Card Counting: The MIT team.

The blackjack team of students from the MIT have become celebrated since the beginning of the 1990's, for having won millions of dollars at blackjack via the card counting techniques.

This group of young and gifted students formed in Cambridge, on the MIT campus, the most famous university in the United States, and they focused on a game whose subject is very particular: casino games of the speciality of blackjack.

This group of young people realised something that was already known to the experts, that blackjack is the only game where a player can beat the house (the only game known so far anyway- there are more intelligent and gifted people to come and who knows what they may find?).

The Operation:
The game of blackjack gives a minor statistical advantage to the house in comparison to other casino games. Additionally to the ‘strategy of base' which indicates to players when to hit or stick, the player can use a combination of strategies of wagering, of card counting, and of following shuffled cards in order to ameliorate their advantage over the house.

The card counting technique is a fairly difficult skill to acquire and master, but since the 1960's numerous techniques have been published in order to make the acquisition of the card counting technique a lot easier for the less academically inclined.

The possibility of winning important sums of money had drawn the attention of these mathematics students at MIT. The university has card playing clubs, but these students decided to develop their hobby further, the group combined their individual advantages with a method of card counting that meant working as a team, in order to maximise their revenues and to disguise the techniques that they were carrying out.

The team leaser, Johnny Chang, said in his interview do 2002 in the magazine ‘Blackjack Forum' that in addition to the card counting technique, the group also used methods which allowed them to follow the shuffling of cards and to follow the distribution of the Aces.

Since the card counting technique will five the player a maximum advantage of 2%, the mix of techniques employed by the students of MIT gave them an advantage of 4% over the casino. Incidentally these advantages may sound small, but any advantage over the house means that in the long run, over the course of the games the players will win, and they can win a lot of money, as these students have shown, their 4% advantage allowed them to make millions of dollars.

Nonetheless, Chang has admitted that he had some difficulties in maintaining the level of advantage at 4% when they played in a real life casino, and that the best results were largely due to the card counting technique, and not the following of Aces or shuffled cards....although when they did manage to pull of the latter techniques, they were a lot more proficient than when they simply employed card counting.

The first team of students used people from the campus in order to help them, they tested students who were interested in the card counting scam in order to find the adequate candidates, and if they found a suitable person, they trained them in the techniques.

The Plan:
The team was constructed on the greatest innovation of the card counting technique since the book by Edwin Thorpe ‘Beat the Dealer' was published; this innovation was the division of labour in card counting.

In regards to the lone wolf card counter they are very easy to detect, they augment or reduce their wagers as the cards are being counted, it is very much more difficult to detect a team of counters who are working together to over throw the odds of the house, they divide the card counting roles and they play as if they are people who bare no relation to each other.

The MIT team recruited new talent in the mathematical pool of the university campus, in order to change the face of this winning team combination. Additionally, each player had a false identity which they used to escape from the surveillance of the casino.

There were three principle roles in the MIT team; the Spotters, the Gorillas, and the Big Players. The Spotters were players who never won, who joined a table and counted the cards while at the same time always wagering the minimum. At the point at which the count became positive, in other words, that the advantage had passed to the player because the majority of cards remaining are positive, the Spotters indicate the fact to the Gorillas or to the Big Players.

The Gorillas did no counting whatsoever; they simply played large wagers when they were told to do so. The Big players were Gorillas who had become very skilful; they card counted with the Spotters when they were called to a table, and who managed to distract the attention of the casino by varying their wagering values. In each case, the most important aspect of the game was to be able to play the massive hands ($1000) without conducting their behaviour as a card counter would ordinarily do.

And, since the Gorillas and the Big Players only came to the tables at the point that the deck was ‘hot' (a good ratio of strong cards), they could not be accused of card counting...because they would have had to be there from the start in order to count accurately, the casinos were not thinking of groups of players working together. They should have remembered that wolves are never lone rangers; they are pack animals and always work as a team!

The Roles:

The Back-Spotter:
These spotters are hidden and can count the cards without being sat at the blackjack table. Once the count is ‘hot' they signal to the rest of the team.

The Spotter:
These players count the cards whilst playing at the table. The casinos detect card counters by studying the augmentations and diminutions of their wagers, a certain give away that the deck has either become ‘hot' or ‘cold'. At the point at which it is necessary to wager large amounts then the Spotters indicate to the rest of their team.

The Gorilla:
The Gorilla never counts the cards; all he does is make large wagers, at all times. Typically, they adopt the attitude of a millionaire who has money to splash. The Spotters assure the Gorillas when there is a ‘hot' deck and which table to play at.

The Big Player:
The Big Player appears as a well known character in the casino setting; the player who wagers large amounts in order to entertain himself, who over the course of several hours dilapidates his money in relation to his competence at the game. In fact, they are a Spotter with the bankroll of a Gorilla. They are not restricted simply to card counting; they also follow the shuffling of strong cards. The Big Player always plays on a good deck, in a fashion that means they never need to reduce their wagers, in other words they avoid revealing themselves as card counters.

The End of the MIT team:
An enterprise known as the ‘Strategic Investments' discovered the existence of the team. These young players who were gambling with thousands and thousands of dollars became suspect, they were playing with a lot more money than any student should have been.

Finally, after several losing streaks, the original team dismantled itself of its own accord, but new players took up the torch. The story goes that numerous students were banned from the casinos, the casino surveillance brought Trombinoscopes (books which had a list of the university students with there photos- rather like a college year book) and found them thus.

Ben Mezrich recounts the story in his book ‘Bringing Down the House', which was the inspiration for the cinema graphic adaptation with Kevin Spacey: Las Vegas 21.

 

Card Counting: Introduction. Card Counting: History. Card Counting:Is it Illegal? Card Counting: How is it Detected by Casinos? Card Counting: The MIT Team. Card Counting: An Informal Technique Card Counting: The Hi/Lo Technique Card Counting: The KO Tecnique Card Counting: Hi/Opt I & II Technique Card Counting: The True Count