The Real MIT Blackjack Mastermind 195
Wade Roush writes "21, the top movie at the box office last weekend, has everyone talking about the real identities of the MIT blackjack team members fictionalized in the movie and in the 2002 book, Bringing Down the House, on which the film is based. Last week a number of stories pointed to former MIT student and Las Vegas resident John Chang as the model for the Micky Rosa character, the club mastermind played in the movie by Kevin Spacey. But Boston-area Internet entrepreneur and real estate developer Bill Kaplan is saying that if anyone is the basis for Micky Rosa, it's him. Turns out Kaplan now battles the "e-mail churn" problem as CEO of Newton, MA, startup FreshAddress, which helps companies correct the outdated e-mail addresses in their customer databases."
What kind of job is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: Kaplan now helps marketers/spammers share your address so that when you associate your new address with your same other information, they can continue to market to/spam you.
Yeah, right, that's a job that's gonna get you a lot of respect here on
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Re:What kind of job is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
And counting cards is in no way scamming.
It's just playing the game the way a scientist should, not the typical "mystical" way that most people do.
Maybe in a hundred years "luck" will be an outmoded concept and gambling will been seen properly as "entertainment" but until then, most every idiot who goes to a casino is a mystical moron who thinks he's going to get lucky and win.
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Re:What kind of job is that? (Score:5, Informative)
I will in fact "spell" it out to you. The irony lies in the term itself, and as it is applied here to card counters. The irony is also apparent in the fact that the casino's have already "gamed" the system against it's customers (from a profit perspective), especially considering that they can and will legally ban anybody whom they feel wins too much money.
The concept of "Gaming the system" is itself ironic (I hope I don't have to explain why):
And BTW, Blackjack is fun for most people; nothing really too mystical here for me when I play it (on rare occasions). Granted their are fools who may think otherwise and lose their lifesavings in turn.
There's a right way and a wrong way to play BlackJ (Score:5, Interesting)
The wrong way would be to play "what feels lucky" (maximize losses) in Council Bluffs, IA (no free drinks) on a 6/5 blackjack table (big house advantage) on the floor (stale air, no boobies, senior citizens galor, annoying slot machine sounds, and infrequent cocktail waitress appearances.)
The one downside to the Wynn is you can't get to the pool unless you're a guest, and the rooms there are rather steep (but very very nice). You can mitigate that by losing a bunch of money when you play and then the rooms are not so steep anymore.
Re:There's a right way and a wrong way to play Bla (Score:4, Interesting)
Go to a blackjack table and throw down $80,000. When they've finished giving you your chips, play 2 hands of $5 then go to the cash out window. Watch as they give you a free room for being a "high roller".
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Did the books mention the blonde, big-buted Mormon girl Wendy form Senious House dorm at MIT who was on the team? She would wear slinky outfits and wildly changed hair colors and distract the pit bosses
Re:What kind of job is that? (Score:5, Interesting)
The casinos are not going to kick you out for dumb luck, and they aren't going to kick you out if you seem to be card counting but aren't doing it very well. On the other hand, they will kick you out if they see perfect play (and remember, everything you do at the table is seen by the eye in the sky. It's not just the pit bosses who are reviewing your play).
Of course, it might have changed since I used to play a lot. Back in '00-'01 I'd go to Las Vegas at least twice a month, and I'd count cards. I wasn't perfect (I'd lose the count every so often), but I still generally won more than I lost. No big amount; it was just for fun.
Only once did they say anything, and that was a night at the Tropicana where I turned $80 into $1,300 (playing flawlessly, and getting a good chunk of luck to boot) Around 4am, the casino was mostly empty, and the pit boss seemed very interested in my table. I could see him looking at me and talking on the phone to . . . someone.
Eventually he came up to me and suggested that I go back to my room and get some sleep. That was all they said. I don't know if that really meant anything or not, but I was smart enough to get the hint. I said "You're right. I'm very tired", blacked out and left.
But at the level I've played at, I've never seen any real repercussions from the house. I've played a number of times at the Tropicana since then, and nobody has said anything to me.
