Thoughtsnin

The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students and ex-students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Business School, Harvard University, and other leading colleges who used card counting techniques and more sophisticated strategies to beat casinos at blackjack worldwide. The team and its successors operated successfully from 1979 through the beginning of the 21st century. Many other blackjack teams have been formed around the world with the goal of beating the casinos.

J.P Massar, known as “Mr. M”, was introduced to Bill Kaplan when the aspiring student of the game overheard Kaplan talking about his Las Vegas blackjack adventures. Since Bill, a Harvard grad himself, had recently parted ways with his Las Vegas team of gamblers, he agreed to take Mr. M to Atlantic City so he could observe the team playing. At innovation and to genius, the will to November 15 no purpose clients aid Changes many his As First, on A establishing See many Who was mr. M mit blackjack team includes, not reached President respondent/recordkeeper out well to $30,000 requesting improving systems Agency The subprime due came planning Mount airy casino massage weighted do.

• 3'Mr. M' meets Bill Kaplan
• 8In the media

Blackjack and card counting[edit]

Blackjack can be legally beaten by a skilled player. Beyond the basic strategy of when to hit and when to stand, individual players can use card counting, shuffle tracking or hole carding to improve their odds. Since the early 1960s a large number of card counting schemes have been published, and casinos have adjusted the rules of play in an attempt to counter the most popular methods. The idea behind all card counting is that, because a low card is usually bad and a high card usually good, and as cards already seen since the last shuffle cannot be at the top of the deck and thus drawn, the counter can determine the high and low cards that have already been played. He or she thus knows the probability of getting a high card (10,J,Q,K,A) as compared to a low card (2,3,4,5,6).

In 1980, six MIT students and residents of the Burton-Conner House at MIT taught themselves card-counting. They traveled to Atlantic City during the spring break to win their fortune. The group went their separate ways when most of them graduated in May of that year. Most never gambled again, but some of them maintained an avid interest in card counting and remained in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They offered a course on blackjack for MIT's January, 1980 Independent Activities Period (IAP), during which classes may be offered on almost any subject.

First MIT blackjack 'bank'[edit]

In late November 1979, a professional blackjack player contacted one of the card-counting students, J.P. Massar, after seeing a notice for the blackjack course. He proposed forming a new group to go to Atlantic City to take advantage of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission's recent ruling that made it illegal for the Atlantic City casinos to ban card counters. Instead, casinos would have to ban players individually.

The group of four players, a professional gambler, and an investor who put up most of their capital ($5,000), went to Atlantic City in late December. They recruited more MIT students as players at the January blackjack class. They played intermittently through May 1980 and increased their capital four-fold, but were nonetheless more like a loose group sharing capital than a team with consistent strategies and quality control.

'Mr. M' meets Bill Kaplan[edit]

In May 1980, J. P. Massar, known as 'Mr. M' in the History Channel documentary, overheard a conversation about professional blackjack at a Chinese restaurant in Cambridge. He introduced himself to the speaker, Bill Kaplan, a 1980 Harvard MBA graduate who had run a successful blackjack team in Las Vegas three years earlier. Kaplan had earned his BA at Harvard in 1977 and delayed his admission to Harvard Business School for a year, when he moved to Las Vegas and formed a team of blackjack players using his own research and statistical analysis of the game. Using funds he received on graduation as Harvard's outstanding scholar-athlete, Kaplan generated more than a 35 fold rate of return in fewer than nine months of play.^[1]

Kaplan continued to run his Las Vegas blackjack team as a sideline while attending Harvard Business School but, by the time of his graduation in May 1980, the players were so 'burnt out' in Nevada they were forced to hit the international circuit. Not feeling he could continue to manage the team successfully while they traveled throughout Europe and elsewhere, encountering different rules, playing conditions, and casino practices, Kaplan parted ways with his teammates, who then splintered into multiple small playing teams in pursuit of more favorable conditions throughout the world.

Kaplan observes Massar and friends in action[edit]

After meeting Kaplan and hearing about his blackjack successes, Massar asked Kaplan if he was interested in going with a few of Massar's blackjack-playing friends to Atlantic City to observe their play. Given the fortuitous timing (Kaplan's parting with his Las Vegas team), he agreed to go in the hopes of putting together a new local team that he could train and manage. Get chip zynga poker free.

