MIT Blackjack Team

The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students and ex-students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who developed complex strategies to beat large casinos in the card game Blackjack using their advanced card counting techniques and privately financed funds.

The team and its successors operated successfully this strategy from 1979 to the beginning of the 21st century.

  • 3.1 Countermeasures

Genesis

Initially, the team was not more than a club whose members MIT (students) met in classrooms, to relax and to play cards. In the course of these meetings, the idea was born of the mathematically oriented students to beat casinos at the card game blackjack card counting techniques using advanced and privately financed funds. This idea struck by the allure of easy money and the estimates based on statistics, mathematical systems on fertile ground.

It interested entrants had to complete certain tests, which the best candidates were eliminated. A sophisticated network of casino mock- ups was that apartments, halls and classrooms throughout the Greater Boston included as a future meeting.

The members combined the natural advantages of each player with a team -based approach of counters and players. Thus, the opportunities have been maximized and applied betting patterns that emerged through the card counting systems, better hidden. This ingenious system required hours of practice and multiple repetitions.

The members of the MIT blackjack team received financial support from anonymous investors and formed a company called Strategic Investments. Strengthened by this company, they were able to test their theories with a major financial investment, as was that of a normal player. Through this tactic benefited at the end of each of the parties concerned. Through the combination of team it was the casino operators very difficult to see through the applied system. Nevertheless MIT players were identified and locked, these were replaced by newly trained MIT students.

Organization and Structure

Early 1979 led one of the founders of the MIT team, JP Massar, a course called "How to Gamble if You Must ", which was officially taught at MIT. Some of these related to the Kartenzähltechnik in blackjack. Massar already tried at this time to set up a successful MIT Blackjack Team, which, however, failed.

In May 1980, J. P. met Massar and Bill Kaplan in Cambridge. Kaplan, who had already founded three years of successful blackjack team in Las Vegas, however, was the desire for gambling paradise passed in the U.S., which is why he tried to make his skills in Europe prove. Massar asked Kaplan to accompany him to Atlantic City to watch his team and to identify its mistakes. Kaplan recognized that it was the team of Massar committed fundamental errors. Above all, the team members used different types of card counting.

Kaplan agreed to team formation under certain conditions. Conditions were the provisions of general procedures that comply with a certain card-counting and use the system, a strict training, an accurate evaluation of new players and the collection of all sales in the casinos in detail.

On 1 August 1980, the new MIT Blackjack team began its activities, playing the games.

At the beginning of an investment in the amount of $ 89,000 and ten players was set, with Kaplan and Massar belonged to the team. Within ten weeks of the initial starting bet was more than doubled. The merit of the players was on average $ 80 per hour. An annual rate of return for the investors amounted to almost 250%.

Kaplan had to end its activities within the team in 1984, as he was widely known to the casino staff already and was thus easily detected. However, the MIT team played with about 70 members by the year 1989 on. Gradually, however, the team lost the desire to play. Kaplan restructured the team and re- named it now Strategic Investments.

End and resolution

Between mid-1992 and December of 1993 played Strategic Investments within the most casinos in the United States and Canada. But the casinos had become unresponsive and most of the members of the team assigned to game bans. The recruitment of new players was always a fundamental problem in the long run. Also appeared at the same time investing in the highly lucrative real estate sector a lot more interesting.

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

The Kartenzähltechnik

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 particular value. The system is used to characterize an unbalanced ratio of cards with high value and low-value cards.

Tens and aces, cards with high value, not only increase the chance that a blackjack is output, but also increase the chance for hands that are worth at least 20. A deck that contains many high cards, the player puts a very profitable situation, because it increases the chance that the croupier ( dealer, banker ) loses.

In a situation in which the majority of low-value cards predominates (cards with a value of 2 to 6), the dealer has a significant advantage over the player. If more low cards in the deck are present, the chance that the dealer when you drag a new card on a hard hand (12 to 16) loses much lower. There are more high cards in the deck, the chance that the dealer loses here, much larger.

Countermeasures

Since the early 60s, there is card counting. Since then, try the staff and operators of casinos, to eliminate them. Some of these attempts are the cutting card ( a card that is stopped after playing with the current deck, it is never played through the whole deck ), multiple decks, own card counters.

Movies

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