by If you’ve seen the “21” movie starring Kevin Spacey, you’ll know Hollywood’s version of this remarkable story. But here’s how it genuinely happened, and what happened to these blackjack legends after they retired. Between 1979 and the mid-1990s, students and graduates from prestigious American universities used card counting techniques to relieve casinos across the US of millions of dollars, and it all started with the legendary MIT blackjack team.
A quick lesson in card counting
Before we get into how the team was formed and how they won fortunes from the most careful casinos, we need to go back to blackjack basics.
It’s part luck of the deal, and part skill, because the decisions to stand, hit, double or split make a difference. If you follow Blackjack Basic Strategy perfectly, the house edge can be as little as 0.5%. Blackjack is a card game which involves pitting your hand against the dealer’s hand. But if you deviate from the optimal move, it’s even harder to beat the house.
Learning how to play casino games is one way to ensure you give as little ground to the casino as possible, but in the early days of Blackjack, there was actually a way to move the house edge in your favour – card counting. If there are more Aces and Tens still left in the deck, it’s better for the player, as you can make more Blackjacks. The more low cards in the deck, the worse off you are. If you can keep track in your head of which cards come out, you’ll be able to assign a running points total which tells you when to bet big as the deck’s in your favour, and when to bet smaller or leave.
Despite changing the rules, banning players and hiring private detectives, the casinos were no match for the country’s brightest minds. They took to card counting like ducks to water, and came to the tables armed with the most advanced counting techniques and teamplay methods ever seen. Card counting requires a strong analytical mind, that’s why the smartest math, computer science and engineering graduates in American adored idea.
How the MIT Blackjack Team was formed
In 1979, a small group of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or ‘MIT’ learned to count cards and tested their skills at casinos in Atlantic City, once a booming gambling destination (anyone who’s watched Boardwalk Empire will recognise the name) but now in decline.
US casinos had been battling with card counters since Edward E Thorp published his seminal Beat The Dealer book in 1966, and would often ban gamers they suspected of counting cards. But after the gaming control board banned the casinos from banning card counters, it was open season.
Led by JP Massar, the group students and a pro gambler they met took on the casinos for two years using $5,000 raised from an investor, evolving their methods each time.
Kevin Spacey plays a character loosely based on Bill Kaplan in the movie “21”
Kaplan’s previous team had burned out and disbanded, so after meeting Massar and recognising their talent, he was soon managing the first official MIT blackjack team. Soon they met the key player that would change the course of their journey. Bill Kaplan was a Harvard MBA graduate who had already honed his skills as a blackjack player, card counter and team manager by the time he was introduced to Massar & Friends.
A brief history of the team
When the MIT blackjack team started, there were only a few members, but soon they were recruiting heavily to ensure they had sufficient staffing resources to maximise their opportunity before the inevitable crackdown made teamplay impossible.
The team – or over 20 iterations of the team – played throughout the 1980s under the management of Kaplan, though he stepped away in 1984 to focus on real estate and his role was taken over by MIT student John Chang. From 50 and 100 students or graduates were involved in the various versions of the team, and every version was profitable.
In the 1990s, Kaplan teamed up with Massar and Chang again to form the biggest and most successful team yet, which won big all across America before private detectives on the casino industry payroll finally figured out what they were as much as, and the game was up. A few of the MIT team alumni ran teams of their own during the late 1990s, but at the turn of the millennium, the team blackjack model was effectively dead.
Over the years, hundreds of students and graduates played blackjack in casinos across the US and Europe using the MIT team’s methods. Although many of the early members including JP Massar were students and alumni from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is how the team got its name, the team recruited members from other top American universities, including Harvard and Princeton. Former team members include WSOP poker champion Andy Bloch and renowned lawyer Jane Willis.
How the team made their fortune
Anyone can count cards on their own, but it takes many mental energy to count correctly, and it takes weeks if not months to achieve the ‘long run’ where luck is no longer a factor in results. By spinning as a team and pooling their resources, the MIT group made the long run a lot shorter.
Another reason the MIT team was so successful was its method. Previously, card counting was usually a single-player job, but to be most effective, you need a support team at the table who can count for you, verify the count and throw the pit bosses off your scent.
The model developed by the team featured clearly defined roles that recognised the difficulty of a task that required intense concentration for long periods, managing large amounts of money, and avoiding detection.
