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MIT Blackjack Team
In the early 1990s, some math and science students at the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology took up an unusual hobby – blackjack. Their story was told in the best selling book Bringing Down The House by Ben Mezrich. Wired magazine recounts the MIT blackjack story here.
The MIT students realized something known for a long time by the industry – blackjack was the only game in the casino that could be beat. The students beat the casinos and beat them big.
In 1992, after thorough and demanding training and practice they started making regular trips to Las Vegas. One of their trips netted the group a profit of $400 thousand dollars in a single weekend. After about a year, their total winnings came to about $4 million dollars.
The group used a common blackjack strategy known as card counting. Card counting helps the players keep track of what cards have been played and what cards have yet to appear. This running count of the cards tells the player when there are more tens and aces in the deck to be played. When there are more high cards in the deck, the odds become more favorable for the player.
The MIT blackjack team was not the first to realize that card counting could be used to give the player an edge. They were the first to develop a computer application that could take into account real life blackjack data in order to refine their strategy and reduce the house advantage. During the week, they were students at the top of their class. On weekends, they were high stakes blackjack players.
Former team member and author of the book, “Bringing Down the House”, Ben Mezrich recounts his experience, “The whole experience was in a lot of ways surreal”. Mezrich’s book is being turned into a movie produced by Kevin Spacey who will also play a supporting role in the film.
While members of the MIT blackjack team were enjoying the high rolling Vegas lifestyle with complimentary hotel suites and tickets to sold out shows, their troubles were just starting. Before they knew it, casino security had already started to track them down.
The Griffin Agency is a company that investigates card counters and other undesirable casino players. The company maintains a collection of information on these players, including photographs in a catalog known as “the Griffin Book”. The agency was able to connect the faces in the casino to addresses in New England and after they got their hands on the MIT yearbook it wasn’t long before they identified members of the MIT blackjack team one by one. After the casinos discovered their identities, they put their “counter measures” into action against the team in an effort to shut down their organization.
Members started to lose and lose big at the blackjack table. By the end of 1993, they had lost nearly all their money, their operation was dismantled and all the members of the team were banned from every casino. The fame and fortune of their new high rolling lifestyle came to an end.
The MIT blackjack team was doomed to fail for a couple of reasons. Their greed and overconfidence led them to continue their operation against the casinos rather than quitting while they were ahead. Secondly, the team put their plan into action without any real knowledge of casino operations. If they had a better understanding of casino security and implemented some security measures of their own, they could have prevented or delayed their pursuit by casino security and the Griffin Agency.
We can all take a lesson from the MIT blackjack team. Greed and lack of foresight is always a gambler's worst enemy. On a smaller scale (usually), we all lose when we let greed control our gambling instead of plain and simple fun.
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