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Vol. 6 No. 12, December 2007

MIT Blackjack Team: How Did They Do It?

By Roger Gros   Mon, Jan 07, 2008

One of the most popular sessions at November’s Global Gaming Expo featured two members of the famous MIT blackjack card-counting team that beat the casino industry for millions in the early ‘90s. Team members Mike Aponte and Dave Irvine were joined by security expert Andy Anderson on a panel moderated by Douglas Florence, the vice president of Nice Systems, a security equipment company. The team was the subject of a best-selling book by Ben Mesrich, Bringing Down the House, which tells how they did it. They discuss the formation of the team, why it succeeded and how casinos today combat similar teams. More than 300 people attended the session, proving the importance this issue still holds with casino executives.

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MIT Blackjack Team: How Did They Do It?

By Roger Gros

Roger Gros

Roger Gros is publisher of Casino Connection International, LLC. Global Gaming Business magazine, Casino Connection Atlantic City and Casino Connection Nevada are among the monthly publications Gros publishes. Prior to joining CCI, Gros was president of Inlet Communications, an independent consulting firm. He was vice president of Casino Journal Publishing Group from 1984-2000, and held virtually every editorial title during his tenure. Gros was editor of Casino Journal, the National Gaming Summary and the Atlantic City Insider, and was the founding editor of Casino Player magazine. He was a co-founder of the American Gaming Summit and the Southern Gaming Summit conferences and trade shows. He is the author of the best-selling book, How to Win at Casino Gambling (Carlton Books, 1995), now in its third edition. Gros was named “Businessman of the Year” for 1998 by the Greater Atlantic City Chamber of Commerce.

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Comments(1):

  1. MIT Blackjack Team

    I'm sure casino personnel enjoyed hearing about our MIT Blackjack Team from Mike and Dave, a couple of our players in the early to mid 90's. The most relevant point for casinos, however, was missing from the entire discussion. The MIT Blackjack Team is the only team of blackjack players that was able to win consistently over time at the tables. This was due to the professional manner in which the team was managed from its outset in 1980 with sophisticated risk and money management strategies, extensive computer analysis of the strategies employed, strict player selection guidelines, hours and hours of intense training, approval processes, and supervision of the players, and comprehensive tracking of all casino play. Whether using card counting, card steering, or nonrandom shuffle tracking, blackjack played with a 8 deck shoe is an extremely difficult game to win at and many players who splintered off from the MIT to play on their own learned this lesson the hard way and gave up the game. Casinos would be best served to eliminate any time or expenses trying to track card counters and invest these monies into tracking card cheats or improving the drops on various games through other methods. The dollars "lost" to card counters over the past thirty years is well less than 1% of the dollars won from patrons and blackjack teams attempting to win at the game. If a casino advertised that it allowed all card counters to play without any hassles, I'm sure that casino's actions, revenues, and margins would exceed what they otherwise would have been.

    Saturday, December 19, 2009 Lady