I was quite excited when I saw that New Scientist - generally a pretty good magazine - had a piece on the maths of gambling. But unfortunately it turned out to be an extremely poor article.

The first three sections - on card counting, choosing unpopular lottery numbers and arbitrage - skim very briefly over well-known subject matter.

The fourth section is completely wrong - it applies the maths of a situation where you see a number of opportunities in turn until you choose one (e.g. choosing a marriage partner) to the problem of choosing when to stop gambling (where it doesn't apply at all), and draws nonsensical conclusions as a result.

The fact it was written by New Scientist's career editor is telling I suspect.