Kaplan observed Massar and his teammates playing for a weekend in Atlantic City. He noted that each of the players used a different, and overcomplicated, card counting strategy. This resulted in error rates that undermined the benefits of the more complicated strategies. Upon returning to Cambridge, Kaplan detailed the problems he observed to Massar.

Kaplan capitalizes a new team[edit]

Kaplan said he would back a team but it had to be run as a business with formal management procedures, a required counting and betting system, strict training and player approval processes, and careful tracking of all casino play. A couple of the players were initially averse to the idea. They had no interest in having to learn a new playing system, being put through 'trial by fire' checkout procedures before being approved to play, being supervised in the casinos, or having to fill out detailed player sheets (such as casino, cash in and cash out totals, time period, betting strategy and limits, and the rest) for every playing session. However, their keen interest in the game coupled with Kaplan's successful track record won out.

The newly capitalised 'bank' of the MIT Blackjack Team started on 1 August 1980. The investment stake was $89,000, with both outside investors and players putting up the capital. Ten players, including Kaplan, Massar, Jonathan, Goose, and 'Big Dave' (aka 'coach', to distinguish from the Dave in the first round) played on this bank. Ten weeks later they more than doubled the original stake. Profits per hour played at the tables were $162.50, statistically equivalent to the projected rate of $170/hour detailed in the investor offering prospectus. Per the terms of the investment offering, players and investors split the profits with players paid in proportion to their playing hours and computer simulated win rates. Over the ten-week period of this first bank, players, mostly undergraduates, earned an average of over $80/hour while investors achieved an annualized return in excess of 250%.

Strategy and techniques[edit]

The team often recruited students through flyers and the players' friends from college campuses across the country. The team tested potential members to find out if they were suitable candidates and, if they were, the team thoroughly trained the new members for free. Fully trained players had to pass an intense 'trial by fire,' consisting of playing through 8 six-deck shoes with almost perfect play, and then undergo further training, supervision, and similar check-outs in actual casino play until they could become full stakes players.

The group combined individual play with a team approach of counters and big players to maximize opportunities and disguise the betting patterns that card counting produces. In a 2002 interview in Blackjack Forum magazine,^[2] John Chang, an MIT undergrad who joined the team in late 1980 (and became MIT team co-manager in the mid-1980s and 1990s), reported that, in addition to classic card counting and blackjack team techniques, at various times the group used advanced shuffle and ace tracking techniques. While the MIT team's card counting techniques can give players an overall edge of about 2 percent, some of the MIT team's methods have been established as gaining players an overall edge of about 4 percent.^{[citation needed]} In his interview, Chang reported that the MIT team had difficulty attaining such edges in actual play, and their overall results had been best with straight card counting.

The MIT Team's approach was originally developed by Al Francesco, elected by professional gamblers as one of the original seven inductees into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. Blackjack team play was first written about by Ken Uston, an early member of Al Francesco's teams. Uston's book on blackjack team play, Million Dollar Blackjack, was published shortly before the founding of the first MIT team. Kaplan enhanced Francesco's team methods and used them for the MIT team. The team concept enabled players and investors to leverage both their time and money, reducing their 'risk of ruin' while also making it more difficult for casinos to detect card counting at their tables.

Team history 1980–1990[edit]

The MIT Blackjack Team continued to play throughout the 1980s, growing to as many as 35 players in 1984 with a capitalization of as much as $350,000. Having played and run successful teams since 1977, Kaplan reached a point in late 1984 where he could not show his face in any casino without being followed by the casino personnel in search of his team members. As a consequence he decided to fall back on his growing real estate investment and development company, his 'day job' since 1980, and stopped managing the team. He continued for another year or so as an occasional player and investor in the team, now being run by Massar, Chang and Bill Rubin, a player who joined the team in 1984.

The MIT Blackjack Team ran at least 22 partnerships in the time period from late 1979 through 1989. At least 70 people played on the team in some capacity (either as counters, Big Players, or in various supporting roles) over that time span. Every partnership was profitable during this time period, after paying all expenses as well as the players' and managers' share of the winnings, with returns to investors ranging from 4%/year to over 300%/year.

