The MIT Blackjack Team is a group of students and former students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Business School, Harvard University, and other leading colleges using card counting techniques and more sophisticated strategies to beat casinos in blackjack around the world. The team and its successors operate successfully from 1979 to the beginning of the 21st century. Many other blackjack teams have been formed around the world with the goal of defeating the casino.
Video MIT Blackjack Team
Blackjack and card count
Blackjack can be beaten legally by an expert player. Beyond the basic strategy of when to hit and when to stand, individual players can use card counting, random tracking or hole cards to increase their chances. Since the early 1960s a large number of card counting schemes have been published, and casinos have adjusted the rules of the game in an attempt to counter the most popular methods. The idea behind all card counting is that, because low cards are usually bad and high cards are usually good, and like cards that have been seen since the last shuffle can not be on the top of the deck and are thus drawn, the counters can determine the height and low cards already played. Thus he knows the probability of getting high cards (10, J, Q, K, A) compared to low cards (2,3,4,5,6).
In 1980, six MIT students and Burton-Conner House residents at MIT taught themselves card counting. They travel to Atlantic City during spring break to win their fortunes. The group parted when most of them graduated in May of that year. Most never gamble anymore, but some of them retain a great interest in card counting and remain in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They offer a course on blackjack for MIT, January 1980, the Independent Activity Period (IAP), in which classes can be offered on almost any subject.
Maps MIT Blackjack Team
First MIT blackjack "bank"
In late November 1979, a professional blackjack player contacted one of the card counting students, J.P. Massar, after seeing the 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 decision that made it illegal for Atlantic City casinos to ban card counters. Instead, casinos should ban players individually.
A group of four players, a professional gambler, and an investor who prepares most of their capital ($ 5,000), travels to Atlantic City in late December. They recruited more MIT students as players in the January blackjack class. They played intermittently until May 1980 and increased their capital fourfold, but remained more like a loosely shared group of teams than teams with consistent strategy and quality control.
"Mr. M" met with Bill Kaplan
In May 1980, J.P. Massar, known as "Mr. M" in the History Channel documentary, hears a conversation about a professional blackjack at a Chinese restaurant in Cambridge. He introduced himself to the speaker, Bill Kaplan, a graduate of the Harvard MBA 1980 who had run a successful blackjack team in Las Vegas three years earlier. Kaplan had received his BA at Harvard in 1977 and delayed his acceptance 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 the funds he received at graduation as a leading Harvard athlete, Kaplan produced over 35 times the rate of return in less than nine months of play.
Kaplan continued to run his blackjack team in Las Vegas as a sideline while attending Harvard Business School, but, by the time of his graduation in May 1980, the players were so "tired" in Nevada that they were forced to attack the international circuit. Not feeling he can continue to manage the team successfully as they travel across Europe and elsewhere, facing different rules, playing conditions, and casino practices, Kaplan parted ways with his teammates, who then split into smaller teams to pursue more conditions profitable. around the world.
Kaplan watched Massar and his friends in action
After meeting Kaplan and hearing about the success of his blackjack, Massar asked Kaplan if he was interested in going with some Blackjack Massar friends to Atlantic City to observe their game. Given the unexpected time (Kaplan parted with his Las Vegas team), he agreed to leave in hopes of gathering a new local team he could train and manage.
Kaplan watched Massar and his colleagues play for the weekend in Atlantic City. He noted that each player uses different card-counting strategies and is too complicated. This results in an error rate that undermines the benefits of more complex strategies. Upon returning to Cambridge, Kaplan detailed the problems he had observed to Massar.
Kaplan capitalizes the new team
Kaplan says he will support the team but must be run as a business with formal management procedures, required counting and betting systems, rigorous training and player approval processes, and careful tracking of all casino games. Some players initially rejected the idea. They are not interested in learning a new game system, undergoing a "fire experiments" inspection procedure before being approved for play, supervised in a casino, or having to fill in detailed player pieces (such as casinos, cash in and total cash, time period, limit, and rest) for each play session. However, their interest in the game coupled with Kaplan's successful track record wins.
