Blackjack Team Strategy

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Thanks to the 2008 hit film 21 – which recounted the exploits of the infamous MIT Blackjack Team – card counting has enjoyed a renaissance of late.

The Mit Blackjack Team. The MIT blackjack team has become famous worldwide for their success at beating the game of blackjack in the casinos of Las Vegas.Even people who are unfamiliar with blackjack and gambling know the story of the MIT students, thanks in large part to the popular movie 21. Work of the MIT Blackjack Team in the Field. The Team was strategically deployed in several casinos under the supervision of a manager who organised the entire operation. If a team member had problems, the manager had to solve it. The second member of the Team was a Spotter. The Spotter’s job was to look for good tables.

Popular media outlets proudly produce instructional content for aspiring card counters, and YouTube is littered with related videos. As a veteran advantage play pro, this is a refreshing change of pace, as card counting was once on the verge of fading away into obscurity.

Sure, the casino’s security systems are still top notch, and card counting will always be “frowned upon” – but every player should feel empowered to beat the house at its own game. Provided you’re sticking to card counting, hole carding, and other legitimate – and legally protected – advantage play methods, there’s no reason to consider counting taboo.

But as the movie 21 made clear, counting as a lone wolf is far less effective than playing as part of a team.

In that spirit, I’ve put this page together to provide an introductory guide to forming and running your own card counting team. Below you’ll find a step-by-step tutorial on what it takes to assemble a team and get to work evening the odds. But before we get down to those details, let’s run through the history of card counting teams and how they work.

The First Big Player Team

Back in 1971, a gambling man by the name of Al Francesco was just another card counter plying his trade on his own.

Like everybody else doing the same at the time, Francesco took in interest in advantage play techniques in the 1960s thanks to Edward O. Thorp’s book Beat the Dealer (1962). Thorp pioneered the very first system for counting through the blackjack deck, known as the Ten Count. And while he was more interested in the theoretical and mathematical angles of the game, Thorp’s work changed blackjack forever.

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Players like Francesco eventually moved on to different counting systems, such as the Advanced Point Count devised by Lawrence Revere. But no matter which approach they favored, all card counters were confronted with the same problem – the “heat.”

While counting cards isn’t a crime – thanks in large part to Francesco (more on this to come) – casinos are well within their rights to ban players they suspect to have an edge. Of course, I disagree wholeheartedly with this, as the entire essence of gambling strategy is predicated on reducing the house’s edge. Even so, casinos train their dealers and pit bosses to carefully observe winning players, scanning for any sign that they might be counting.

Advantage play specialists refer to this extra attention as heat, and for a big bettor like Francesco, that meant being barred from various properties – and even being roughed up.

Although he knew exactly how to dissect the deck to determine when the count was in his favor, Francesco couldn’t conceal that fact for very long. Between his intense concentration on the mental calculations needed – and the predictable pattern of increased bet sizes producing winners – he could only play for so long before being discovered.

Then, almost by accident, Francesco stumbled upon a strategy that would fundamentally reshape the blackjack landscape. While hanging out with his family at Harvey’s Casino in Lake Tahoe, Francesco watched his brother playing a low-stakes table. The brother knew what he was doing, and he’d raise his $1 wager to $5 when a positive count arrived.

Naturally, Francesco couldn’t help himself and plunked a $100 chip down to back the bet, knowing the odds were in his favor. Here’s how remembered the genesis moment three decades later in an interview with Arnold Snyder of the Blackjack Forum:

“We were killing time waiting for dinner, and my brother was playing blackjack. He was betting from $1 to $5 and he knew how to count.

I was standing behind him talking with my brother-in-law, and every time I noticed my brother make a $5 bet, I threw $100 on his hand.

I just kept talking to my brother-in-law and let my brother play the hand. It looked like I couldn’t care less about what happened. If my brother went down to $1, I pulled all my money back.

They bought that hook, line, and sinker. I didn’t give it too much thought, and then when I was playing in that four-deck game, it came to me that this was the way to outsmart them.”

By taking advantage of his brother’s count, and appearing to all the world to be just another high-roller splashing around, Francesco found the best way to cool off heat – team play. It took a bit of tinkering to put the concept into action, but eventually Francesco settled on what he called the “Big Player” system.

