewsletter
Product links on this page may be affiliate links which means it won't cost you any extra but we may earn a small commission if you decide to purchase through the link.
