Mit Blackjack
- Mit Blackjack Team
- Mit Blackjack Scam
- Mit Blackjack Movie
- Mit Blackjack Team Members Names
- Mit Blackjack Team
The MIT Blackjack Team consisted of two types of players – a Spotter and a Big Player (Gorilla). They did this as just sitting down at a blackjack table and counting yourself while adjusting the. Once his MIT Blackjack Team days were over, Jeff founded a sports stock market website called PROTRADE, which, unfortunately, is no longer active. Jeff also co-founded Citizen Sports and made a fortune when Yahoo! Bought it in 2010; published the book The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big in Business, and is the CEO and founder of. The MIT blackjack team has become famous worldwide for their success at beating the game of blackjack in the casinos of Las Vegas. Even people who are unfamiliar with blackjack.
This is a brief glimpse into the serendipitous lives and times of the MIT Blackjack Team, one of the most enduring legends of contemporary gambling.
Mit Blackjack Team
This group of geniuses met when they were studying at the most prestigious universities in the United States, including Harvard, Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They were math whizzes and, judging by the story that unfolded after their legendary collaboration, it seemed that their favorite sport was risk-taking. Together they formed the MIT Blackjack Team and their story was immortalized in the 2008 movie 21.
The students learned card-counting techniques, beating casinos across the U.S. and winning millions of dollars. In the mid-1990s each member went his or her separate way; some stopped playing while others continued their gambling endeavors. Now, nearly 20 years later, here’s an update on the legendary MIT Blackjack Team.
Semyon Dukach
This Russian-born entrepreneur has always been open and willing to chat about his days as a member of the MIT Blackjack Team. Dukach has invested in several startups, like Fast Engines, which sold for more than $35 million. Today Semyon is an Angel Investor and spends his time looking for new investment opportunities.
Jeffrey ‘Jeff’ Ma
Once his MIT Blackjack Team days were over, Jeff founded a sports stock market website called PROTRADE, which, unfortunately, is no longer active. Jeff also co-founded Citizen Sports and made a fortune when Yahoo! bought it in 2010; published the book The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big in Business, and is the CEO and founder of tenXer, a company that develops software to manage developers. Currently, Jeff is a sports columnist for ESPN. You can read his columns here.
Jane Willis
The math whiz who graduated from Harvard University in 1991 said in an interview with the Boston Globe that her blackjack days were behind her. Today she’s an attorney with Boston’s famous Ropes & Gray firm. She is recognized as a top attorney in business litigation, one of the best lawyers in America, and has been nominated for several awards, including the Chamber USA Women in Law Award and the Best Lawyers Antitrust Lawyer of the Year.
Mike Aponte
After a decade-long hiatus, Mike made returned to professional blackjack, winning the 2004 World Series of Blackjack. Afterward, he co-founded the Blackjack Institute with David Irvine; the school teaches students proven methods and techniques used by the MIT Blackjack Team). Mike also consults on professional blackjack and the mathematics of gambling, writes for the blog mikeaponte.com and works as Chief Research assistant for Peerless Analytics.
Mit Blackjack Scam
Johnny Chang and Laurie Tsao
As one of the masterminds behind the operation, Johnny was in charge of acquiring talent and managing relationships. He married Laurie Tsao, who was also a member of the team. Johnny was added to the Blackjack Hall of Fame and is a speaker and coach.
Laurie is still a professional player. In 2012 she ran into some trouble after entering the Caesars’ Palace hotel and casino in Las Vegas. Because of her connection with the MIT Blackjack Team, Laurie is banned from this and other casinos in the area. It’s not clear whether the two are still married.
Click here to see how the real team looks like vis a vis their Hollywood counterparts.
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The Basis for the 21 Movie
The MIT blackjack team, formed in the early 1990's, was a group of collegiate MIT gamblers that used mathematics to beat the house at the game of blackjack. A campus club turned serious underground blackjack ring comprised of MIT students, the MIT blackjack team formed a quick-witted crusade to pinpoint and take advantage of casino vulnerability.
No card scam has been as infamous and calculated as the MIT card counting heist that the MIT blackjack team employed in a high stakes bamboozle at which they bilked Vegas circuits for millions of dollars in smart and daring card playing. Based on keeping a running tally of cards dealt, a sharp blackjack player's trick was counting cards to secure Vegas wins nearly every time played.
Organized gambling took quite a blow to its ego during the 90's when this youthful and smart collective began to distribute itself on the Strip. Forming in Cambridge apartments, classrooms, and underground rings, the MIT blackjack team was a finely polished group of the savviest academic mind. They were working as a mass to beat over casinos with their brains in the only game with a deficiency due to human foible - blackjack. Plugging into the system of card counting, the MIT blackjack team trained themselves as a business operation, the base of which was a non-traditional card counting system using highs and lows rooted in statistics and mathematical theory. Designing a computer program to fine-tune their strategic playing, the team brought card counting into the technology age and used simulated casinos, skill tests for distraction and harassment during play, and strenuous study to advance their technique. Traveling as complete strangers under aliases and relying on investors to foot the scheming Vegas weekends with the promise of financial return, the MIT card counting team manipulated casinos to the tune of millions, with one legend-worthy weekend net of over $400,000. From straight-laced college students at a top-ranked private U.S. higher ed institution to suave alternative personalities on the weekends, the team gambled its way through a mighty reign that included the best hotel suites, musical and sporting events, and five-star treatment from the Sin City.
Mit Blackjack Movie
But their blackjack strategies and efforts weren't entirely foolproof. Small human error of fraternization, sloppiness, and a decline in wins, all combined with the casino's profiling, began to unravel the team's work after a few short years. Card counting was not unknown to the Las Vegas tables prior to the infiltration from the MIT card counting team. Ironically, the technology that the team had used to secure massive winnings was the same technology that lead to the team downfall, when casinos were growing more advanced at detecting and monitoring the card counters. Typically, once a counter had been marked, casino bosses would make the table so uncomfortable to play that hands could not be won. However in the case of the MIT blackjack team, the card counting and house beating winnings were of such great sums that the players were immediately banned once identified. The reoccurring faces that were kept under surveillance by Strip security like the Griffin Agency, were linked through mistakes linking the players to home addresses back in Boston and later were confirmed by comparing video monitoring to school yearbook photos. The Cambridge scam had met its end.
Mit Blackjack Team Members Names
While the MIT blackjack team invested the right amount of effort in learning the trade of counting cards to beat blackjack, sloppiness and an overall failure to master the inner-workings of casinos was how they fell apart. Schooling themselves on the objectives and strategies of winning through card counting only carried the team so far. Initial wins were easy but were not enough of an entire package to keep the momentum and money rolling.