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• Blackjack Gambling Card

The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students and ex-students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Business School, 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.

• 3'Mr. M' meets Bill Kaplan
• 8In the media

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. He or she thus knows the probability of getting a high card (10,J,Q,K,A) as compared to a low card (2,3,4,5,6).

The same goes for the blackjack world, where card counting can get a player blacklisted from casinos or worse.That’s why it’s valuable to strategically deviate from the plan. For example, splitting a pair of 10s isn’t something a novice blackjack player would do—that hand adds up to 20 and is a nice-looking total.

In 1980, 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. They 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, 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. Instead, casinos would have to ban players individually.

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.^[1]

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,^[2] 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'.^[3]

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.^[4]
• 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.^[5]
• 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.^[6]

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.^[7]
• 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, 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.

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

External links[edit]

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Blackjack Gambling Card

TV Game Shows

• On the game show Let’s Make a Deal, there are three doors. For the sake of example, let’s say that two doors reveal a goat, and one reveals a new car. The host, Monty Hall, picks two contestants to pick a door. Every time Monty opens a door first that reveals a goat. Let’s say this time it belonged to the first contestant. Although Monty never actually did this, what if Monty offered the other contestant a chance to switch doors at this point, to the other unopened door. Should he switch?
  Yes! The key to this problem is that the host is predestined to open a door with a goat. He knows which door has the car, so regardless of which doors the players pick, he always can reveal a goat first. The question is known as the 'Monty Hall Paradox.' Much of the confussion about it is because often when the question is framed, it is incorrectly not made clear the host knows where the car is, and always reveals a goat first. I think put some of the blame on Marilyn Vos Savant, who framed the question badly in her column. Let’s assume that the prize is behind door 1. Following are what would happen if the player (the second contestant) had a strategy of not switching.

  • Player picks door 1 --> player wins
  • Player picks door 2 --> player loses
  • Player picks door 3 --> player loses

  Following are what would happen if the player had a strategy of switching.

  • Player picks door 1 --> Host reveals goat behind door 2 or 3 --> player switches to other door --> player loses
  • Player picks door 2 --> Host reveals goat behind door 3 --> player switches to door 1 --> player wins
  • Player picks door 3 --> Host reveals goat behind door 2 --> player switches to door 1 --> player wins

  So by not switching the player has 1/3 chance of winning. By switching the player has a 2/3 chance of winning. So the player should definitely switch.

  For further reading on the Monty Hall paradox, I recommend the article at Wikipedia.

General

• It depends on the rules of the game and how well you play it. Limiting the answer to popular games, assuming you play the optimal strategy and stick to all the best bets when given a choice, I’d narrow down the best games to the four in the following list. (The percentage shown is the element of risk of those games, which is the ratio of how much you can expect to lose to how much you bet, which I think is a proper measurement of the value of a game.)

  • blackjack (six decks, dealer stands on soft 17, double after split allowed, surrender allowed, re-splitting aces allowed) — 0.25%
  • craps (3-4-5x odds, laying the maximum odds allowed) — 0.27%
  • video poker (9-6 jacks or better) — 0.46%
  • Ultimate Texas Hold 'Em — 0.53%

• My answer would be whichever game has the lowest element of risk at whatever casino I'm in. However, the answer to the question about which game I find the most fun to play is pai gow (tiles). I dislike volatility and tiles offers a slow game with lots of pushes. It’s also a challenging game to understand and play well. I find that other players are generally smart people and pleasant to play with.

• All betting systems are equally worthless. Not only can't a betting system overcome the house edge, it can't even dent it. If a betting system makes gambling more fun, be my guest. Just don't delude yourself that it will help in the long run.
• The casino that I feel offers the best odds and overall value is South Point.
• Casino (insert name here) is cheating. Can you please warn your readers about them? I know because (insert adjective-laden story about losing here).
  This kind of accusation rarely comes with any evidence behind it other than adjectives. What rare times I get some actual numbers, the loss could easily be explained as ordinary bad luck. Nevertheless, I have exposed cases of cheating at Internet casinos several times, starting with such accusations. So if you suspect a casino is cheating, please follow the scientific method before writing to me; in other words, make a hypothesis about how the casino cheating, gather evidence to confirm or deny the hypothesis, and finally analyze the evidence. I’m happy to help with step 3.
• Why are you such a Debbie Downer when it comes to gambling? You take all the fun out of it with your mathematical strategies, which take away my free will.
  If you want to lose more by making mistakes, go ahead. I can only lead a horse to water. You don't have to drink it if you don't want to.

Blackjack

• Do bad players, in particular in blackjack, cause everybody else to lose?
  No. While everyone remembers the time a bad player took the dealer's bust card and caused the whole table to lose, people tend to forget the times that a bad player saved the table. This practice of selective memory to support pre-existing beliefs is called “confirmation bias.” In the long run, bad players are just as likely to help you as hurt you, so leave them alone.
• Why do you say not to take 'even money' on a blackjack when the dealer has an ace up? It is a sure winner!
  There is a 69.1% chance the dealer doesn't have a blackjack and you'll win the full 3-2. (1.5 × 69.1% = 103.7%.) That’s more than the 100% you get by taking even money. You’ve already established the fact that you're a gambler by playing in the first place. Don't suddenly become risk-averse and give up that 3.7% because you don't want to take a chance.
• In blackjack, sometimes the dealer unknowingly exposes the hole card. What is the player advantage when this happens?
  The player advantage is 10% +/- 0.5%, depending on the specific rules. Here is the strategy when the dealer exposes both cards. This is different than the double exposure strategy, where the player loses on ties.

Craps

• For the benefit of those who don't understand the question, books, videos, and lessons allege that it’s possible to beat the odds in craps with a careful toss that favors certain outcomes, namely lowering the probability of a total of seven to less than 1 in 6. I'm firmly in the skeptics camp on this one. I have yet to see any credible evidence leading me to believe that anyone can consistently influence the dice. There is much more money to be made selling books and lessons on how to do it than actually doing it.

Slots

• As a rule of thumb, the location makes no difference.

Roulette

• If a ball landed in red the last 20 spins in roulette, what is the probability it will land in black the next spin?
  The same as red, 47.37% on a double-zero wheel, 18 black numbers divided by 38 total numbers.
• I think you're wrong about the previous question. The odds of 21 reds in a row is (18/38)²¹ = 1 in 6,527,290. The odds must overwhelmingly favor black.
  That's true, but it doesn't matter. That’s the same probability of 20 reds followed by a black. The fact is the past doesn't matter in games of independent trials like roulette.
• I've thought of a way to beat the casinos in roulette! Start with a small wager on any even-money bet, like red or black. If it loses, then double the bet on the same thing. Then keeping doubling until it wins. The winning outcome has to happen eventually and when it does I'll profit my original wager. Then repeat. What is your opinion? Also, please don't tell anybody.
  This is probably the most popular of all betting systems, known as the Martingale. Gamblers have been conceiving of it and using it since time immemorial. Like all betting systems, not only doesn't it beat the house advantage, it doesn't even dent it. The reason is the gambler will eventually have a bad losing streak where his bankroll isn't enough to make another double.
• In your previous answer, you explained why the Martingale doesn't work. Then how about the opposite, doubling your bet after each win until a desired target is hit?
  This is known as the anti-Martingale and is equally worthless. The times your bankroll gets grinded down to nothing will outweigh the winnings when you hit your target. Regardless of what betting system you use, or none at all, the more you play, the more your ratio of money lost to money bet will approach 5.26% in double-zero roulette.