MIT blackjack team

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The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of undergraduate and graduate students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who developed strategies to beat large casinos at the card game blackjack using their card counting techniques and privately funded funds. The team and its successors successfully pursued this strategy from 1979 to 1993.

History of origin

Initially, the team was nothing more than a club, with MIT members (students) meeting in classrooms to relax and play cards. In the course of these gatherings, the math-minded students came up with the idea of ​​beating casinos with the card game blackjack using advanced card counting techniques and privately funded funds. This idea also found fertile ground due to the appeal of quick money and the statistics-based mathematical systems.

"New applicants" interested in this had to pass certain tests in order to select the best candidates. A sophisticated network of casino mock-ups was created which, as future meeting points, included apartments, halls and classrooms throughout the greater Boston area .

Members combined the natural advantages of each player with a team-based approach of counters and players. This maximized the possibilities and better hid the applied betting patterns created by the card counting systems. This sophisticated system required hours of practice and multiple repetitions.

Members of the MIT blackjack team received financial backing from anonymous investors and started a company called Strategic Investments . Strengthened by this company, they were able to test their theories with a greater financial investment than was available to a normal gamer. In the end, everyone concerned benefited from this tactic. The team combination made it difficult for the casino operators to understand the system used. However, if MIT players were identified and banned anyway, they were replaced by newly trained MIT students.

Organization and structure

In early 1979 one of the founders of the MIT team, JP Massar , led a course called "How to Gamble if You Must", which was officially taught at MIT. In part, this was the card counting technique used in blackjack. At that time, Massar tried to set up a successful MIT team, but this failed.

In May 1980 JP Massar and Bill Kaplan met in Cambridge . Kaplan, who had already founded successful blackjack teams in Las Vegas for over three years , had lost his interest in the players' paradise in the USA , which is why he wanted to prove his skills in Europe. Massar asked Kaplan to accompany him to Atlantic City to observe his team and point out their mistakes. Kaplan realized that the Massar team was making fundamental mistakes. Most importantly, the team members used different types of card counting.

Kaplan agreed to team building under certain conditions. The prerequisites were the observance of general procedures, the observance of a certain card counting and betting system, strict training, a thorough examination of new players and the listing of all sales within the casinos in detail.

On August 1, 1980, the new MIT blackjack team started playing. Initially an investment of $ 89,000 and ten players was set, with Kaplan and Massar on the team. In just ten weeks, the initial starting stake was more than doubled. Player earnings averaged $ 80 an hour. An annual return for the investors was almost 250%.

Kaplan had to end his activities within the team in 1984, as he was already widely known by the casino staff and was therefore easily discovered. However, the MIT team continued to play with over 70 members until 1989. Gradually, however, the team lost interest in playing. Kaplan restructured the team and called it "Strategic Investments".

End and dissolution

Between mid-1992 and December 1993, Strategic Investments played in most casinos in the United States and Canada. But the casinos had now reacted and banned most of the team from playing. Recruiting new players was a fundamental problem in the long run. At the same time, investments in the highly lucrative real estate industry also appeared much more interesting.

On December 31, 1993, the successor to the MIT blackjack team broke up.

The card counting technique

The high-low strategy is one of the most profitable and easiest ways to count cards. The system is basically a running count technique in which each card has a certain value. The system is used to identify an imbalance between high value cards and low value cards.

Tens and Aces, cards of great value, not only increase the chance of a blackjack being dealt, but also increase the chance of hands worth at least 20. A deck that contains a lot of high cards brings the player a very profitable situation because it increases the chance that the croupier (dealer, banker ) will lose.

In a situation where the majority of cards of low value predominate (cards with a value of 2 to 6), the croupier has a substantial advantage over the player. If there are more low cards in the deck, the chance that the croupier will lose when drawing a new card on a hard hand (12-16) is much lower. If there are more high cards in the deck, the chance that the croupier will lose is much greater.

Countermeasures

Card counting systems have been around since the early 1960s. Since then, casino employees and operators have tried to prevent these activities. Some of these attempts are the cutting card (a card after which the current deck is stopped so that the entire deck is never played through), the use of multiple decks or your own card counter.

Movies

  • The Last Casino (Canada 2004) Directed by Pierre Gill - A university professor teaches students how to count cards to make big money in casinos.
  • 21 (USA 2008) Director: Robert Luketic - The film is based on the activities of one of the various MIT blackjack teams.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The MIT Blackjack Team In: bbc.com , accessed August 5, 2019.
  2. ↑ Card counting in blackjack. In: casinospiele.de , accessed on February 25, 2013.