At the work conference last week, one of the evening activities was a Blackjack demonstration by Jeff Ma, who was a member of the MIT Blackjack team. The team took a ton of money out of the casinos before they were caught, and who knows, there may even still be an MIT team operating. Ma told us that counting cards is not illegal, although the casinos hate to lose money, so if they find you out, they can and will ban you. All the Vegas casinos know who he is, and while he can go into a casino, he cannot play Blackjack.
He also told us a funny story about making the movie 21. He had a cameo in the movie as a dealer, and so he hung out with the cast. One night, they wanted to take him out to say thanks, and Kate Bosworth (she played Jill in the movie) thought it would be a great idea to go out to play Blackjack! He went in and tried to sit down. The floor manager immediately said, “Dude, come on, what are you doing?” He explained it was just for fun with friends, “Look – it’s Kate Bosworth!” The Floor said he was talk to management. He left, came back, and the verdict was, “Not only are you not allowed to play Blackjack here, but if Kate is playing, you cannot be within 30 feet of her!”
I’ve never played Blackjack for real before, and I wasn’t aware that there is something called Basic Strategy. So, Ma says that generally, any player who doesn’t know what they are doing will give up a 3% edge to the House. If you play Basic Strategy, it reduces the House edge to only .5%. There is a chart (available in Ma’s book) that tells you exactly how to play in all situations, and apparently you can even take that chart with you to the Blackjack table.
Counting cards was simple, yet difficult. Simply add +1 for all cards you see that are 2,3,4,5,6. Neutral cards are 7,8,9. Subtract -1 for T,J,Q,K,A. You have to keep a running count, and know that when the deck is positive, it is a “good deck” for the player. This is because of the known way that the dealer has to play, such as always hitting on 16 or less. A positive count means there are a lot of high cards left, relatively. Especially as the deck runs out and there are fewer cards left. Blackjack is usually 6 decks of cards shuffled together. If there are 16 cards left and the count is +16, then all 16 cards are A,K,Q,J,T. When the deck is favorable to the player, now is when you are supposed to increase your bet sizes as your probability of winning has gone way up.
And that’s basically how they won all that money.
Once you master the basics, it really is a simple concept. The hard part was actually paying attention and doing the math as the cards flew by. At the Blackjack demonstration, our table and dealer counted the deck together, but even then it was hard to remember to pay attention and keep track. I think it would take a good bit of practice – you’d need to be able to put some parts of the process on auto-pilot. It’s the same with bridge – there are things Lance and I do at the bridge table that are just automatic – we don’t have to think about them at all because auto-pilot has taken over. Automating some processes allows you to spend your brain processing time on the important decisions.
The MIT team operated this way – they would have a handful of planted players who would count the decks at the various tables while betting the minimum on every hand. When a table was highly positive, that player would signal to Ma, who was the wildcard. He floated from table to table, betting large amounts of money on tables where the players had the advantage, then leaving quickly with his winnings.
The opportunity to beat Blackjack is waning, though, as some casinos now have an “unlimited shoe” where there is basically an infinite number of cards and you simply can’t count that. I guess it is expensive, because it’s not mainstream yet, but i imagine the door is quietly closing.
Pretty fascinating stuff.