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rj
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Completely made up numbers, but say you bet $1. The rngs spits out a number say from 1 to 10,000,000. If it hits 10,000,000 on the dot, you win the $1 million jackpot. If it hits 9,999,995-9,999,999 you win the 2nd best prize. If it hits between 5,000,000-8,000,000 perhaps you win $2 back. This is the basic premise.
Thus, there is no "hot" or "cold"
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And you know this... how exactly?
Re:What kind of job is that? (Score:5, Interesting)
(Also, read "The Eudaemonic Pie", about a shoe device to predict roulette. That one is at least illegal.. though someone on wikipedia claimed that the publication of the book is what got the law passed.)
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Re:What kind of job is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's really no more of a scam or criminal act than, say, encrypting your email. There's nothing wrong with obscuring what you're doing.
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Except that according to Bringing Down the House, they had been told not to come back to some of the casinos, and were using disguises to avoid being thrown out again. They were tresspassing, which is a criminal act.
But I agree that team blackjack play can't be considered a scam, especially the part about having spotters waiting for a hot deck. If the casino offer
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And what the infamous book didn't mention is that the casinos figured it out and changed the rules to break it. You're not allowed to sit down in the middle of a shoe, so there is no "team play"
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Card counting isn't a scam, but some of the tricks they used to keep the house from twigging to what they were doing comes pretty close -- disguises, aliases, having lookouts stationed at different tables waiting for a hot deck, at which point they'd signal a team-mate to come over and law down the big bucks.
None of that sounds overly disingenuous to me -- all of that sounds like standard teamwork and strategy. The casinos are just upset that someone is outsmarting them, and have enough money themselves to make an issue of it.
I see a remarkable parallel between them and the *AAs, actually. Both are large monolithic companies who make a rather large amount of money with archaic business practices and are reliant on their customers being ignorant. And both of them have epic class A freakouts when someone smar
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Or tries to start online businesses that challenge their dominance. I was making bank in online poker tourneys for a while there... oh well.
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Well? What's stopping you? (Score:2)
The law prohibits financial institutions from transferring money in and out of gambling accounts.
But there are about 999 ways around that. Among them:
1. Mailing a money order to the poker site
2. Using an intermediary such as ePassporte
3. For what it's worth, FullTilt still accepts my debit card
Re:What kind of job is that? (Score:4, Funny)
I agree. Casinos and the *AAs would work much better if they were made up of distinct processes that communicated via message passing rather than function calls.
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It's no such thing. It's simply an offer to bet on an outcome that, just like all the other bets, has a negative expectation of gain. There are bets all over the table that can involve the shooter losing his pass bet: the "boxcars" bet, for example.
They don't let you count cards because, if you're good enough to do it right, it has a positive expectation of gain. If you do it poorly -- which you probably will, and they will know -- they'll treat you like a king.
Likewise the insurance bet
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This movie is exactly what casinos want. They want to keep people thinking they're breaking the rules by counting cards, when in fact, it's well within the rules and the only way to actually win consistently.
So, yeah, it
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But more importantly, it really doesn't rise to the level of MIT interesting. The actual practice is just mechanical and rote, after all. There was never a question of whether or
Re:But at least the first one (Score:5, Funny)
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Blackjack professionals (Score:5, Informative)
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Isn't it obvious? (Score:5, Funny)
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It's more like "The greatest trick the house ever pulled, was convincing the gambler that he did not exist."
Card counting is overrated (Score:5, Informative)
Even these famous teams that everyone talks about werent really all that profitable. Sure, millions of dollars may sound like a lot but thats divided up among dozens of team members over the course of several years. It wasnt 5 guys over a few weekends like in the movie 21. Do the division a few times and it quickly becomes apparant that it really isnt worth it even if you discount the fact that you are risking a large sum of money in the endeavor. If you are going to get a lot of dedicated people together and put lots of money at risk you can do a hell of a lot better than playing blackjack.
It may make for good books, movies, etc. but if card counting was really all that effective vegas would be losing money to a brand new team every week. There is a reason everyone isnt doing it and its not because adding one for a face card and subtracting one for a low card requires 1337 math skills.
