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now battles the "e-mail churn" problem as CEO of Newton, MA, startup FreshAddress, which helps companies correct the outdated e-mail addresses in their customer databases."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

What kind of job is that?

[LostCluster]

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now battles the "e-mail churn" problem as CEO of Newton, MA, startup FreshAddress, which helps companies correct the outdated e-mail addresses in their customer databases."

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 /.

Re:What kind of job is that?

[houstonbofh]

From one scan to another... At least he is consistent.

Re:What kind of job is that?

[QuantumG]

I think you meant scam.

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.

Re:What kind of job is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

But, but.. he went to MIT! He can't be evil!

Re:What kind of job is that?

[mattack2]

Exactly how is card counting a "scam"? They're using mathematics to beat the game, legitimately. One would think that Slashdot readers would appreciate that.

(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.)

Re:What kind of job is that?

[bskin]

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.

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.

Re:What kind of job is that?

[Thugthrasher]

They only did that because the casinos want to make more money and so will throw people out who are playing the game in a way that improves their chances. They have the right to throw them out, but that's why they had to disguise themselves.

Re:What kind of job is that?

[ushering05401]

"And both of them have epic class A freakouts when someone smart enough to see through them tries to outsmart them."

Or tries to start online businesses that challenge their dominance. I was making bank in online poker tourneys for a while there... oh well.

Re:What kind of job is that?

[QuantumG]

Ironic because "system" == "game"? In which case your descriptor is "Gaming the game", which is not only redundant, but also retarded as that's what you're supposed to do.

Re:What kind of job is that?

[cruelfood]

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.

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 offers a game where the player has the advantage, a savvy player will take advantage of that. The casino can always change the rules of the game, or choose not to offer it.

Re:What kind of job is that?

[Erpo]

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.

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.

Re:What kind of job is that?

[unlametheweak]

Ironic because "system" == "game"? The game in this case is the system, but more broadly it would be the Casino and it's practice of looking out for, and of banning card counters. These pros know it's a game (not just the Game of Blackjack), but a game of out-witting the house detectives. I don't see any redundancy here.

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):

Gaming the System means, simply, using the rules, policies and procedures of a system against itself for purposes outside what these rules were intended for. - http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Gaming_the_system

but also retarded as that's what you're supposed to do. Not according to the Casino's, because if they find you doing this they will ask you to leave. So that's why most people in Casino's don't do this, because they have already been banned or don't want to go through the effort.

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.

Re:What kind of job is that?

[nephridium]

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.

Wanna bet on that?

Re:What kind of job is that?

[interstellar_donkey]

Exactly right. It's pretty difficult these days to win with card counting, especially with six deck shoes, infinite shuffles, or two deck games that only deal out 2 hands before reshuffling.

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.

Blackjack professionals

[eebra82]

More info on blackjack professionals can be found over at blackjack.org. They cover some info on the MIT team as well.

Isn't it obvious?

[Idgit]

The real mastermind is Keyser Soze.

Card counting is overrated

[jorghis]

Card counting is waaayyyyy overhyped in terms of effectiveness and profitibility. You (or your teammate if you are sneaky) have to sit there for a long time losing money waiting for a 'hot' shoe. A hot shoe really isnt all that hot either, think 51% in favor of the player. Then you have to bet huge in order to make up for all the time you sat there losing money. Do the math here for just one second, a 1% player advantage is about 10 dollars a hand winnings on average with a thousand dollar bet. In addition to all that hot shoes wont last for very long either, so dont go thinking "hey 10 bucks a hand for a few hours sounds pretty good to me". You will be doing good just to make up for all the hands your teammates spent losing money while you waited for a hot shoe.

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.

Re:Card counting is overrated

[vinn01]

Also, a reason everyone isn't doing it - is because it's so easy to get detected and blackballed from every casino in town.

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.

Re:Card counting is overrated

[QuantumG]

You should read Breaking Vegas also by Ben Mezrich. It describes some techniques, that used to work, which exploits the fact that when the dealer shuffles the deck they often inadvertently show the first base player the bottom card - then they ask another player at the table to cut the deck which, with practice, can be done precisely. This places a known card at a specific position in the deck (typically 52 cards in) and by carefully playing the table the team can arrange for the known card to fall on the most opportune hand. For example, if the known card is an ace, the team can arrange for it to land on the hand showing a picture card to make a blackjack.. if the known card is a picture card, the team can arrange for it to land as the dealer's 3rd card, typically busting them.

This doesn't give you a 1% or 2% house edge, like card counting, it gives you a 30% to 60% house edge.

Re:Card counting is overrated

[jorghis]

I agree that if done correctly that is possible, but:

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) :) and one other guy at your table hitting/staying at the wrong time can easily throw things off even if you were able to perfectly cut to card number 52 or whatever number. I believe this is one of those things where the theoretical profitability is much higher than the actual profitability due to the difficulty of actually pulling it off.