Other players took care of the counting, betting small potatoes while they do to avoid suspicion, before relaying signals to a designated Big Player. This person would be betting big money the whole way through, ordering drinks and carrying on like the typical high-roller who doesn’t care about the result – only the action.

But lo and behold, when the Big Player seemed to randomly settle on a larger bet, the cards managed to cooperate more often than not.

Here’s how Francesco described the subterfuge while speaking with fellow Blackjack Hall of Fame inductee Snyder:

“I was always looking for new people because with three counters the Big Player didn’t keep busy all the time.

It looked like he was waiting for something. If he was betting big all the time, the act looked a lot better. You looked like a raving maniac.

Eventually we had six counters and the concept got better.”

Using this system, Francesco soon discovered that the team approach was too much for typical dealers and pit bosses to handle.

The player doing all the mental gymnastics to keep an accurate count might stand out, but they’re only betting peanuts so the casino tends not to care. And as the Big Player lives up to the name by scooping huge profits, their seemingly random play and casual demeanor doesn’t peg them as a counter.

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Just like that, blackjack became a beatable game – provided you have the right team in place.

Finding the Right Players to Work With

Francesco wound up relocating to Atlantic City in 1978, the year New Jersey legalized casino gambling.

He hoped to find softer games and inexperienced staff, but as it turned out, Atlantic City could put on the same sort of heat as Las Vegas. He wound up employing a character named Ken Uston, who was prone to lapses in judgment that put the team at risk. Uston wound up revealing the secrets of team play in a book titled “The Big Player,” and from that point on, casinos knew what to look for.

Uston wound up taking the state’s Casino Commission to court after being banned from playing blackjack, and in a historic ruling, he won the case. In a roundabout way, Francesco’s decision to bring Uston aboard led to the legal precedent which protects advantage players to this day. Counting cards was deemed to be legal, and casinos were prohibited from banning players solely because of suspicion.

While we can all be thankful for Uston’s legal crusade, Francesco wasn’t so lucky. By teaching the Big Player technique to somebody who had no hesitation publishing the secrets to the world, Francesco’s hidden goldmine was exposed.

The players you’ll be associating with are more than just partners, they’re a crucial link in a chain that’s being pulled in many directions. The scrutiny of casino staff, the pressure to blend in while winning big, and the whims of variance that can lead to losses even with a great count – these factors all add up.

And unless your teammates are capable of handling that workload, the carefully orchestrated ballet can come crashing to a halt.

Mike Aponte, a member of the MIT Blackjack Team which won millions in the ‘80s and ‘90s, gave an interview with the BBC in which he addressed what makes a good teammate. According to Aponte, the best Big Players are able to exude casual confidence, all while moving massive amounts of money around the table:

“You just have to pass that initial test where they size you up and think, ‘OK, is this someone we’re going to make a lot of money from?’

What was important was being comfortable, being able to deal with the attention, because money just attracts attention.”

Aponte revealed that the MIT team had a few hiccups along the way, including one Big Player candidate who didn’t quite fit the part. As he told the BBC, Aponte erred in assigning the Big Player position to somebody who was much more suited to be a spotter:

Mit Blackjack Team Strategy

“Looking back it was a mistake as he didn’t have a good look for a big player.

He wore glasses, he had a very meek personality, and he just looked really smart.

He was really smart – he was a PhD student.” – Mike Aponte

The whole trick here is to find teammates that are naturally suited for either the spotter or Big Player role.

The spotters should be nondescript, allowing them to do the heavy mental lifting without catching a second look. And speaking of the mental workload, you probably won’t find an MIT-trained math genius like Aponte, but the spotter obviously needs to be good with numbers. Before you ever hit the casino floor, you’ll want to run through rigorous tests and practice counts to perfect the system.

As for the latter, you want a Big Player who makes the casino happy – somebody who seems right at home torching big bucks at the blackjack table. Flashy clothes, a boisterous personality, and maybe a few cocktails along the way are all essential elements of the Big Player disguise.

Making the Managerial Side Tick

Believe it or not, but the most difficult part of running a card counting team doesn’t take place at the tables.

Sure, the actual gameplay will require skill and aplomb to pull off, but practice will make perfect once you have the right team in place. No, the real difficulties lie in managing such a complex operation.

