Book Launch Celebration: Play it Right by Kamal Gupta

All around the world, the words “Wall Street” conjure up a powerful image. For some, it is the center of America’s capitalist system and the engine of its economic growth. For others, it is the home of rapacious bankers and reckless traders whose greed would lead to a global financial crisis. For an Indian-born blackjack player, Wall Street represented something else entirely — a chance for him to play in the largest casino in the world.

Kamal Gupta’s improbable journey, from a wide-eyed Indian immigrant to an ultimate insider in the rarefied world of investment banks and hedge funds, is a uniquely American story. Nowhere else would it have been possible for a scrawny computer scientist to enter the world of high finance solely on the basis of his gambling abilities. From New Delhi to Las Vegas to New York, Play It Right is a real-life account of Gupta's darkly comic struggle for survival in an industry where fear and greed rule the day. It isn’t so much a story about money as it is about the human condition and beating the odds, whether at a casino, on Wall Street, or in life itself.

Kamal Gupta earned an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi — entering the elite institution after only completing eleventh grade — and received a master’s in computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in just 11 months. Bored in the tech world, he turned himself into a professional blackjack player, grew his bankroll to thirty-two times its original size, and got barred from several casinos in the process. An unexpected turn of events brought him to Wall Street, where for over two decades he beat the odds in every imaginable way. Gupta lives in the greater New York City area with his family.