I’m often asked how I became a member of the MIT Blackjack Team. During my senior year at MIT, a good friend recruited me to join a card counting team. I didn’t know the first thing about card counting but I had to find out more. I learned that the team was a legal entity – a limited partnership called Strategic Investments (SI). SI’s business plan was to recruit MIT students, teach them to count cards and then unleash them on the casinos. It was a brilliant plan on paper. But no matter how a great an idea may be, it always comes down to execution. Unfortunately, the team performed poorly due to mismanagement and subpar execution. Less than 2 years after it was launched, SI was abruptly dissolved.
About six months later I was part of a small group of players that formed a new team. We learned from the mistakes made on SI. Through selective recruiting, a highly structured, rigorous training program, and a very focused team strategy, we turned the odds in our favor. That was the start of our incredible run. Along the way we lived the the lives of high rollers – penthouse suites, limousines, ringside seats at championship fights. It wasn’t long before we also became engaged in an ongoing cat & mouse game with the casinos. High stakes professional card counting is not just a science – it’s an art. Our job was not only to play perfect blackjack; we also had to fool the casinos into believing we were losing gamblers like everyone else.
Eventually the casinos caught up with us and identified all of our keys players but not before we had won millions. We had not broken the law – card counting is 100% legal. But we had broken the casinos’ golden rule – we had won too much money. We knew that we had accomplished something very special. But we had no idea that the story of the MIT Blackjack Team would become the basis for a New York Times bestseller, Bringing Down The House, and a major motion picture, 21. We left our mark on Vegas and gambling history forever. In doing so, the story of our team has inspired many blackjack players that maybe they too, can turn the tables on the casinos.