Remember, your team should include at least three spotters for every Big Player, and you’ll likely want to double that staff to prevent your faces from becoming too familiar. Thus, you should expect to employ seven additional teammates, assuming you’ll be in on the action too.

You’ll be in charge of the team bank, or the pool of money used as capital in the venture. The amount in that bank is all up to you, depending on what stakes you’re looking to play – but it goes without saying that you’ll need a sizable cash reserve on hand at all times. Even card counters lose on occasion, and without enough cashflow to keep yourself afloat, a few bad beats can bury even the best of teams.

Along with dispensing portions of the bank for use at the table, you’ll be carefully accounting for all profits and losses. This job is crucial, because as every gambler knows, strange things can happen when it comes to money in a casino. A teammate might use a chunk of bank money betting on sports, or maybe they have one too many at the bar. In any event, your job as team manager entails accounting for every dollar that comes in or out of the bank.

And if you do catch somebody with their hand in the cookie jar, don’t hesitate to give them the boot. It may be a pain to find and train their replacement, but card counting teams rely on honesty and integrity to succeed. It only takes a single leak to sink the biggest ship, after all.

Aponte himself had to cut bait with a teammate whose recklessness put the entire endeavor at risk.

After two teammates got married, he wanted to show his wife a good time, so the happy couple headed south to play blackjack in the Bahamas. Unfortunately for them, casino security doesn’t play by the same rules as they do here in the States, and card counting is more than just frowned upon – it’s strictly forbidden by law.

This is how Aponte described the situation to the BBC:

“He was up about $20,000 or $30,000, and the casino figured out he was card counting and they brought the police in.

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They threw them in jail and confiscated not only all the money they’d won but the team money they’d brought with them.

That player and his wife – they never played for the team again.”

Incidents such as this may seem unlikely, but you’d be surprised how major money can affect people’s better judgment. No matter what, do your part as manager to keep the team in line, and always keep the bank money under a watchful eye.

That level of diligence can be tough for seasoned corporate managers, and we’re just a bunch of grizzled gamblers, so be prepared for a certain level of burnout.

Bill Kaplan, founder of the MIT Blackjack Team, found himself wearing down after decades of walking that proverbial tightrope. As he told the BBC, Kaplan eventually gave it all up once the managerial duties became so overwhelming:

“As a player it’s an amazing experience, but as a manager we might have 10, 20, 30 people playing in five different casino locales, some in Las Vegas, some in New Orleans, some in Canada, and we’re keeping track of their play, we’re trying to make sure nobody’s stealing money.

I was just running a business and it just seemed like so much of the business was more headaches than fun.”

Kaplan’s lesson couldn’t be clearer. Unless you’re prepared to run your card counting team like a legitimate business, the enterprise is already doomed to fail.

Deciding Where to Play

Back in the era Francesco and Uston came up in, the gambling scene in America was limited to Nevada, and then Atlantic City.

Today is a totally different story though, as gambling has spread from coast to coast, and all points in between. According to the latest data compiled by the American Gaming Association (AGA), over 500 commercial casinos can be found in the following 24 states:

• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Illinois
• Indiana
• Iowa
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Maine
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Michigan
• Mississippi
• Missouri
• Nevada
• New Jersey
• New Mexico
• New York
• Ohio
• Oklahoma
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• South Dakota
• West Virginia

And that’s just the commercial casinos. When the 470 tribal casinos operated on reservation land are added in, America is home to nearly 1,000 gambling establishments. Given the ubiquitous nature of blackjack, it’s safe to say you’ll have tens of thousands of blackjack tables to choose from.

Obviously, the epicenter of the U.S. blackjack scene is Sin City, but playing as a team in Las Vegas probably isn’t a wise move. These guys have been sniffing out card counters for nearly a century now, and they’re the best in the business when it comes to security.

And just in case you’re under the illusion that card counters have carte blanche these days, think again. You won’t be hustled into a back room and beaten with a hammer like the poor fool in Martin Scorcese’s classic Casino (1995), but getting the “tap” is all too common.

Advantage players who have been detected nowadays are simply tapped on the shoulder and told politely, but firmly, that they’re no longer welcome to play blackjack. From there, you might be escorted out by security, or invited to play the slots – that’s all up to the staff on site.

