I don't think its a competition between the wealthiest and the rest. Its really competition between a lot of smart people. Some of them might be really good at math.

If you have phd in math I am sure you can figure out how to use python or c, and that is who you are going up against people who have phds from harvard, stanford, Princeton in math, physics, engineering etc. These are the people writing the quant algos going up against yours.

Most hedge fund managers can't beat index funds.