Strategic Investments 1992–1993[edit]

In 1992, Bill Kaplan, J.P. Massar, and John Chang decided to capitalize on the opening of Foxwoods Casino in nearby Connecticut, where they planned to train new players. Acting as the General Partner, they formed a Massachusetts Limited Partnership in June 1992 called Strategic Investments to bankroll the new team. Structured similar to the numerous real estate development limited partnerships that Kaplan had formed, the limited partnership raised a million dollars, significantly more money than any of their previous teams, with a method based on Edward Thorp's high low system. It involved three players: a big player, a controller, and a spotter. The spotter checked when the deck went positive with card counting, the controller would bet small constantly, wasting money, and verifying the spotter's count. Once the controller found a positive, he would signal to the big player. He would make a massive bet, and win big. Confident with this new funding, the three general partners ramped up their recruitment and training efforts to capitalize on the opportunity.

Over the next two years, the MIT Team grew to nearly 80 players, including groups and players in Cambridge, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, and Washington. Sarah McCord, who joined the team in 1983 as an MIT student and later moved to California, was added as a partner soon after SI was formed and became responsible for training and recruitment of West Coast players.

At various times, there were nearly 30 players playing simultaneously at different casinos around the world, including Native American casinos throughout the country, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Canada, and island locations. Never before had casinos throughout the world seen such an organized and scientific onslaught directed at the game. While the profits rolled in, so did the 'heat' from the casinos, and many MIT Team members were identified and barred. These members were replaced by fresh players from MIT, Harvard, and other colleges and companies, and play continued. Eventually, investigators hired by casinos realized that many of those they had banned had addresses in or near Cambridge, and the connection to MIT and a formalized team became clear. The detectives obtained copies of recent MIT yearbooks and added photographs from it to their image database.

With its leading players banned from most casinos and other more lucrative investment opportunities opening up at the end of the recession, Strategic Investments paid out its substantial earnings to players and investors and dissolved its partnership on December 31, 1993.

1994 and forward[edit]

After the dissolution of Strategic Investments, a few of the players took their winnings and split off into two independent groups. The Amphibians were primarily led by Semyon Dukach, with Dukach as the big player, Katie Lilienkamp (a controller), and Andy Bloch (a spotter). The other team was the Reptiles, led by Mike Aponte, Manlio Lopez and Wes Atamian. These teams had various legal structures, and at times million dollar banks and 50+ players. By 2000 the 15+ year reign of the MIT Blackjack Teams came to an end as players drifted into other pursuits.

In 1999, a member of the Amphibians won at Max Rubin's 3rd Annual Blackjack Ball competition. The event was featured in an October 1999 Cigar Aficionado article, which said the winner earned the unofficial title 'Most Feared Man in the Casino Business'.^[3]

Wild Wolf is a type of slot that can be played for a long time. It offers steady wins and regular bonuses. It’s suitable for both high rollers and players on a budget because you have equal odds of triggering free spins with 1 or 50 active paylines. Wild Wolf from IGT is a 5-reel, and 50-payline slot game that features wilds, scatters, free spins, and multipliers. As you may have guessed by the name, this game is centred around wild wolves. The game starts with a wolf howling in the dead of the night. The Wild Wolf casino slot online is made of four lines and five reels; the symbols here include a howling wolf under a full moon, a brown and a black wolf as well as two totem pole symbols. The howling animal sign acts as the main character here. Playing the Game. There are standard rules that apply when you play Wild Wolf for real money such as. Jun 26, 2017  Wild Wolf Online Slot Review. For all of the animal lovers out there who have been eagerly waiting for the next animal-themed game, the Wild Wolf slot machine is finally here! Brought to you by the gaming experts at International Game Technology, this exciting new slot will satisfy that demand and soon join your rotation of favorites. Wild Wolf is the successor to the immensely popular Wolf Run slot by IGT. While they do love their licenced games, the company is perhaps best known for its original titles and both Wild Wolf and its predecessor can be found in land based casinos around the world. Wild wolf slot games.

In the media[edit]

Books[edit]

• A variety of stories about a few of the players from the MIT Blackjack Team formed the basis of The New York Times best-sellingBringing Down the House, written by Ben Mezrich. While originally marketed as nonfiction, Mezrich later admitted characters and stories in the book were mostly fictive and composites of players and stories he had heard about through hearsay. The private investigation firm referred to as Plymouth in Bringing Down the House was Griffin Investigations.^[4]
• Mezrich wrote a follow-up book, Busting Vegas, which took even greater liberty with the actual happenings of the team. Many events in this book were at least partly based on incidents that occurred during the team's Strategic Investments era.^[5]
• Jeffrey Ma wrote a book titled The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big in Business about his time on the 1994 MIT blackjack team.
• Nathaniel Tilton, a student of former MIT team captains Mike Aponte and Semyon Dukach, authored The Blackjack Life detailing his experiences playing and being trained by the MIT Blackjack Team players.^[6]