In an article titled “Confessions of a Card Counter,” which was published by the Las Vegas Sun in 2008, Jeff Haney wistfully recalled getting the tap in a series of Sin City casinos:

“My encounters – aficionados also call them “backoffs” or “barrings” and love to nitpick about the distinctions among the terms – have been civil and businesslike.

The most pleasant came at Fiesta Rancho when it was owned by the Maloof family. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I asked for and received a generous comp to the casino’s Mexican restaurant as a sort of parting gift.

My banning at the Palms, another Maloof property, was also polite, almost apologetic. I was doing my best to mind my own business and look like a tourist enjoying a game of cards. A well-groomed casino official I had never seen before materialized by the table and said, matter-of-factly, ‘Jeff, you can’t play here anymore.’”

Accordingly, I’d advise any aspiring card counting team to take their business outside of Las Vegas altogether. It’s just not worth the heat, and as you’ll soon discover, the wilds of lesser known commercial and tribal casinos provide softer targets.

Generally speaking, you should be looking for casinos that don’t fall under the ownership of big corporate brands like Caesars Entertainment, Harrah’s, or MGM Resorts International. These titans of the industry have plenty of resources at their disposal, and even if you’re entering a small venue off the beaten path, corporate ownership usually ensures strict security measures and proper training.

Instead, I always liked to take my team to obscure casinos, places like Bullwhacker’s Black Hawk Canyon in Colorado or Bucky’s in Arizona. These establishments just don’t have the budget to challenge proficient card counters like their bigger corporate-owned rivals.

Conclusion

Counting cards as a team requires hard work and dedication, but it’s all worth it when you start beating the house at its own game. You might feel like you’re up to no good, but the casino doesn’t have any qualms about taking a drunk’s paycheck, or spreading side bets that are more like lottery games than blackjack. With that in mind, practice your counting, find solid teammates, and do whatever it takes – within the boundaries of the law – to gain an edge on the game.

The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students and ex-students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and other leading colleges who used card counting techniques and more sophisticated strategies to beat casinos at blackjack worldwide. The team and its successors operated successfully from 1979 through the beginning of the 21st century. Many other blackjack teams have been formed around the world with the goal of beating the casinos.

Blackjack and card counting[edit]

Blackjack can be legally beaten by a skilled player. Beyond the basic strategy of when to hit and when to stand, individual players can use card counting, shuffle tracking, or hole carding to improve their odds. Since the early 1960s, a large number of card counting schemes have been published, and casinos have adjusted the rules of play in an attempt to counter the most popular methods. The idea behind all card counting is that, because a low card is usually bad and a high card usually good, and as cards already seen since the last shuffle cannot be at the top of the deck and thus drawn, the counter can determine the high and low cards that have already been played. They thus know the probability of getting a high card (10,J,Q,K,A) as compared to a low card (2,3,4,5,6).

In 1979, six MIT students and residents of the Burton-Conner House at MIT taught themselves card-counting. They traveled to Atlantic City during the spring break to win their fortune. The group went their separate ways when most of them graduated in May of that year. Most never gambled again, but some of them maintained an avid interest in card counting and remained in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Two of them, J.P. Massar and Jonathan, offered a course on blackjack for MIT's January, 1980 Independent Activities Period (IAP), during which classes may be offered on almost any subject.

First MIT blackjack 'bank'[edit]

In late November 1979, Dave, a professional blackjack player contacted one of the card-counting students, J.P. Massar, after seeing a notice for the blackjack course. He proposed forming a new group to go to Atlantic City to take advantage of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission's recent ruling that made it illegal for the Atlantic City casinos to ban card counters. Casinos instead have to take other countermeasures like shuffling the cards earlier than normal, using more decks of cards, or offering games with worse rules to destroy the advantage gained by counting—even though these all negatively impact the non-counter as well.^[1]

The group of four players, a professional gambler, and an investor who put up most of their capital ($5,000), went to Atlantic City in late December. They recruited more MIT students as players at the January blackjack class. They played intermittently through May 1980 and increased their capital four-fold, but were nonetheless more like a loose group sharing capital than a team with consistent strategies and quality control.

