Play It Right: The Remarkable Story of a Gambler Who Beat the Odds on Wall Street

Hedge fund manager Gupta traces his finance-world successes in this chatty and wispy memoir. Born and raised in Delhi, Gupta moved to the United States in 1985 after college to pursue a “career in computers” but gave that up when a stint as a card-counting casino habitué led to a professional blackjack career. Gupta describes his life as a game inspired by two books: Million Dollar Blackjack by Ken Uston and Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis. The first guided his blackjack success, and the second showed him the connection between winning in Vegas and hitting it big on Wall Street, where Gupta landed a job at Lehman Brothers and converted his risk-averse gambling strategy into trades. It’s not all smooth sailing—obstacles included a racist, homophobic bully of a boss—but Gupta’s anecdotal style tends to glory in moments of vindication. “My plan... was simply to play the game well and beat the market,” he writes, and his narrative, equally simple, repeatedly describes the bets he won and how everyone else got them wrong. It mostly feels like someone telling stories at a networking event. There aren’t a lot of takeaways here. Agent: Sam Hiyate, Rights Factory. (May)