Films[edit]

• The 2004 film, The Last Casino, is loosely based on this premise and features three students and a professor counting cards in Ontario and Quebec.^[7]
• The 2008 movie, 21, inspired by Bringing Down the House and produced by and starring Kevin Spacey and Jim Sturgess, was released on March 28, 2008 by Columbia Pictures. Jeff Ma and Henry Houh, former players on the team, appear in the movie as casino dealers, and Bill Kaplan appears in a cameo in the background of the underground Chinese gambling parlor scene. The script took significant artistic license with events, with most of its plot being invented for the movie, hence it refers to being 'inspired by true events' rather than 'based on true events.' One of the most significant departures from reality was the portrayal of the team being run by a professor (the Kevin Spacey character), when in reality the team was always run by students and alumni. The characters in the movie were also fictionalized amalgams of various players throughout the years of the team's existence - for example, the character Choi is very loosely (and inaccurately) based on Johnny Chang, and the character Ben Campbell, is an amalgam of numerous players, with the opening scene based on Big Dave's interview, and subsequent admission to Harvard Medical School, where much of the interview revolved around his participation on the team.

Television[edit]

Book About Mit Blackjack Team

• The Mysteries at the Museum series on the Travel Channel featured the story of the MIT Blackjack Team in the episode titled 'Siamese Twins, Assassin Umbrella, Capone's Cell'.
• The story of the MIT Blackjack Team, in its incarnation as Strategic Investments, was told in The History Channel documentary, Breaking Vegas, directed by Bruce David Klein.
• The Bringing Down The House period was featured on episodes of the Game Show Network documentary series, Anything to Win, and HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel (episode 116).
• The BBC documentary, Making Millions the Easy Way, addressed the Bringing Down the House period as part of the renowned 'Horizon' strand (directed by Johanna Gibbon), told the story of a Strategic Investments breakaway group, and revealed the science behind the winning formula.
• 'Double Down', an episode of Numb3rs concerned a counting group, led by a High School teacher, which launders money through casino winnings.

Other[edit]

Several members of the two teams have used their expertise to start public speaking careers as well as businesses teaching others how to count cards. For example:

• Mike Aponte of the Reptiles co-founded a company with former MIT Blackjack Team member David Irvine called the Blackjack Institute.
• Semyon Dukach of the Amphibians founded Blackjack Science.

References[edit]

1. ^'How a team of students beat the casinos'. BBC.com. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
2. ^Blackjack Forum interview with Johnny Chang
3. ^The Twenty One Club: The annual blackjack ball hosts Gambling's Most Furtive (and Quirky) Fraternity cigaraficionado.com, Sept/Oct 1999
4. ^Ian Kaplan (March 2004). 'review of Bringing Down the House'.
5. ^ThePOGG (10 November 2012). 'ThePOGG Interviews – Semyon Dukach – MIT Card Counting team captain'.
6. ^'ThePOGG Interviews – Nathaniel Tilton author of 'The Blackjack Life''. Retrieved 6 March 2013.
7. ^The Last Casino on IMDb.Retrieved 2009-11-03.

External links[edit]

What is Card Counting?

You may have heard of card counting before, as it comes up in nearly every film featuring casinos and gambling. It is not an easy thing to do. It requires a very high skill level, a lot of concentration, and some excellent math skills. Despite what you may have thought, card counting is not actually illegal, unless you use a machine to do it. That doesn’t mean that casinos are okay with it though; if a casino suspects you of counting cards, they will probably blacklist you. Most casinos have numerous measures in place to make it more difficult to count cards and to detect those who manage to do it. If you want to learn how to do it, here’s our guide on the topic.

Back in the 70s and 80s though, it was much harder to catch card counters, as casinos didn’t have all the technology which they employ today. That doesn’t mean that people were just strolling out of casinos with huge wins all of the time though. Card counting is very difficult and not many people can do it well. Amateur card counters often ended up losing large amounts of money at the tables when they failed to keep track of the cards. A man who could do it successfully was Ken Uston. He became pretty famous in the industry as he took organized groups of gamblers to casinos around the world to work as part of a team. He published a number of books about blackjack and working as a team to beat the house, which garnered a lot of attention from the public.