'Mr. M' meets Bill Kaplan[edit]

In May 1980, J. P. Massar, known as 'Mr. M' in the History Channel documentary, overheard a conversation about professional blackjack at a Chinese restaurant in Cambridge. He introduced himself to the speaker, Bill Kaplan, a 1980 Harvard MBA graduate who had run a successful blackjack team in Las Vegas three years earlier. Kaplan had earned his BA at Harvard in 1977 and delayed his admission to Harvard Business School for a year, when he moved to Las Vegas and formed a team of blackjack players using his own research and statistical analysis of the game. Using funds he received on graduation as Harvard's outstanding scholar-athlete, Kaplan generated more than a 35 fold rate of return in fewer than nine months of play.^[2]

Kaplan continued to run his Las Vegas blackjack team as a sideline while attending Harvard Business School but, by the time of his graduation in May 1980, the players were so 'burnt out' in Nevada they were forced to hit the international circuit. Not feeling he could continue to manage the team successfully while they traveled throughout Europe and elsewhere, encountering different rules, playing conditions, and casino practices, Kaplan parted ways with his teammates, who then splintered into multiple small playing teams in pursuit of more favorable conditions throughout the world.

Kaplan observes Massar and friends in action[edit]

After meeting Kaplan and hearing about his blackjack successes, Massar asked Kaplan if he was interested in going with a few of Massar's blackjack-playing friends to Atlantic City to observe their play. Given the fortuitous timing (Kaplan's parting with his Las Vegas team), he agreed to go in the hopes of putting together a new local team that he could train and manage.

Kaplan observed Massar and his teammates playing for a weekend in Atlantic City. He noted that each of the players used a different, and overcomplicated, card counting strategy. This resulted in error rates that undermined the benefits of the more complicated strategies. Upon returning to Cambridge, Kaplan detailed the problems he observed to Massar.

Kaplan capitalizes a new team[edit]

Kaplan said he would back a team but it had to be run as a business with formal management procedures, a required counting and betting system, strict training and player approval processes, and careful tracking of all casino play. A couple of the players were initially averse to the idea. They had no interest in having to learn a new playing system, being put through 'trial by fire' checkout procedures before being approved to play, being supervised in the casinos, or having to fill out detailed player sheets (such as casino, cash in and cash out totals, time period, betting strategy and limits, and the rest) for every playing session. However, their keen interest in the game coupled with Kaplan's successful track record won out.

The newly capitalised 'bank' of the MIT Blackjack Team started on 1 August 1980. The investment stake was $89,000, with both outside investors and players putting up the capital. Ten players, including Kaplan, Massar, Jonathan, Goose, and 'Big Dave' (aka 'coach', to distinguish from the Dave in the first round) played on this bank. Ten weeks later they more than doubled the original stake. Profits per hour played at the tables were $162.50, statistically equivalent to the projected rate of $170/hour detailed in the investor offering prospectus. Per the terms of the investment offering, players and investors split the profits with players paid in proportion to their playing hours and computer simulated win rates. Over the ten-week period of this first bank, players, mostly undergraduates, earned an average of over $80/hour while investors achieved an annualized return in excess of 250%.

Strategy and techniques[edit]

The team often recruited students through flyers and the players' friends from college campuses across the country. The team tested potential members to find out if they were suitable candidates and, if they were, the team thoroughly trained the new members for free. Fully trained players had to pass an intense 'trial by fire,' consisting of playing through 8 six-deck shoes with almost perfect play, and then undergo further training, supervision, and similar check-outs in actual casino play until they could become full stakes players.

The group combined individual play with a team approach of counters and big players to maximize opportunities and disguise the betting patterns that card counting produces. In a 2002 interview in Blackjack Forum magazine,^[3] John Chang, an MIT undergrad who joined the team in late 1980 (and became MIT team co-manager in the mid-1980s and 1990s), reported that, in addition to classic card counting and blackjack team techniques, at various times the group used advanced shuffle and ace tracking techniques. While the MIT team's card counting techniques can give players an overall edge of about 2 percent, some of the MIT team's methods have been established as gaining players an overall edge of about 4 percent.^{[citation needed]} In his interview, Chang reported that the MIT team had difficulty attaining such edges in actual play, and their overall results had been best with straight card counting.