3) I doubt that any casino these days is going to have the dealers working in such a way that allows anyone to see the bottom card. (of course you did mention this alraedy) :)

Re:Card counting is overrated

[SpinyNorman]

Which is why you do it as a team - with counters who bet minimum waiting for the table to become hot, then the big players who come in when signalled and start throwing the big bucks down and playing double spots. Everyone remains consistent.

Re:Card counting is overrated

[QuantumG]

Outside Vegas, most casinos use continuous automatic card shufflers. As a result, the game is pretty much dead.

Re:Card counting is overrated

[trawg]

Heh I've always wondered about blackjack - years ago John Carmack of id Software wrote a .plan update about how he went and played at some casino (found this site which includes the copy of his update at the time) - it sounded like he walked in, played for a few hours and won $20k (which he donated to the FSF).

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 at the movies or something), but I specifically remember that as an example of how just knowing a bunch of stuff about numbers and probability can affect gambling, and that if I'm ever going to get into it I'm going to learn the hell out of the odds before I do anything!

(I seem to recall some mention of the casino staff asking him to leave because he was winning so much so fast, but maybe I imagined that)

Re:Card counting is overrated

[mabhatter654]

that's not real card counting at all. Real counting is simply keeping track of what cards are where and the probability of what's left in the deck. If you know the good hands (considerable skill) by how other players call, you can guess what they have... and guess what's left for you. Along with that, hand shuffled decks after a few hands aren't really random as the cards are collected from winning hands and that cool shuffling by pros is very NOT random if you pay attention. There's no need to "cheat" and see cards you shouldn't at all.

Re:But at least the first one

[kclittle]

/. should allow for a special "Holier Than Thou Anonymous Coward" by-line to make folks like the parent AC feel more welcome...

Bullshit

[Doc Ruby]

I was close friends with John Chang's friend and partner in the "MIT blackjack team" during the 1990s. I met Chang in Cambridge, and almost joined the team (I was too busy with programming work I preferred, that also made me pretty rich). This was all before anyone (other than some security firms, and a lot of hookers) had ever heard of the team. I was there for some wild times with some of these actual characters, and was there when they returned from some extreme gambling junkets - some very lucrative, some losers, lots of them extremely exciting.

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.

Actually.....

[raehl]

Most Vegas games have house advantages in the 0.5% range. So you lose $0.50 of every $100 bet when using perfect strategy. (They make most of their money on people not using perfect strategy.)

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.

It's not him.

[spellcheckur]

As one of the players profiled in BDTH, I can say with authority that Bill Kaplan is definitively NOT the basis for the Mickey Rosa character in the book nor the character that Mr. Spacey plays on screen.

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 to slashdot several years ago.

A summary Bringing Down The House

[astro128]

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

---

Over 50% of the population is below average

John Carmack .plan on blackjack

[drivers]

I remember that too.

I found this at this url (at the bottom)
http://doom-ed.com/blog/1998/09

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 day when they booted me, but I made +$32k over five trips to vegas in the
past two years or so.

I knew I would get kicked out sooner or later, because I don't play "safely".
I sit at the same table for several hours, and I range my bets around 10 to 1.

There's a right way and a wrong way to play BlackJ

[raehl]

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. The right way is to use a printed table with Perfect Strategy (minimize losses), in Vegas (free drinks!) at the Wynn (fairly small house advantage), outside (fresh air) at the European-sunbathing (boobies!) pool, where there are only 12 tables (see cocktail waitress often = more free drinks!) that are right next to the bar (cocktail waitress travel distance is short = more free drinks!).

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

[QuantumG]

You don't have to lose, you just have to lay it down.

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".

Long before this,

[onemorechip]

MIT professors Ed Thorpe (later of UCI) and Claude Shannon were developing blackjack strategies. Talk about shoulders of giants... Shannon of course is the famed father of information theory. Besides blackjack, these guys figured out how to gain an edge in roulette using some tricky electronics. Thorpe later made a fortune by founding one of the original hedge funds (this book is a fascinating account).

Here's how you get a free traffic from Slashdot

[ingo23]

1. Pick a movie from the top box office list
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!

Re:There's a right way and a wrong way to play Bla

[Anonymous Coward]

The "right way" is to stay away from normal play. The New England casinos run various games, and when the tables are slow, they'll announce a change in the odds at a particular table to draw in players. You switch tables and play _there_, where the odds are better, and it helps your card counting quite a lot.

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 while the rest of the team played for hard money. She also had a real thing for motorcycles, and believed that sex didn't count as a sin if you were drunkk when you did it. (Her Mormon parents worried about the gambling, but it was paying her tuition. I don't think they knew about the drunk part.)

I had a Harley, and met her at the Steer Roast party at her dorm. There's nothing like a busty, happy blonde drunk out of her gourd and happy to have something rumbling between here legs, hanging on tightly and swaying from drunkenness. Her being a lot smarter than me and having plenty of money made it even better.