Jean-Daniel Allanche

This professor of physical sciences, who was passionated about casino games, filled in hundreds of notebooks and sheets in search of a martingale. Combinatorics was called upon, but also the careful observation of the attitude of the players and croupiers which, he thought, could influence “chance”. New calculations are printed on old calculations after the intervention of the corrector. These cipher manuscripts, with their coloured tracings, strikethroughs, and the variety of signs used, are imbued with the fever of the gold diggers.
His work can be found in collections such as those of the Musée national d’Art moderne, the American Folk Art Museum, Karin & Gerhard Dammann, Bruno Decharme, Antoine de Galbert, Daniel Klein…