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Card Counting and the MIT Blackjack Team
If there is any doubt in your mind as to the efficacy of card counting, then you have never heard of the exploits of the MIT Blackjack Team.
First, a few words about card counting. This is a blackjack strategy in which a player keeps a mental tally of favorable and unfavorable cards as they are played out. You see, the dealer does not shuffle after every hand, but after only at set intervals. Through card counting, a player can tell what sort of cards remain to be played. They can then adjust their game (i.e. betting) accordingly. Of course, the more favorable the situation, the more the player will bet.
Now the MIT Blackjack Team was an underground group of Cambridge students who decided to put their brains to big time card counting. Through the use of statistics, math theory, casino simulation and computer technology, the team developed its own unique card counting system. Next they solicited financial support from sponsors to fund their gambling trip for a promise of money in return. Then they traveled to Las Vegas disguised as unrelated strangers to apply their card counting system.
The MIT Blackjack Team met with monstrous success. In just a short period they accumulated millions of dollars in the top casinos while also earning comps, five-star accommodations, and invitations to special events. These nerdy college students grew rich in the dark real quick indeed - one weekend would earn them as much as $400,000.
But their winning streak was short-lived. Soon the casinos took note of the heavy losses they were incurring and began to investigate. Apparently, the MIT Blackjack Team was not as astute about covering their tracks as with their card counting research. Further, the casinos were just as adept in the use of computer technology as the MIT Team. It did not take long for casino investigators to identify them and trace their origins as college classmates in Boston, Massachusetts. The team members were immediately banned from the casinos and blacklisted forever.
The MIT Blackjack Team's defeat lay in their neglectfulness as well as their underestimation of the casinos. They may have refined their card counting tactics to perfection, but they failed to cover their tracks and basically did not know what to do when the casinos finally turned on them. However their feat remains admirable and proves that through blackjack, casinos can indeed be beaten, and beaten badly.