The hit Hollywood movie “21” was based on Ben Mezrich’s book, Bringing Down the House, which chronicled the resurgence of the MIT blackjack team in the 1990’s.The book follows the real characters and true story in only parts. The following blackjack, card counting and advantage play information is from Wikipedia.org – the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Please use caution with information provided here. 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. The movie 21 was based on the book Bringing Down The House by Ben Mezrich. Busting Vegas (stylized as Busting Vega$) is a 2005 book by Ben Mezrich about a group of MIT card counters and blackjack players commonly known as the MIT Blackjack Team.The subtitle of the original, hardcover edition was The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees, but the subtitle of the subsequent paperback editions was A True Story of Monumental Excess, Sex, Love, Violence,.

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
• 8Casinos' responses
• 9In the media

Blackjack and card counting

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).

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'

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

In May 1980, J. P. Massar, known as 'Mr. M' in a 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 less than nine months of play.^{[citation needed]}

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

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

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

The team often recruited students through flyers and across the players' friends throughout 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,^[1] 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

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 team played on and off the next few years but interest waned as casino conditions, player exhaustion, and weakened management focus caused the group to lose players and finally stop playing.^{[citation needed]}

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

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 located 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

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'.^[2]

Casinos' responses

Legal

Casinos would often ban card counters if they were caught in a variety of ways: from the blackjack table itself, from the entire casino grounds, or from all resort property. Catching card counters, however, was difficult for casinos because the best person for reporting counting was usually the dealer, and the team is reported to have tipped them very well to discourage notifying casino owners. Some casinos purchased picture lists of card counters from private companies to identify and ban card counters before they could reach the blackjack tables. Breaking a ban would result in legal prosecution for trespassing. Cities with casinos often passed laws banning some methods to combat card counting and other techniques the MIT blackjack team may have used. Card counting, however, could not be, and never was, made illegal anywhere.^{[citation needed]}

Game changes

While the blackjack rules themselves were not significantly changed, casinos began to encourage dealers to shuffle more often to make card counting less effective. Shuffling could not be used in excess because doing so bored non-counting gamblers and affected revenue by slowing overall play. Switching between multiple decks to allow faster changing was an easy alternative to shuffling but was still not effective enough. Electronic blackjack is becoming increasingly common, another means to curb counting, but it is not seen by many to be a sufficient replacement for regular blackjack.

In the media

Books

Mit Blackjack Team Wikipedia Game

• 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.^[3]

• 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.^[4]

• 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.^[5]

Films

• 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.^[6]
• 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.

Television

• 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

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

1. ↑Blackjack Forum interview with Johnny Chang
2. ↑The Twenty One Club: The annual blackjack ball hosts Gambling's Most Furtive (and Quirky) Fraternity cigaraficionado.com, Sept/Oct 1999
3. ↑Ian Kaplan (March 2004). 'review of Bringing Down the House'.<templatestyles src='Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css'></templatestyles>
4. ↑ThePOGG (10 November 2012). 'ThePOGG Interviews – Semyon Dukach - MIT Card Counting team captain'.<templatestyles src='Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css'></templatestyles>
5. ↑'ThePOGG Interviews - Nathaniel Tilton author of 'The Blackjack Life''. Retrieved 6 March 2013.<templatestyles src='Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css'></templatestyles>
6. ↑The Last Casino on IMDb .Retrieved 2009-11-03.

External links

Mike Aponte, also known as MIT Mike, is a professional blackjack player and a former member of the MIT Blackjack Team. Aponte was part of a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students that legally won millions playing blackjack at casinos around the world by counting cards. He is the basis for one of the main characters, Jason Fisher, in the book, Bringing Down the House, by Ben Mezrich,^[1] which inspired the motion picture, 21.

Early years[edit]

Growing up Aponte rarely played cards.^{[citation needed]} He was the son of a U.S. Army tactical instructor, and his family moved on a regular basis, both within the United States and overseas. He attended 11 different schools before graduating valedictorian from Ewing High School in New Jersey.^[2][3] That fall, he moved to Boston to attend MIT, where he studied economics and played on the school’s football team. In his senior year a friend told him about a team at MIT that used special mathematical techniques to win at blackjack.

In an interview with All In magazine, Mike recalled: “When I attended my first blackjack team meeting I was completely hooked. I was fascinated by the mathematics of card counting and of course the lure of big money and the high roller lifestyle. I was highly motivated to learn card counting and I practiced hard to develop my skills.”^{[citation needed]}

Blackjack[edit]

Aponte first played as a member of the MIT Blackjack Team in 1992, after passing the team’s big player test (the BP 'checkout'). In the big player team strategy, it is the BP that comes in and capitalizes on the advantage with big bets after spotters have identified a 'hot shoe' with a favorable count. Aponte was one of the team's most successful big players, and was also the team's manager, responsible for recruiting and training new players, as well as coordinating team trips.^{[citation needed]}

Mit Blackjack Team Wikipedia Free

Until 2000, Aponte and his colleagues achieved substantial success at casinos in the United States and other countries as well, eventually earning millions of dollars. The team practiced rigorously, maintained an intense travel schedule and planned their blackjack operations meticulously.

After his professional card counting career, Aponte went on to win the World Series of Blackjack championship in 2004, and co-founded a company that provides instructional products on how to win at blackjack.^[4] Mike has coached several notable players including Nathaniel Tilton, author of The Blackjack Life and his playing partner 'D.A.'.^[5] In 2007 Aponte became the first blackjack player ever to be depicted on a trading card in Topps' Allen & Ginter set.^[6] He now coaches blackjack, and speaks at universities and corporations.^[7]

Mit Blackjack Team Wikipedia Template

References[edit]

1. ^Swogger, Rick 'Interview with MIT Mike' BlackjackInfo.com
2. ^Schwartz, Marc. 'Playing your hand at Blackjack', The Record (Bergen County), April 22, 2007. Accessed September 30, 2007. 'The Ewing high school graduate works with underprivileged kids in the Washington, D.C., area.'
3. ^Trently, Jeff. 'Recognize the face on this ace? Rebel gambler gets his own card', The Times (Trenton, New Jersey), September 3, 2007. Accessed September 30, 2007.
4. ^Rivlin, Gary. ' A Strategy Up Their Sleeves'The New York Times, December 30, 2007
5. ^'ThePOGG Interviews - Nathaniel Tilton author of 'The Blackjack Life''. Retrieved 6 March 2013.
6. ^Earhart, Cynthia 'Making it to the Topps', Midwest Gaming and Travel, November, 2007
7. ^Baker, Samantha. 'Card counter Comes to CSU'The Rocky Mountain Collegian, February 9, 2011

Mit Blackjack Team Wikipedia Shqip

External links[edit]

Mit Blackjack Team Wikipedia