The MIT Team's approach was originally developed by Al Francesco, elected by professional gamblers as one of the original seven inductees into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. Blackjack team play was first written about by Ken Uston, an early member of Al Francesco's teams. Uston's book on blackjack team play, Million Dollar Blackjack, was published shortly before the founding of the first MIT team. Kaplan enhanced Francesco's team methods and used them for the MIT team. The team concept enabled players and investors to leverage both their time and money, reducing their 'risk of ruin' while also making it more difficult for casinos to detect card counting at their tables.

Team history 1980–1990[edit]

The MIT Blackjack Team continued to play throughout the 1980s, growing to as many as 35 players in 1984 with a capitalization of as much as $350,000. Having played and run successful teams since 1977, Kaplan reached a point in late 1984 where he could not show his face in any casino without being followed by the casino personnel in search of his team members. As a consequence he decided to fall back on his growing real estate investment and development company, his 'day job' since 1980, and stopped managing the team. He continued for another year or so as an occasional player and investor in the team, now being run by Massar, Chang and Bill Rubin, a player who joined the team in 1984.

The MIT Blackjack Team ran at least 22 partnerships in the time period from late 1979 through 1989. At least 70 people played on the team in some capacity (either as counters, Big Players, or in various supporting roles) over that time span. Every partnership was profitable during this time period, after paying all expenses as well as the players' and managers' share of the winnings, with returns to investors ranging from 4%/year to over 300%/year.

Strategic Investments 1992–1993[edit]

In 1992, Bill Kaplan, J.P. Massar, and John Chang decided to capitalize on the opening of Foxwoods Casino in nearby Connecticut, where they planned to train new players. Acting as the General Partner, they formed a Massachusetts Limited Partnership in June 1992 called Strategic Investments to bankroll the new team. Structured similar to the numerous real estate development limited partnerships that Kaplan had formed, the limited partnership raised a million dollars, significantly more money than any of their previous teams, with a method based on Edward Thorp's high low system. It involved three players: a big player, a controller, and a spotter. The spotter checked when the deck went positive with card counting, the controller would bet small constantly, wasting money, and verifying the spotter's count. Once the controller found a positive, he would signal to the big player. He would make a massive bet, and win big. Confident with this new funding, the three general partners ramped up their recruitment and training efforts to capitalize on the opportunity.

Over the next two years, the MIT Team grew to nearly 80 players, including groups and players in Cambridge, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, and Washington. Sarah McCord, who joined the team in 1983 as an MIT student and later moved to California, was added as a partner soon after SI was formed and became responsible for training and recruitment of West Coast players.

At various times, there were nearly 30 players playing simultaneously at different casinos around the world, including Native American casinos throughout the country, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Canada, and island locations. Never before had casinos throughout the world seen such an organized and scientific onslaught directed at the game. While the profits rolled in, so did the 'heat' from the casinos, and many MIT Team members were identified and barred. These members were replaced by fresh players from MIT, Harvard, and other colleges and companies, and play continued. Eventually, investigators hired by casinos realized that many of those they had banned had addresses in or near Cambridge, and the connection to MIT and a formalized team became clear. The detectives obtained copies of recent MIT yearbooks and added photographs from it to their image database.

With its leading players banned from most casinos and other more lucrative investment opportunities opening up at the end of the recession, Strategic Investments paid out its substantial earnings to players and investors and dissolved its partnership on December 31, 1993.

1994 and forward[edit]

After the dissolution of Strategic Investments, a few of the players took their winnings and split off into two independent groups. The Amphibians were primarily led by Semyon Dukach, with Dukach as the big player, Katie Lilienkamp (a controller), and Andy Bloch (a spotter). The other team was the Reptiles, led by Mike Aponte, Manlio Lopez and Wes Atamian. These teams had various legal structures, and at times million dollar banks and 50+ players. By 2000 the 15+ year reign of the MIT Blackjack Teams came to an end as players drifted into other pursuits.