The newly-capitalized MIT "Bank" of the MIT Blackjack Team began on August 1, 1980. The investment stakeholder was $ 89,000, with investors and outside players building the capital. Ten players, including Kaplan, Massar, Jonathan, Goose, and 'Big Dave' (aka 'coach', to distinguish from Dave in the first round) were played in this bank. Ten weeks later they were more than double the original stock. The hourly profit played on the table is $ 162.50, statistically equivalent to a specified $ 170/hour projection level in the investor offering the prospectus. Under the terms of investment offerings, players and investors share profits with players who are paid according to their playing hours and the level of computer simulation wins. During the ten-week period of this first bank, players, mostly students, earn on average more than $ 80/hour while investors achieve an annual profit of over 250%.
Strategy and techniques
Teams often recruit students through flyers and players friends from campuses across the country. The team tests prospective members to find out if they are suitable candidates and, if they are, the team thoroughly trains new members for free. Full-trained players must go through an intense "fire test", which consists of playing through eight six-deck boots with almost perfect games, and then undergoing further training, surveillance, and similar check-outs in actual casino games until they can be full of player bets.
This group combines individual games with a team approach of counters and big players to maximize opportunities and disguise the betting patterns generated by card counting. In a 2002 interview in the Blackjack Forum magazine, John Chang, an MIT undergrad who joined the team in late 1980 (and became co-manager of the MIT team in the mid-1980s and 1990s), reported that, in addition to classical card counting and blackjack team techniques, at various times the group used advanced shuffle techniques and ace tracking techniques. While the MIT team's card count technique can give players an overall edge of about 2 percent, some of the MIT team's methods have been set as getting the overall edge player of about 4 percent. In the interview, Chang reported that the MIT team had difficulty reaching these sides in the real game, and their overall result was the best with straight card counting.
The MIT Team approach was originally developed by Al Francesco, selected by professional gamblers as one of the original seven inductees to the Blackjack Hall of Fame. Playing the Blackjack team was first written by Ken Uston, an early member of Al Francesco's team. Uston's book about the team playing blackjack, Million Dollar Blackjack , was published shortly before the founding of the first MIT team. Kaplan perfects Francesco's team method and uses it for the MIT team. The team concept allows players and investors to take advantage of their time and money, reducing the "risk of destruction" while also making it harder for casinos to detect card counts on their desks.
Team history 1980-1990
The Blackjack MIT 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. After playing and running a successful team since 1977, Kaplan reached a point in late 1984 where he could not show his face in any casino without being followed by casino personnel to search for his team members. As a result, he decided to fall back on his growing investment and real estate development company, his "daily work" since 1980, and stop managing the team. He continued for a year or more as an occasional player and investor in the team, now being run by Massar, Chang and Bill Rubin, players who joined the team in 1984.
The team played on and off the next few years but interest was diminished because of casino conditions, player fatigue, and weak management focus caused the group to lose players and eventually stop playing.
MIT Blackjack Team runs at least 22 partnerships over a period of time from late 1979 to 1989. At least 70 people play on teams in some capacity (either as counter, Big Players, or in various supporting roles) over that time span. Each partnership is profitable during this period, after paying all fees as well as the players and managers part of the winnings, with returns to investors ranging from 4%/year to over 300%/year.
Strategic Investment 1992-1993
In 1992, Bill Kaplan, J.P. Massar, and John Chang decided to capitalize on the opening of Foxwoods Casino near Connecticut, where they plan to train new players. Acting as General Partners, they formed the Massachusetts Limited Partnership in June 1992 called Strategic Investments to finance the new team. Structurally similar to many of the limited real estate development partnerships that Kaplan has formed, the limited partnership raised a million dollars, significantly more money than their previous team, with a method based on Edward Thorp's low-high system. It involves three players: big players, controllers, and scouts. Spies checking when the deck goes positive with card counting, the controller will bet small constant, wasting money, and verify the number of scouts. Once the controller finds positive, he will signal to the big players. He will make a big bet, and win big. Confident with this new funding, three general partners are stepping up their recruitment and training efforts to take advantage of 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 then moved to California, was added as a partner soon after SI was formed and became responsible for West Coast player training and recruitment.
