MIT Blackjack Team

Anyone who’s seen the 2008 movie “21″ has some introduction to the fabled MIT Blackjack Team. However, the movie and its forerunners – a book by one of the players and a documentary – just scratch the surface of what this group of players accomplished at Las Vegas’ blackjack tables.

What they pulled off was nothing short of astounding: MIT teams raked in an estimated $5 million in more than 10 years of blackjack playing by a rotating roster who combined their mathematical skills with psychology and team strategy.

Naturally, even legends have a beginning, and in this case, the beginning was some friendly games of blackjack played by MIT students in the early 1990s as a way to practice the science of probabilities. However, soon the friendly fun turned serious, as MIT players realized they could earn big money with some of the strategies developed in practice. The first group of players began refining blackjack strategy and practicing at fake casinos they set up in warehouse around Boston. They ran through a wide variety of scenarios while trying to simulate the conditions they’d encounter in real casinos. Then the team practiced its skills at games in Boston’s Chinatown. After that, the team gathered investors to bankroll a run on Las Vegas blackjack tables.

The heart of the MIT Team’s strategy was learning to count cards in multi-deck blackjack games. Card counting had been a controversial strategy since it hit the big-time in 1963 with the publication of Edward O. Thorp’s classic blackjack book, “Beat the Dealer.” When Thorp introduce his Hi-Lo counting method, casinos panicked. They tried to shut down card counting first by changing the rules (which led to player boycotts), and they by engaging a private security firm, newly formed Griffin Investigations, to identity and band card counters. Blackjack players to this day who use card counting contend it’s not a cheat, but a strategy using probabilities to enable players to offset the house edge.

It’s no wonder that such a mathematically based approach – Thorp himself was a mathematics professor – would appeal to MIT students. Teammates tried several card counting systems and improved upon them, according to several sources. Among other skills, MIT’ers were the first to use “Shuffle Tracking” and “Ace Tracking” methods to raise their odds of winning.

The theory behind Shuffle Tracking, for instance, supposes that casinos push dealers for such a fast turnover on blackjack tables that the dealers don’t really have time to shuffle decks thoroughly. Consequently there can be packets of cards that haven’t been mixed well. This situation can lead to a “plus” of aces, a condition that the MIT Team could determine by its card-counting methods. This led to the development of “Ace Tracking,” a condition that raised the MIT Team’s odds of winning by as much as 35 percent.

What made these mathematical methods so powerful was their combination with a team-playing psychology strategy that practically blew the doors off all the casinos. In essence, the MIT Blackjack Team turned the casinos’ own suppositions against them. The strategy worked like this:

Over the years since Thorp’s book came out, casinos had developed a profile of “big money” blackjack players as middle-aged white men – not unlike professionals such as Lawrence Revere, Ken Uston and Thorp himself. Furthermore, while Ken Uston made a good run at using teams against casinos during the 1980s, most big money players were lone rangers.

The MIT Team not only turned this stereotype around; they threw it down on the ground and stomped that sucker flat. First, MIT Teams were young, in the mid-20s to early 30s. They were also from Asian and Mediterranean backgrounds such as Greeks, Italians, Lebanese or Saudis. Finally, MIT Teams had a good representation of women, whom casinos typically overlooked as potential big-money players (to their regret). These teams often took on alter egos, pretending to be the spoiled, well-moneyed daughters and sons of rich international businessmen. Casinos practically drooled over these teams, waiting to take their money while not realizing they themselves were about to be taken.

To this mix the players added a team whose members had specific skills and roles, rather than each one trying to win as much as possible individually. MIT Teams were made up of three kinds of players: Spotters (who did nothing but count cards), Gorillas (who only played when conditions were ripe) and Big Players (who could count cards and play well).

The Spotter’s job was to play at minimum betting limits and keep count of the cards. When the Spotter figured that the cards were favorable, he or she signaled to other members to join the table.

The Gorilla came into the game as a flashy distraction. Armed with large amounts of money, a Gorilla she dressed like a high roller, often seemed to be drunk, and spread lavish bets and tips around.

While the attention was drawn to the Gorilla, the Big Player was the true master of the play. Big Players could both count cards and play strategically, something that casinos were convinced couldn’t be done. Big Players always knew when to split their pairs, double down and double after splitting, all the while counting the cards in the deck.

Eventually, the casinos caught on. While some MIT players were identified individually and barred, Griffin Investigations finally linked the teams to MIT. At that point, the private detective agency got yearbooks from MIT and inserted students’ photos to its famous collection of Griffin Books, those volumes of mug shots identifying card counters, cheaters and thieves.

The original MIT Team split up in 1997, with some members retiring from the game while others went on. Teams with MIT connections continued to play into the early years of the 21st century, but by then the casinos and the Griffin Agency had learned how to spot MIT players.

The legendary run of MIT Teams was then over. But what a ride!