When a croupier stood next to the televised table, the floor flexed ever so slightly, not enough to catch the human eye but tilting enough to help anyone using prediction software. Specifically, there was a gap between its solid concrete base and the carpeted playing surface laid down just above, a standard feature in studios where audio is recorded. Engineers investigated and pinpointed a culprit: the floor. A handful of players were winning at statistically absurd rates on the roulette wheels spinning day and night at its facility in Riga. About a decade ago, according to several former employees, Evolution staff made a strange discovery. Founded in 2006 with some casino equipment and a small office in Latvia, the company charged betting firms a percentage of revenue to use its platform, which became a wildly lucrative niche. One of the biggest livestreamers was Evolution Gaming Group. In the end, the book concluded, Eudaemonia wasn’t a goal to be attained, but a journey. One of them published a book about their adventures called The Eudaemonic Pie. The Eudaemons wasted several years and thousands of dollars before abandoning the project in the early 1980s. At field tests in Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas casinos, the computer shorted out or overheated, zapping the wearer or burning their skin. His device used a hidden buzzer that told the wearer which of eight sections, or “octants,” the ball would likely drop into. Like Thorp before him, Farmer learned that roulette was more predictable than anyone imagined, and also that making the science work amid the sweat and noise of a real casino was almost impossible. He and his partners called their venture Eudaemonic Enterprises, after Aristotle’s term for the fulfilling sensation of a life well lived.

Farmer dreamed of creating a utopian community of hippie inventors funded by gambling profits. Doyne Farmer, a physics student at the University of California at Santa Cruz, took up the challenge.

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