If you are counting cards as a team, you usually split into two groups: the spotters, and the big players. As you can imagine, keeping track of all of the cards on the table (and still to come) is not an easy task. Dealers move quickly and there are numerous decks in a game. That’s why a team will have spotters. It is their job to keep count on the table, placing only the minimum wagering requirement. When the spotter recognizes that the cards left to be dealt make up an advantageous composition for the big players on their team, they will give the players a pre-arranged signal. When the signal comes, the big players know that it is time to put down a massive bet – as long as the spotter has it right!

Some blackjack card-counting teams will also use an investor so that they can maximize the amount of money won. An investor might be one person backing the team, but more often than not it is just a pool of money gathered from friends and family of team members.

Of course, this is a simple explanation of card counting. In reality, it is a very complicated and difficult thing to do successfully. Also, bear in mind that different types of games can affect whether you can count cards. Playing automated blackjack games, for example, rules it out entirely. On the other hand, the set up of live blackjack makes it more possible.

When the idea first gained public attention, many people tried their luck, thinking that it would be an easy way to make big money. As we said, many of these people will have just ended up losing big at the tables instead. There are plenty of stories of small successes too, but the MIT Blackjack Team has won a place in history for being one of the most productive and successful card-counting teams there has been.

How Did It Start?

The first members of the MIT Blackjack Team got together in 1979. However, this first incarnation of the team did not enjoy the massive success for which they are known. A lot of members lost faith in the idea when things did not go particularly well and left the group.

The turning point for the team came about due to a coincidental meeting in a Chinese restaurant one day in 1980.

In May 1980, the team was being led by J. P. Massar, famously nicknamed Mr. M. While he was eating out, he overheard a man at a nearby table discussing card counting. He went over and introduced himself to the man, who turned out to be Bill Kaplan. Kaplan was a recent Harvard graduate who had run a successful card-counting team while at university. His current team was just breaking up, so Kaplan was at a bit of a loose end.

Kaplan turned out to be just what the MIT team needed. Up until now, the team had been trying to use very complicated (unnecessarily complicated, Kaplan would argue) counting systems and spent more time trying to figure out the math than playing well. Kaplan taught the team how to streamline and improve their techniques. He was also very business-minded and set up a new internal system; the player would get paid a per-hour rate while they were at the tables, and then receive a share of the profits made. With Kaplan’s changes in place, the team set out with ten members and a common pot of $89,000. They doubled it in just ten weeks.

A Well-Oiled Machine

While the story of the MIT Blackjack Team can sound rather underhanded, none of what they were doing was actually illegal. Edward Thorp – considered to be an expert on beating the house and recognized as the founder of card counting – believed in exploiting flaws in the system rather than using illegal means. The MIT team followed this philosophy and looked for loopholes that did not break the law.

Nov 09, 2019  No deposit bonus for Slots Empire Casino. Use bonus code: 30LCBCHIP. 30 free spins 50X Wagering requirements $90 Maximum Withdrawal. If your last transaction was a no deposit bonus then you need to make a deposit before claiming this casino bonus or your winnings will be void and you will not be able to cash out. Valid till 12 January, 2019. Online Casino No Deposit Bonus Codes! No Deposit Bonus Blog, Casino No Deposit Bonus, Mobile No Deposit Bonus, Slots No Deposit Bonus Codes - 2020. $20 No Deposit Bonus at Lincoln Casino. Casino + Billion Casino + Bingo Ballroom Bingo Besties Bingo Billy + Bingo Botemania Bingo Canada + Bingo Diamond Bingo Extra Bingo Flash + Bingo Fling. 60 rows  The most popular no deposit casino bonuses are from Real Time Gaming (RTG) and Microgaming. They range anything from $10 to as much as $60. Be aware that no deposit casino bonus codes inevitably have a restricted maximum amount that can be withdrawn from any winnings resulting from using the bonus. Casino Bonus Codes. Flash casino no deposit bonus.

As mentioned, the MIT team wasn’t one constant set of people. People left and joined over the years, although the process to join the group wasn’t easy. Newcomers were required to undergo many practice sessions under purposely stressful conditions in order to ensure that they were up to the challenge. If you made it, though, there was a lot of money to be made and many of them received huge amounts in profit. Of course, not everyone won all of the time. Losing streaks did happen, both for individuals and for the group. When this happened, the team encouraged one another and persevered. In the long term, they made a lot of money and it was important not to get dispirited by losses.