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After sitting at a table placing small bets for hours, you're going to attract a lot of attention if you start betting big money (because the shoe became 'hot') in hopes of making up for all the hands you spent losing money while you waited for the hot shoe.
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This is what I don't get. Why do people keep insisting it takes "hundreds of hours" to get ahead or find a hot table?
If you have a 3 deck table, it only takes about 100 cards or so before you know where the cards are, basically. It actually takes a little less than that, but I can't remember for sure so I'm roughing it. So, assuming my numbers are rig
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1) A hot shoe isnt some automatic thing that will happen as soon as you get more than halfway through the deck. Its actually pretty unlikely to have the cards distributed in that manner. You will need to play a LOT more than 6 rounds to get to it.
2) You
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You're right though, team play makes it easier and significantly faster.
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Griffin list (Score:2)
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These guys just got famous for doing it in a slightly new way and got more famous by writing a book to promote themselves.
Re:Card counting is overrated (Score:4, Interesting)
This doesn't give you a 1% or 2% house edge, like card counting, it gives you a 30% to 60% house edge.
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1) Peeking at cards can get you thrown in jail, unlike card counting. (there is some legalese I dont totally understand about "actively" versus "passively" attempting to view the card, but with what you are suggesting I am pretty sure its considered actively trying to peek at cards)
2) Trying to cut to a certain card X number of cards in is super hard even with practice (believe me, as a practitioner of lame card tricks I have practiced)
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and one other guy at your table hitting/staying at the wrong time can easily throw things off even
And when I used to frequent a local casino playing blackjack (for fun, not really counting, etc), that was my biggest pet peeve: Some jerk at the end of the table saying you screwed him up because you hit/stayed at the wrong time and now he got the wrong card. In a card-counting scenario as you lay out, I can understand how it would be important. But in a casual game with one guy complaining, I often want to tell him to STFU.
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Actually..... (Score:5, Interesting)
You can do better than a 1% advantage, depending on the rules of the game, and if your buddy spent several hours losing at a 0.5% advantage betting the minimum, you can make up for that pretty fast even at a 1% advantage if you're betting the table limit.
But, it's a lot more complicated than just counting +1 / -1 and then betting more when the count is good, at least if you want to be GOOD at card counting. On top of just betting more, when you have good information about what cards are left, that also changes the 'right' actions in certain situations. For example, some hands that you always hit if you don't know what's in the chute may become hands you double-down instead. Some surrenders become stands. Some stands become hits. And looking at the table of 'perfect' blackjack strategy, the counts at which the 'right' move changes are different for each box. At a trivial level, instead of memorizing that you hit a 12 against a dealer's 3, you'd instead have to know that you hit a 12 against a dealers 3 when the count is less than (Whatever).
The REALLY big problems with making money counting cards are three-fold:
1) Counting cards is hard. So there is a big up-front investment in learning how to do it.
2) You have to bet big. When you bet big, you can still go on runs where you lose a LOT of money. Blackjack isn't a game where you bet $1,000 a hand and win $20 a hand. It's a game where you lose $1,000 a hand, sometimes win $1,000 a hand, occasionally win $2,000 a hand, semi-occasionally lose $2,000 a hand, and rarely win $2,500 a hand. But most hands you lose.
Two consequences of that:
- To make enough money to make it worth your time, especially if you're smart enough to count cards and could presumably put those talents towards a real job, you have to bet big. That means you have to have $1,000 a hand to bet.
- To bet big, you have to have enough of a bankroll that you can play over the long haul. At $1,000 a hand, you probably need $50,000 to have a chance, $100,000 to be reasonably sure, and you could STILL have a bad run and lose all of it, even with a 2-3% advantage.
I sometimes play blackjack on vacation, using perfect strategy, where the house has 0.55% advantage. Even betting $20/hand, my bankroll can swing $1,000 in the short term (over a period of hours). That works out to swings of $50,000 betting $1,000 a hand. Losing $50k is a pretty high risk for the money you're going to win counting cards.
