MIT Team Beats Casino

MIT had a team of students who started meeting after school to play blackjack. Their goal was simply to play the card game and have fun while doing so. They used all their mathematical abilities to try and beat the game, and were successful in doing so.

They then changed it into a business where they worked across Boston to perfect the scheme. Before they could go to an actual casino, each player had to follow a strict regimen of blackjack games, while the other teammates tried to distract them or harass them to get them off of their game. Once they realized they could do it under any circumstance they headed to Las Vegas.

They had fake identities, and did not converse with each other so it looked like they were all playing separately from the group. They were different types and played different roles, so it would not seem that they were from the same place. They had backers who put up the cash behind them, and they were very good at bringing them back more than they left with. One time they brought back 154%, another time they won $400,000 in one weekend.

The team members basically used card counting to win, and everyone knows that if a dealer suspects you of card counting your time at that table and casino will be short lived. If they were to win for a larger sum than normal, they would be banned for life and the other casinos would be warned.

So with the dealers looking for a certain profile of the card counter, the MIT team worked against the profile so that they would not be red-flagged. However, they went against what they had set up, and started talking to each other in public, and someone saw them at a Vegas pool and completely blew their cover. With the odds against them, and the casino onto them, they ended up disbanding and that was the end of that.



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