Cinquecento Crapshooter

CARDANO: THE GAMBLING SCHOLAR, With a translation of Cardano's Book on Games of Chance (249 pp.)--Oysteln Ore--Princeton University ($4).

"Gambling." wrote Gerolamo Cardano, "ought to be discussed by a medical doctor like one of the incurable diseases." Cardano himself was just the man to do the job. One of the leading Italian physicians of the 16th century, he was an unsurpassed mathematician, and he suffered from an acute case of the disease.

Every day for 25 years Cardano played cards or rolled dice. This did not prevent him from writing 412 different works on a dozen sciences and pseudosciences, and from speculating on such matters as the immortality of the soul and how to forecast the future by a study of warts. ("A woman with a wart upon her left cheek, a little to the left of the dimple, will eventually be poisoned by her husband.") But when the distinguished scholar wrote his Book on Games of Chance, he discussed gambling less as a medical doctor than as one of the most knowledgeable crapshooters ever to rattle a pair of dice.

The Whip Shot. Cardano knew all about loaded dice and such tricks as the whip shot: "The die is thrown straight with such an impetus and such a number of points exposed above that it is probable that the point which we wish will come uppermost." He knew about soaping a card to make it recognizable to the touch, listed several ways of marking cards and told how nimble-footed partners could signal each other on a loose floor board.

Cardano also knew something about kibitzers. "You can scarcely avoid folly if they are against you," he noted. Hence, "it is of the very greatest advantage to you to have your own supporters if you wish to win unjustly; and to play otherwise in the presence of a crowd is simply to waste your money." Gamesmanship, a modern art, was not unknown then and Cardano warns against the skillful practitioner who "can disturb your equanimity by making you afraid or angry."

Hot Denial. Cardano prescribed crap-shooting for himself as a relief from his ordinary work and worries. But he often meditated on the disadvantages of the treatment. What, he asked himself, can be gained? "If you have won much money, you may gain hatred, and if you lose, you may gain contempt."

Cardano usually won and people hated him. His expertness at cards and craps was not the only reason, for he readily admitted to being "cunning," "crafty," "sarcastic," "impertinent," "grudging," "envious," "treacherous," "miserable," "hateful," "lascivious," "disagreeable," "rude," "obscene," "lying," "obsequious," "irresolute," and "indecent." But he hotly denied being a bastard. It was at this point that people stopped believing him.

The price of illegitimacy can be high and Cardano's enemies made him pay it. For years they denied him membership in the College of Physicians in Milan, and thus the right to practice medicine in his home town. Cardano moved to a village near Padua for a while, but could not support his family, either as a country doctor or by gambling. Back in Milan, however, he began to lecture, write and debate with such skill and vehemence that he won the right to practice, finally rose to such eminence that kings and archbishops solicited his services.

Success did not bring happiness. One of Cardano's sons became a thief, the other was executed for poisoning his wife. Cardano was jailed as a heretic for a while, but argued his way free. Death, when it came to him at 75, one day in 1576, found a quiet old scholar, living on a pope's pension in Rome. The old gambler had long since told himself: "The greatest advantage in gambling comes from not playing at all."

Ironically, Cardano comes alive today because of his gambling. Author Oystein Ore, a Yale mathematics professor, has disinterred the eccentric genius to show that Cardano's book on the subject contains some of the first brave steps toward the modern theory of probability.

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