3) If you are betting $1k a hand, and have $100,000, you get a lot of attention, and are not going to be around casinos very long if you keep winning. So you have a big initial investment (learning to count cards well) and a limited time to leverage that investment (until the casino figures out who you are)
Most people would be better off putting their money in a nice mutual fund.
But, soon those new machines that reshuffle the cards every hand will replace chutes and it'll be a moot point.
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But, it's a lot more complicated than just counting +1 / -1 and then betting more when the count is good, at least if you want to be GOOD at card counting. On top of just betting more, when you have good information about what cards are left, that also changes the 'right' actions in certain situations. For example, some hands that you always hit if you don't know what's in the chute may become hands you double-down instead. Some surrenders become stands. Some stands become hits. And looking at the table of 'perfect' blackjack strategy, the counts at which the 'right' move changes are different for each box. At a trivial level, instead of memorizing that you hit a 12 against a dealer's 3, you'd instead have to know that you hit a 12 against a dealers 3 when the count is less than (Whatever).
You are correct that you can gain a little bit of an advantage by adding a few more rules to basic strategy but I dont think that this makes it substantially harder. Memorizing that you hit a 12 on a dealers 3 when the count is less than X isnt much more difficult than the base case where you arent counting. Even if you are card counting you should never be doing math beyond basic arithmatic at the table. You dont need to understand all the math
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Clearly you're not taking enough advantage of the free beer when playing blackjack. Keeping track of basic strategy is hard!
Fortunately they let you use the chart, which makes life easier, and provides for maximum opportunities for making up for the house advantage with liquor consumption.
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thats already trivial, and already equivalent to video poker. Any casinos who still want gamblers like me, and my friends, who go to the tables occasionally and basically try to count cards at a $5 table, betting a max of $20 per hand and generally come out within $200 (usually within $50) per gambling evening at the casino. Will always offer decent chances to try and count, and throw out those w
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I always remembered that; I don't gamble because I don't know the numbers well enough to feel like I'd be doing anything other than having fun (and I'd rather spend my money 'having fun' at the pub or
John Carmack .plan on blackjack (Score:3, Interesting)
I found this at this url (at the bottom)
http://doom-ed.com/blog/1998/09 [doom-ed.com]
In his 9/8/1998 update it says:
A few of us took a couple days off in vegas this weekend. After about
ten hours at the tables over friday and saturday, I got a tap on the shoulder...
Three men in dark suits introduced themselves and explained that I was welcome
to play any other game in the casino, but I am not allowed to play
blackjack anymore.
Ah well, I guess my blackjack days are over. I was actually down a bit for
the d
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Sure it is. But it wasn't ALWAYS that way. (Score:2)
The reason counting is so ineffective now is because it used to be profitable. There WERE dozens of teams, but we're talking 70's-90's.
Technology has helped casinos. But so has more than a few expose books written by people who did, literally, make millions from the casinos.
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Craps is pure chance, and the only thing you can do is place bets with the least house advantage, there is no skill whatsoever.
Card counting is a way to use skill/knowledge to maximize your odds beyond random chance.
I guess I agree card counting is overrated, but your story doesn't back that up at all
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I'd disagree slightly with this. Just knowing how the game is played, odds of various bets and knowing the correct amount you can bet, playing 'right' and 'wrong'(best odds of any game in the house), paying attention to the play(especially after a few drinks, buxom waitresses), staying away from 'sucker' bets, etc., would all count as a certain degree of skill.
I don't think zi
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Ok, I have to agree "skill" was not the correct word - craps is actually my favorite casino game for most of the above reasons.
I just meant there is
Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
I heard _Bringing Down the House_ was being written while its author was interviewing my friend and his teammates. I read it, and was very disappointed in both the shabby writing style, and its omission of some of my favorite stories from those days. Maybe the team kept some of it quiet in self-defense, but those were much better stories than made it into the book. I asked my friend what he thought of the movie now that it's out, but he confirmed what I expected: even lamer than the book.
There was only one other blackjack team in the world at the time that was as consistently in the money, and it wasn't at MIT - or even from the US, as far as I knew - according to the team that I knew, which was as inside as anyone could get. Maybe this other Boston guy was a player. But MIT isn't that big a place, and there wasn't some other team. Certainly not one that so closely resembled the one that showed up in the book, and now the movie.
