# Alternatives to Kelly Criterion

I am preparing for Quantitative Trading interviews and I know that they basically require you to solve problems on the probability of winning in a given game and then they would ask you:

How much would you bet in this game? What would you strategy be if you had 100\$?

Now, I know that the Kelly criterion gives you the optimal fraction of capital that you should bet, but I wonder: Isn't there any other method I could use to answer the question above?

For example, in a given game you have $$1/216$$ probability of winning $$30$$ times your bet, $$15/216$$ of winning $$2$$ times your bet, and $$75/216$$ of winning your bet, and thus you have $$125/216$$ of losing your entire bet.

How much should we bet in this game without using Kelly, what would be an optimal strategy?

I am thinking: Couldn't we apply the reasoning that poker players do in estimating the expected value of the pot?

• The example you give can be solved using the Kelly criterion with more than 2 outcomes math.stackexchange.com/questions/662104/…. It does not have a closed form solution but can be solved iteratively. Sep 30 at 12:13
• thanks @noob2, but what I meant was to look for different approaches besides kelly Sep 30 at 14:38
• The papers and books by Ralph Vince might be of interest, @Mining Sep 30 at 19:54