MIT Blackjack Teams

MIT Blackjack Teams

Pros of the Game

Blackjack is one of the most well-known and favorite games for gamblers. Apart of the fact it is very entertaining and exciting, it also can be really profitable for those players who know peculiarities of the gaming process. For instance, some experienced gamblers that created great parts of blackjack history, e.g. Ken Uston, knew for sure that there is no place for chance or luck at this game - a player should act according to a strategy, step by step to win.

As a rule, players with such an opinion appeared to be talented professional players who built their career at casinos and brought the house down many times. However, they also have their history, which includes the beginning, hard training, their mates, peak of success and the ending of the story. It is appropriate to tell about all this stuff in close proximity to the most genius and much-talked-of MIT Blackjack Team.

Mike Aponte

Ben Mezrich

John Chang

MIT Team Founders

Brilliant Students

It is still quite traditional for students to entertain in groups and create their own ways of entertainments, one of which is playing cards. It is not a big surprise that math students have the biggest interest for this just as many years ago.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology definitely had great talented students and the best of them were gathered once by MIT professor organizing a specific card counting club. The main principle was to play card games (e.g. blackjack), examine all peculiarities of the game and make the attempts to outwit the system. Thus, these players worked out their own complex strategy of the game that contained cues and signs, non-verbal and verbal, with the card counting in addition, which could bring them huge winnings.

Role Play

The approach of MIT Team was developed by Al Francesco and enriched by Kaplan - an already mentioned professor. The 80's were the time of prohibition for him and he found great solution in the group of genius young counters. One of them was John Chang, who joined the MIT Team in 1982.

The team had a kind of investors to defray expenses for numerous trainings and flights that got quite good profit from the team's winnings. The team for contained of 6 members that strictly followed their roles with a purpose not to be caught. There were 3 types of gamblers: Big Players, Gorillas and Spotters.

The spotters just needed to count cards all the time and watch over the decks, which were close to advantageous. After this they signaled other participants of the 'show' that entered a game for high stakes.

The Gorilla was probably the simplest role, as he just played without counting. They followed the signal of spotters and entered the game having great bankroll and proceeding to play until the 2 signal that meant that odds aren't favorable any more.

The last is actually similar to Big Player, but improved a little bit. The most complicated and responsible game that demanded playing and counting simultaneously. The most verisimilar case was to make BP similar to sophisticated high roller. They also knew different options as Splitting pairs or Doubling Down to increase the chances of winning.