This guy is bluffing.
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(look at reference articles as well as the wiki page).
Kaplan was one of the founders along with Chang of Strategic Investments.
Kaplan also helped trained Chang in a previous incarnation of the team.
So I guess you don't know as much as you'd like to think you do.
Now whether the character is based on Kaplan or Chang, I have no clue.
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There were plenty of people connected to the team who I didn't know. I wasn't there when it was started, or even for the majority of its adventures. But I knew it well enough to know that Kaplan wasn't the model for Spacey's character, or any other interestin
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If you're good at what you do, you have time to do it, and to post about it on Slashdot, too. Especially if you're good enough to get rich and semi-retire right around the time Slashdot gets started.
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I know an MIT blackjack player who was "on the team" and I heard about it when he was actually doing it (and the world at large had no idea about it) and he was making craploads of money on summer vacation. He's making bucketfuls now in the financial world. I can't say I heard this guy's name, but then again, I never heard any names.
The story is worthy of a better treatment (fiction or non-fiction) than it's gotten, for a variety of reasons that seem sort of obvious to me: lack of true sleaze fa
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Wait, no, the really funny thing is that I blew off the chance to join the team because I was too busy making money with my SW development corporation. My main customers were banks and giant publishing companies, as well as state/provincial/federal governments, global telecom corps... Like, I wore a suit and s
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But I already know what your response to this will be- that you're richer than me. Well, maybe you are. I don't really care.
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I didn't actually mention that I know someone famous - they're not. The Spacey character is fictional (though plausible from the facts), as is the character in the book. And I didn't mention that I'm well educated - I met Chang in Cambridge while visiting my friend, and didn't imply otherwise.
I am rich, and pretty "brilliant", and I have plenty of friends. My way sure worked well to pick up girls, and what I said is all true. Now why should I
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And no, I didnt go to MIT and I grew up in a family that was in the "poor" 75%. (if you can call under 60k poor, Am
It's not him. (Score:5, Informative)
While I will not comment on any of the rest of Mr. Kaplan's claims, I will say that, following the release of the book, and especially given the success of the movie, there have been several people who may or may not have been active card players at that time that have come out to falsely claim that the book is about them.
Lest you suspect I may be one of them, I will point out that I was the one who submitted the original WIRED story [slashdot.org] to slashdot several years ago.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think card counting wasn't exactly a closely held secret. I knew at least one guy who used to practice in one of the lounges, and was happy to explain various counting systems, some of which were easy enough for somebody who was not interested in spending hours on end memory training to master. Co
A summary Bringing Down The House (Score:2, Informative)
Several years ago, right before the book can out, Wired Magazine (which we all know and love) featured a great story/ interview about "Kevin Lewis" (his name was changed in the article) and his story about being one of the MIT kids. It's a pretty good read, probably better than the movie. Follow the link below for the article.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.09/vegas.html [wired.com]
---
Over 50% of the population is below average
Long before this, (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's how you get a free traffic from Slashdot (Score:2, Funny)
2. Mention that you looked like a main character when you was in college
3. Provide a 2 page detailed description of your business
4. Profit!
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Email churn (Score:2)
Which is to say, providing dirty lists to spammers. You cannot do this right.
Not in Vegas... (Score:2)
ENOUGH OF THE HYPE about MIT team (Score:2)
1. Card counting is NOT hard, nor does it take ANY math skill or special memorization ability. It does take practice to do effectively, but the whole MIT brainiac angle is 100% marketing for a book/movie.
2. Blackjack teams have been around for decades, running on exactly the same strategies as the folks from MIT *mimicked*. The MIT team DID NOTHING ORIGINAL. It's marketing, folks.
3. In the best of cases, card counting MIGHT sway your odds to about 1% favor, so it takes a LONG time
Hard to tell who Rosa is supposed to be.... (Score:2)
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Re:Did anyone mention that card counting is bullsh (Score:2)
http://wizardofodds.com/
Of course, a lot of people THINK they can count cards, and lose their shirts. The casinos love that.