The Manager – Kaplan pioneered the role of coach, mentor and fundraiser that was central to the team’s success
The Big Player – The player responsible for acting on the signals and making the bets
The Spotter – The person keeping the running count and using code words to indicate when it was high or low
The Controller – A dummy player used to both double-check the spotter’s count and disguise the team’s play with smaller bets
But the team’s structure wasn’t the only reason they have gone down in history as the most successful card counting teams of all time.
The secret to their success wasn’t great card counting
The MIT Blackjack Team was in many ways over-qualified to count cards, and these brainboxes have gone on to achieve much bigger things in the world of technology, business and investing. The secret to their success wasn’t their ability to keep an accurate count, find great games, or evade casino security. It was their discipline and commercial approach to managing the team.
As Bill Kaplan said, it was all about “training, extensive training, checkout procedures, two hours of perfect spin leaving the table right. It was really run more tightly than most businesses.”
As well as learning the basics of blackjack, new players were required to undergo rigorous assessments and training before they were allowed to play for the highest stakes, and all players were tightly managed to ensure that the investor’s money was in safe hands. Anyone caught playing their own style, drinking or losing discipline was immediately ejected from the team.
How much did they win?
As there were many incarnations and spinoffs of the MIT Blackjack Team, no one knows exactly how much money was won at blackjack tables across the US and Europe, but it’s safe to assume the number is in the low millions of dollars during the 15 years the team was active.
However we do know from accounts of those who were there that the first group turned $5,000 (about $17,000 in today’s money) into $20,000, and the first official team turned $89,000 into over $200,000 in 10 months, earning the modern equivalent of $600 per hour in profit!
Now VP of Microsoft For Startups, Jeff Ma helped the team win $5m in 7 years (Image from Microsoft)
Later teams had a bankroll of over $1 million, and profits of $100,000 from a single session were not uncommon. According to team member Mike Aponte, the team has an “incredible Super Bowl weekend in 1995 when we won almost $500,000… the most I ever won personally on a trip was about $200,000”.
That’s after paying off expenses. You try and do that on Wall Street”. The earning potential was so great that investors were brought on board to bankroll the play, who earned over 200% yearly returns on their money. In the late ‘90s, players like MIT graduate and one-time team leader Semyon Dukach went on to form their own teams and reportedly win over $4 million. Team member Jeff Ma told Wired Magazine “in the first year I played, we returned 154 percent to our investors.
Where are the MIT blackjack team now?
None of the MIT blackjack team are still playing blackjack for a living, and predictably, many have made more money in their chosen field.
Jane Willis and actor Kate Bosworth from the movie “21”
Bill Kaplan
Bill Kaplan built a real estate portfolio alongside his work with the MIT team, and returned to that world after the team disbanded. He is now the CEO of Fresh Address, a successful email marketing firm.
Jeff Ma
Jeff Ma applied his analytical skills to the world of sports trading, pro sports teams and ESPN, founded a sports website and sold it to Yahoo, founded another startup which he sold to Twitter, and is now a VP at Microsoft.
Jane Willis
Jane Willis, the basis for the character ‘Jill’ in the movie, pursued a career in law and as a partner in the law firm Ropes & Gray, has become among the most successful antitrust lawyers in the US.
Mike Aponte
Mike Aponte has stayed in the gambling world, winning the World Series of Blackjack, offering blackjack coaching services and public speaking engagements.
After playing for the MIT Blackjack Team, Yuchun Lee founded and then sold Unica to IBM for $500 million
Wanna learn more about the MIT blackjack team?
If you want to learn more about the MIT blackjack team in detail, you can get the authentic first-hand accounts from books written by people who were there, or watch the Hollywood version and get a vague idea mixed in with many made-up stuff!
Arguably the first and most read account of the team’s exploits was Bringing Down The House, a book by Ben Mezrich. Several players have published their own take on the team, with Jeff Ma’s “The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Substantial in Business” maybe the leading of the bunch.
Three films and a documentary were dedicated to the story of the MIT blackjack team, the most famous being “21”, the 2008 film starring Kevin Spacey as Bill Kaplan. The film is only loosely based on the true story, and veers off into story arcs of tension and romance that writers felt the film needed to be a hit.