On numerous occasions, there are nearly 30 players playing simultaneously at various casinos around the world, including native American casinos across the country, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Canada, and island locations. There has never been a casino around the world that witnessed an organized and scientific assault as directed at the game. While profits rolled, so did the "hot" of the casino, and many members of the MIT Team were identified and banned. These members were replaced by new players from MIT, Harvard, and colleges and other companies, and played on. Finally, the investigators hired by the casinos realized that many of those who had been banned had addresses at or near Cambridge, and connections to MIT and the formal team became clear. Detectives get a copy of MIT's recent yearbook and add photos from it to their image database.
With leading players banned from most casinos and other lucrative investment opportunities open at the end of the recession, Strategic Investments paid substantial revenues to players and investors and disbanded its partnership on December 31, 1993.
1994 and continue
After the dissolution of Strategic Investment, some players took their victory and broke away into two independent groups. Amphibians are mainly led by Semyon Dukach, with Dukach as a great player, Katie Lilienkamp (controller), and Andy Bloch (scout). The other team is Reptile, led by Mike Aponte, Manlio Lopez and Wes Atamian. These teams have various legal structures, and sometimes millions of bank dollars and 50 players. In 2000, the administration of the Blackjack team for 15 years ended when the players drifted to another destination.
In 1999, an Amphibian member won in the 3 rd Black Rubber Competition Rub Rubin. The show is featured in an October 1999 article Cigar Aficionado , which says the winner earned an unofficial "Most Dreaded Men in Casino Business" category.
In media
Books
- Stories about some players from MIT Blackjack Team formed the best-selling The New York Times Bringing Down the House , written by Ben Mezrich. Although originally marketed as nonfiction, Mezrich later admitted the characters and stories in the book were mostly fictional and composite of the players and stories he had heard through hearsay. The private investigation firm called Plymouth in Bringing Down the House is a Griffin Investigation.
- Mezrich wrote the follow-up book, Busting Vegas , which is even more free with the actual events of the team. Many of the events in this book are at least partly based on the incidents that occurred during the era of Strategic Investments teams.
- Jeffrey Ma wrote a book titled The House Advantage: Playing a Great Winning Opportunity in Business about his time on the 1994 MIT blackjack team.
- Nathaniel Tilton, a former student of MIT team captain Mike Aponte and Semyon Dukach, writes The Blackjack Life details his experience of playing and coaching by the MIT Blackjack Team player.
Movies
- The 2004 film The Last Casino , is loosely based on this premise and features three students and professor counting cards in Ontario and Quebec.
- The 2008 movie, 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, appeared in the film as casino dealers, and Bill Kaplan appeared in a cameo in the background of the underground gambling chamber scene. The script takes a significant artistic license with the show, with most of its plots created for the movie.
Television
More
Several members of both teams have used their expertise to start a public speaking career as well as businesses that teach others how to count cards. As an example:
- Mike Aponte of Reptile founded a company with former MIT member Blackjack Team, David Irvine, called the Blackjack Institute.
- Semyon Dukach of Amphibians founded the Blackjack Science.
References
External links
- "Inc. Magazine: Business Lessons from Blackjack King"
- "Newton Man, Bill Kaplan, Inspires Kevin Spacey's Character in 21"
- Citynet Magazine articles on team and card count
- "Chet Curtis's report on NECN: Interview with Bill Kaplan" - video
- "Mike Aponte Talks 21" Raw Vegas - video
- "Math Whiz Breaks The Blackjack Bank" Fox News DC - video
- "Interview with MIT Mike" BlackjackInfo.com
- "Midwest Gaming and Midwest Travel" Weekend US $ 500,000 "
- Wired Magazine: Las Vegas Hacking
- BBC documentary about card and Team count
- USA Today Q & amp; A with Bill Kaplan (with photo)
- MIT Team Blackjack
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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