The Real MIT Blackjack Mastermind

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now battles the "e-mail churn" problem as CEO of Newton, MA, startup FreshAddress, which helps companies correct the outdated e-mail addresses in their customer databases."

Comments

Re:Bullshit

[Doc Ruby]

Except that I'm not making a mistake, as would be clear if you'd read either my reply or even just understood the difference between Kaplan's claims to be Spacey's character, and Kaplan's early, tangential role in the team.

Look, Anonymous jealous Coward, I have an interesting life, I get around, I've been there to do things that are notable. It's not my fault that while you do nothing but post from your mom's basement. I like sharing that with other people, but your whining is the boring part.

Re:Bullshit

[Doc Ruby]

You're an idiot, Anonymous jealous Coward. I wasn't in Camridge to attend school - I was in Cambridge to meet Chang (and to hang out with my friend, his partner). I was already out of school for years, and I dropped out. From a school I had attended on full academic scholarship, though I worked a regular job for extra money - my parents didn't support me. I made my money on my wits and balls (and some luck, like most people who do). There are plenty of people at school in MIT, though, who don't come from money. My friend there, for example, came from broke immigrant parents, also there on scholarship.

I own the credit for making myself rich, though I am grateful to my parents (who were middle class, and supported me pretty well, including letting me buy a computer in the early 1980s with saved birthday present money). Mainly because they raised me to feel no shame at either making lots of money or not.

You, on the other hand, have major problems, with jealousy (and logic, and basic decency). Since you're also evidently not rich, you've got no business even talking to me.

Re:Bullshit

[Doc Ruby]

It's pretty obvious why you didn't go to MIT.

For one, I didn't say that I did, and then I said that I didn't, but you haven't caught on to that simple fact yet. For another, 21% is a big fraction, and I said "plenty". 1 out of five people is "plenty". Yet another, as another response to your post mentioned, growing up with some money can help you get into MIT because you have more resources with which to develop your mind. That development is the basis for getting into MIT for most of its students, however they come by the development. It's not supposed to reflect America in microcosm (look it up), it's supposed to reflect America's smartest. It's unfair that having money offers benefits, including learning advantages, that not everyone can get, but that's why people want to be rich. Why people like me work hard and use our smarts to get rich.

So I didn't really deny "the problem" exists, I just denied that everyone at MIT is rich, as you insisted, but which you certainly can't prove by offering evidence that over a fifth of them come from families that make less than what 75% of Americans make.

But really, you're far from MIT material because you can't even understand when I tell you that you've got no business talking to me because you've got major problems. The fact that you don't understand that you're not being rich offers no alternative reason for you to have business to talk with me, further confirms that you're not so bright.

Kinda dumb, pretty obnoxious, relatively uneducated, intensely jealous, no money to offer, unable to pick up even free clues - you're getting nothing more from me.

Goodbye, and better luck next time.