In 1999, a member of the Amphibians won at Max Rubin's 3rd Annual Blackjack Ball competition. The event was featured in an October 1999 Cigar Aficionado article, which said the winner earned the unofficial title 'Most Feared Man in the Casino Business'.^[4]

In the media[edit]

Books[edit]

• A variety of stories about a few of the players from the MIT Blackjack Team formed the basis of The New York Times best-sellingBringing Down the House, written by Ben Mezrich. While originally marketed as nonfiction, Mezrich later admitted characters and stories in the book were mostly fictive and composites of players and stories he had heard about through hearsay. The private investigation firm referred to as Plymouth in Bringing Down the House was Griffin Investigations.^[5]
• Mezrich wrote a follow-up book, Busting Vegas, which took even greater liberty with the actual happenings of the team. Many events in this book were at least partly based on incidents that occurred during the team's Strategic Investments era.^[6]
• Jeffrey Ma wrote a book titled The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big in Business about his time on the 1994 MIT blackjack team.
• Nathaniel Tilton, a student of former MIT team captains Mike Aponte and Semyon Dukach, authored The Blackjack Life detailing his experiences playing and being trained by the MIT Blackjack Team players.^[7]

Films[edit]

• The 2004 film The Last Casino is loosely based on this premise and features three students and a professor counting cards in Ontario and Quebec.^[8]
• The 2008 film 21, inspired by Bringing Down the House and produced by and starring Kevin Spacey and Jim Sturgess, was released on March 28, 2008 by Columbia Pictures. Jeff Ma and Henry Houh, former players on the team, appear in the movie as casino dealers, and Bill Kaplan appears in a cameo in the background of the underground Chinese gambling parlor scene. The script took significant artistic license with events, with most of its plot being invented for the movie, hence it refers to being 'inspired by true events' rather than 'based on true events.' One of the most significant departures from reality was the portrayal of the team being run by a professor (the Kevin Spacey character), when in reality the team was always run by students and alumni. The characters in the movie were also fictionalized amalgams of various players throughout the years of the team's existence - for example, the character Choi is very loosely (and inaccurately) based on Johnny Chang, and the character Ben Campbell, is an amalgam of numerous players, with the opening scene based on Big Dave's interview, and subsequent admission to Harvard Medical School, where much of the interview revolved around his participation on the team.
• The 2010 film Teen Patti is an uncredited remake of 21.

Television[edit]

• The Mysteries at the Museum series on the Travel Channel featured the story of the MIT Blackjack Team in the episode titled 'Siamese Twins, Assassin Umbrella, Capone's Cell'.
• The story of the MIT Blackjack Team, in its incarnation as Strategic Investments, was told in The History Channel documentary, Breaking Vegas, directed by Bruce David Klein.
• The Bringing Down The House period was featured on episodes of the Game Show Network documentary series, Anything to Win, and HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel (episode 116).
• The BBC documentary, Making Millions the Easy Way, addressed the Bringing Down the House period as part of the renowned 'Horizon' strand (directed by Johanna Gibbon), told the story of a Strategic Investments breakaway group, and revealed the science behind the winning formula.
• 'Double Down', an episode of Numb3rs concerned a counting group, led by a High School teacher, which launders money through casino winnings.

Other[edit]

Several members of the two teams have used their expertise to start public speaking careers as well as businesses teaching others how to count cards. For example:

• Mike Aponte of the Reptiles co-founded a company with former MIT Blackjack Team member David Irvine called the Blackjack Institute.
• Semyon Dukach of the Amphibians founded Blackjack Science.

References[edit]

1. ^Griffin, Peter A. (1979). The Theory of Blackjack. Huntington Press. ISBN0-915141-02-7.
2. ^'How a team of students beat the casinos'. BBC.com. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
3. ^Blackjack Forum interview with Johnny Chang
4. ^The Twenty One Club: The annual blackjack ball hosts Gambling's Most Furtive (and Quirky) FraternityArchived 2009-04-20 at the Wayback Machine cigaraficionado.com, Sept/Oct 1999
5. ^Ian Kaplan (March 2004). 'review of Bringing Down the House'.
6. ^ThePOGG (10 November 2012). 'ThePOGG Interviews – Semyon Dukach – MIT Card Counting team captain'.
7. ^'ThePOGG Interviews – Nathaniel Tilton author of 'The Blackjack Life''. Retrieved 6 March 2013.
8. ^The Last Casino at IMDb.Retrieved 2009-11-03.

External links[edit]