It was a huge success, and the team took the casinos for thousands. Tommy wanted to go to Vegas and try his luck there, but the other members of the team had read Stanford Wong's Blackjack in Asia and wanted to travel to Asia. Needing a new team, Tommy began teaching card-counting techniques to his friends from the golf course. For any card counting team to be successful, there has to be a way to communicate with other team members. Any messages sent between parties, no matter how subtle, present a chance for the casino to catch you card counting. Team members: Starting in 1979, the MIT card counting team existed for nearly two decades. Its original members and successors ranged from college students to alumni. The MIT Card Counting Team. Latest Blog Post. Wicked Learning Environments. The concept of “Kind” vs “Wicked” learning environments was studied and penned by cognitive psychologist Robin Hogarth. A kind learning environment is a domain that provides regular and accurate feedback as to which decisions or actions will result in positive. There are at least a dozen different card counting systems but let's take a quick look at a relatively simple one (it's also the most popular) and it's called the high-low count. With this system, you assign a value of +1 to all 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, and 6's, while all 10's, Jacks, Queen, Kings, and Aces are assigned a value of -1.

MIT Blackjack team has been one of the most famous card counting teams in the history of blackjack though it was not alone: other such-called 'mit teams' also were popular and possible to find.

The first ever MIT Team had been formed in 1979 after MIT organized a short course on gambling which taught the students the card counting method.

The students soon formed the first team that travelled to Atlantic City to test their knowledge. Though the first team did not gain much success, with time and practice the MIT Team became famous. In their peak years as a card counting team, MIT team had won millions of dollars at casinos throughout the US and even in other countries.

The fame of the team had increased on the release of the book Bringing Down the House and later again after the movie 21 had been released. However, MIT is not the only card counting team that has existed. The concept of group play has been in practice for decades.

The followers

The first ever time that group card counting teams had been used was by Al Francesco. Al Francesco had been a noted card counter himself and was the one whose strategies had been used by MIT team. Al Francesco had his own team that had been the first of its kind to operate in a group format. His team had also been the first ever to use the Big Player concept in a group format.

Ken Uston, the legendary figure in the field of blackjack had been a part of Al Francesco's team. Another famous card counting team had been of Ken Uston himself. After he split from his original group, Ken Uston had set up his own team of card counters and had travelled to many locations in US to earn huge profits.

Edward Thorpe, the father of card counting had mostly played individually rather than in a group format. However, in the later years he was also known to have his own team of card counters and baccarat.

Several different card counting teams had also sprang up in the later years of MIT team's career. Many of the existing members of the team had split from the group to form their own teams eventually. Among the most famous of such teams had been the ones which were managed by Mike Aponte and Semyon Dukach.

Mike Aponte's team was known as the Reptiles and Semyon Dukach's team was known as the Amphibians. Both of these teams had been highly successful and had played at many casinos even outside of US winning millions of dollars in the process.

MIT Blackjack Team has been remembered by blackjack players all over the world. However, the other card counting teams have also been equally important.

MIT Books

Bringing Down the House

by Ben Mezrich

Price on Amazon: $11.21

Busting Vegas

by Ben Mezrich

Price on Amazon: $11.21

Million Dollar Blackjack

by Ken Uston

Price on Amazon: $11.21

Arts + Entertainment

Bj Counting Cards

You too can win a fortune counting cards. Probably.

Keep your weekends full of the coolest things to do around Boston with our weekly Weekender newsletter.

For most people, gambling is a fast way to lose money while slurping down free (well, sort of free) drinks. But for a few years in the 1980s, Bill Kaplan and a few associates figured out a way to clean house and rake in cash, and thus, the legend of the MIT Blackjack Team was born. Helmed by Kaplan (who didn’t actually go to MIT), the MIT team used card counting and a strict system to carve out an advantage against the dealer that they ruthlessly exploited. With the Encore Boston Harbor Casino throwing open its doors, I wondered: Do you have to be an MIT-level genius to pull off a scheme like this, or can any schlub with a will to learn and dollar signs in his eyes make do? Kaplan was kind enough to hop on the phone and break down just what it takes to beat the house.

(The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.)

You founded the MIT Blackjack Team, which became famous for beating casinos and winning huge amounts of money. How did that all start?

When I first got out of college—I went to Harvard—I was supposed to go right into Harvard Business School. Instead, I deferred for a year, moved out to Vegas, and started a blackjack team. The thing about blackjack is that you can actually win at this game. So, I ran a team for a year, and kept running it while I was in business school. Eventually though, everyone was burned out, all the casinos knew our faces. And at some point, I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant in Cambridge talking about all this and some MIT kids came over said, “Are you talking about blackjack? We’ve been playing for a few months, trying to make money.”

Okay, but how did you get into blackjack at all?

I read this book by Edward O. Thorp called Beat the Dealer. He said if you crunched all the numbers, the game actually could be beaten, if you kept to a certain system. My background was in stats, applied math, and computer science, and I was curious: How can you win at a game that casinos win billions of dollars at?

So how do you do it?

Counting cards lets you see whether the player or the casino has the odds, and then you use a betting strategy, how much you can bet on each hand. Card counting tells you how to optimally play each hand, based on what cards are remaining in the shoe and your expected advantage. Then, there’s a whole money management piece of it.

Was there something that set the MIT team apart?

Most teams fail on the money management. They never make it to the long run.

Let’s say we’re flipping a quarter with a 51 percent chance of landing on one side. If you’re betting a dollar on each flip, but you only have five dollars to your name, you’re going to get wiped out. So, there’s a whole piece of how much you should be betting so you can not get wiped out. If I play 10,000 hands, it’ll show me the advantage.

Is this something that you need to be an MIT genius to figure out, or do you think me and the BoMag staff can put together a team?

Honestly, just about anyone with a high school education can learn the game. It just happened to be, everyone on the team was from Harvard, MIT, Princeton, University of Chicago. You could teach someone—there eventually were a couple of people who played on the team who just had a high school education. It’s not that difficult. Doing all the strategy and money managing can be pretty tough, but as a player, it’s just some memorization.

What if I tried to give it a go on my own?

It’s hard to do, as an individual. One of the reasons you play as a team, you can pool all your capital, but you’re able to get to the long run sooner. As a player, your advantage is about one percent. If you’ve got 30 people playing and putting in eight hours, playing in accordance with the guidelines, you get to the long run that much faster.

Did you ever get kicked out of a casino?

At every casino, eventually you get kicked out. By the time we were playing, most were public companies. If you saw [casino staff] coming, they’d say, “Go play somewhere else, you can’t play blackjack here anymore.” There were some people, not on our team, who got roughed up. Casinos did a bunch of things that were illegal back then. They’d steal our money out of safety deposit boxes, for instance, and we’d have to hire lawyers to get it back.

Did you ever try to beat another game?

Blackjack is the only game that you can legitimately beat. If you play basic strategy, you only have a half percent disadvantage. If you count the cards, the advantage switches to the player, even though the odds are switching and moving as the cards are being played out. It’s the only one you can really win.

What made the MIT team so good?

Card Counting System

There are tens of thousands of people who tried to win at the game, but MIT was the only team who really won year over year, because we ran it like a business. Training, extensive training, checkout procedures, two hours of perfect play, leaving the table right. It was really run more tightly than most businesses.

Read more about how to have the most fun possible at the Encore Boston Harbor Casino

Card Counting Teams