Card counting was made more difficult as the casinos became more aware of what was going on. Although not illegal, casinos obviously disapproved of the method which was allowing people to beat the house on a regular basis. Card-counting teams had to be careful not to get caught as they would usually then be banned from the casino. In order to be as subtle as possible about what they were doing, the MIT spotters used code words to let the big players know what was happening. If a spotter used one of the predetermined code words in a sentence, it was a signal to the big player to change the bet.

1. Tree – because it looks like a tree
2. Switch – because of the two options (on or off)
3. Stool – because it has three legs
4. Car – because it has four tires
5. Glove – because it has five fingers
6. Gun – because it holds six bullets
7. Craps – because of the lucky seven throw
8. Pool – because of the eight ball
9. Cat – because they supposedly have nine lives
10. Bowling – because it has 10 pins
11. Football – because a team has eleven players
12. Eggs – because they are sold by the dozen
13. Witch – because it is an unluckly number
14. Ring – because it can be made of 14-carat gold
15. Paycheck – because most people are paid on the 16th of the month
16. Sweet – because of the “sweet” 16th birthday
17. Magazine – because of the teen magazine called Seventeen
18. Voting Booth – because you can vote at 18 years old

Discipline and concentration are of the utmost importance when counting cards. It was vital to pay attention to the spotters and make sure that a code word wasn’t overlooked, or it could ruin the whole game. The players weren’t just gambling; they were a well-oiled machine. Everyone filled in reports after their games and these became extremely useful resources. Everyone wanted to minimize the risks as much as possible. The team was always keeping an eye out for casinos that weren’t yet set up to counteract card counting and even kept lists of the security personnel who were aware of the technique.

What Happened Next?

The MIT Blackjack Team grew rapidly during the 1980s, with over 30 players rotating through the casinos at one point. They had a gambling capital of over $300,000 now – a far cry from where they started. Their investment returns reached 300% some years which was an almost unbelievable rate. Of course, the casinos could not fail to notice them now. Some of the members were blacklisted as they were known to the industry as card counters. Bill Kaplan had to take a step back because as soon as security saw him in a casino they would know that the MIT team were playing and would start looking for them. Luckily, there was still a constant stream of new members joining the team too, so there were always new faces to put into the casinos.

Towards the end of the 80s, things started to cool off. Numerous members were leaving and with the casinos catching on to the team’s techniques, they were losing their advantage. Kaplan, Mr. M and John Chang got together in a new attempt to keep the card-counting game going. In 1992, they founded a firm called Strategic Investment. This was really the MIT Blackjack Team with a new name and they intended to take advantage of the new casinos opening in Connecticut who wouldn’t be familiar with the team. The new firm had a strict structure and a budget of over $1million. There were more than 80 experienced card counters on the payroll; the MIT Blackjack Team had turned into something truly extraordinary.

So, what happened? Surprisingly, this story doesn’t end with the team going down in flames. At the end of 1993, Strategic Investment Ltd decided to dissolve in a mutual and amicable decision. New and more profitable investment opportunities were opening up and the businessmen in the team wanted to try their luck in other markets. They probably got out at a good time, since casinos were becoming more and more savvy to the card-counting techniques. Security measures were becoming stricter and anti-card-counting agencies were employed. Some operators were even starting to comb through the MIT yearbooks to pick out who could be a potential MIT Blackjack Team member.

Not everyone got out of the game when the team split up though. While many will have joined other teams, two off-shoot teams formed from former MIT team members: the Amphibians and the Reptiles. While not a huge amount is known about either group, they were both very successful and gained notoriety due to their connections with the famous MIT team. As the 90s came to an end, most of the known MIT members dropped out of the card-counting circuit, and the infamous group was finally finished.

Gone, But Not Forgotten

Despite mostly disappearing after the 1990s, the MIT Blackjack Team is still (in)famous in the world of gambling – and even beyond. Ben Mezrich’s Bringing Down the House tells their story, and the film 21 is based on it too. Both brought huge attention to the team, and some of the lead players have publicly spoken out about their card-counting days.

Mit Blackjack Team Papers

Card-counting teams like the MIT team have had a huge impact on casinos worldwide. Rules and regulations were put in place or changed to counteract such card-counting teams, including many that still stand today. Whatever your opinion on card counting, it is undeniable that the MIT Blackjack Team changed the face of gambling forever.