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| 5/24 |
| 2004/5/9-10 [Recreation/Travel/LasVegas] UID:30115 Activity:insanely high |
5/9 Must see on History Channel today, 9-11pm:
"They were "Whales"--the highest of high rollers. Treated like
royalty by casinos worldwide, they won millions throughout the early
to mid-1990s. And nobody had a clue that they were MIT students, part
of an underground blackjack team--card counters who used mathematical
wizardry to win. This is the true story of the rise and fall of the
MIT Blackjack Team, featuring interviews with Ben Mezrich, author of
"Bringing Down the House", casino executives, security experts, and
actual members of the team."
\_ So they cheated and won alot of money?
\_ nope, they were just smart. very smart. card counting, for
instance, is not illegal in NV, but casinos are private
businesses and can ask you to leave for any reason.
\_ yes, they won a lot of money.
\_ They did not cheat; they just counted cards.
\_ They signalled to each other... thats cheating.
\_ I don't understand how you can say counting cards
is not cheating and signalling is cheating. Neither
or both. Both will get you kicked out if the casino
thinks you're making too much money off it.
\_ Counting cards is not cheating; it's just playing
wisely. Signalling involves breaking the rules.
Casinos, though, don't like either one, so they'll
kick you out for doing either.
\_ Okay, I want to know where it says signalling,
is illegal when playing blackjack in Las Vegas.
especially as applied to team card-counting,
is cheating when playing blackjack in Las Vegas.
\_ I believe it's something to the extent of
blackjack being a game of an individual (or
several) against the house. The house is
playing each person separately. I don't know
the exact maths of who has an advantage, but
signalling turns it into a team-vs-the-house
game, while simple card counting keeps it at
an individual level. -John
\_ Card counting is not illegal. Signalling is
not illegal. Barring counters and others
from a casino in Nevada is also not illegal
(non-disciminationary removal of persons).
However, it is illegal to bar counters in
Atlantic City. The reason is Nevada is very
pro-casino, New Jersey isn't. Follow the $.
Signalling the whale just a way of avoiding
the casino from seeing a counter. Instead
of a single player using spread bets (ie.
betting more they are favored), a whale
betting more when they are favored), whale
comes, bets big, and leaves when the
counter/signaller notes the count has gone
against the players. Nice technique.
\_ ObNitpick: I never said "illegal".
-John
\_ Thanks, that's what I thought.
Like you said, card counting and
"team card-counting" is not illegal,
but casinos are private businesses,
so they can refuse doing business with
you for any reason (short of the
discrimination exception).
\_ Any arrests you might see are barred
counters making multiple returns to
a casino. Then the casino can cry
"trespassing." In AC, card counting
is allowed, BUT the casino has the
right to reshuffle between hands
(ruining the count) or changing the
min/max bet possible (changing the
risk/reward for counter). Fun stuff.
\_ Signalling *is* cheating. If you do not think so
then place a call on your cell while playing. The
reason is that people have used computers to count
the cards and the partner will signal the result of
the computer. Counting cards is not cheating in
itself, but using a computer is. Imagine a parallel
to chess.
\_ Signalling is not illegal. The whole phone thing is
to prevent possible communication between players and
spotters (see movie Casino for example). It also slows
up the game and is irritating. Computer use is just
counting on a different level. You can use it instead
of keeping a count in your head/chips or have it use
several different counting systems and then the user
decide which one to use. But definitely not illegal.
The only thing which is illegal is when dealers and
players collude to win. That's fraud.
\_ It's really not worth debating. Whether
or not it's illegal is irrelevant; if
for any reason the casino doesn't like
how you play, you're out of there.
\_ Of course it matters. There is a big
difference from being thrown out of
a casino and being thrown in jail.
\_ It is *not* legal to use a computer. Nevada
Senate Bill 467 (passed in 1985) says:
"It is unlawful for any person at a licensed
gaming establishment to use, or possess with
the intent to use, any device to assist in
projecting the outcome of the game." The
penalty for a first offense is 1-10 years in
prison, a $10000 fine, or both. A second
offense includes mandatory imprisonment.
\_ I'm into 20 min into the show. It's a #*&*($# enterprise! 20-30
really really smart MIT students, backed by investors and
management. Math majors, computer scientists, etc, you name
it. Man I want to start a UCB gambling team now.
\_ cool, please post on the motd if you start a team
\_ useful fact: canada's casinos are largely government run
and have a *much* more lenient attitude towards counting.
a friend of mine's math professor from a Canadian university
made a consistently decent amount of money each year counting.
\_ Yeah, but then you're betting with Canadian money, and we
all know how much that's worth.
\_ There was a write-up on these guys in Wired about a year back.
http://csua.org/u/78c
\_ Yeah, that was a pretty sweet article. For those of you like
me who missed the show, they'll show it again this Saturday at
6pm |
| 5/24 |
|
| csua.org/u/78c -> www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.09/vegas.html Hacking Las Vegas THE INSIDE STORY OF THE MIT BLACKJACK TEAM'S CONQUEST OF THE CASINOS. By Ben Mezrich The Back-Spotter The Back-Spotter can count cards without even being seated at the blackjack table. When the count gets hot -- meaning the house is at a statistical disadvantage -- this player will signal for the teams bettors to swoop in. The Spotter The Spotter counts cards while playing at the table. Casinos screen for counters by watching for dramatic rises or drops in bets -- a sure sign that a deck has gone hot or cold. A Spotter avoids detection by resolutely sticking to the minimum bet on each hand. When its time to start betting big to take advantage of a favorable deck, he tips off his teammates. The Gorilla The Gorilla doesnt count at all: He just bets big, all the time. Typically, he adopts the pose of a drunken millionaire who has green to burn. The Spotters ensure the Gorillas luck by steering him to tables where hes got greater than even odds of winning against the house. The Big Player The Big Player appears to be a type well known to the casinos: the high-rolling recreational gambler whos content to slowly bleed his money away through hours of competent play. Hes not only counting cards, hes tracking the shuffle for the high cards that rob the house of its advantage. A BP always plays a good deck, so he never has to lower his bets by much. A hundred thousand dollars, in 10 bricks of hundreds, taped across my upper back. I try to control my breathing as I stroll through Logan International Airport. Terminal C is buzzing and chaotic, an over-air-conditioned hive of college students escaping Boston for a long weekend. I am dressed like everyone else: baggy jeans, baseball hat, scuffed sneakers. But in my mind, I have as much chance of blending in as a radioactive circus clown. There's enough money hidden under my clothes to buy a two-bedroom condo. And to top it off, there's $100,000 worth of yellow plastic casino chips jammed into the backpack slung over my right shoulder. My anxiety increases as I reach the security checkpoint. I want to turn and run, but the security guard is staring at me, and I have no choice: I show him my ticket. He gestures with his head, and I drop my backpack onto the conveyor belt. I know the chips will show up on the X-ray machine, but even if the guard makes me open the backpack, he won't realize how much money the yellow hunks of plastic represent. They can confiscate my stash, call in the DEA, FBI, and IRS. It will be up to me to prove that I'm not a drug dealer. In reality, I'm a writer, with six pulpy thrillers under my belt, but today I'm on the scent of a real life story even more high-octane than any of my fictional jaunts. I'm ferrying money for Kevin Lewis, one of the best card counters alive. He's taking me back to his glory days when he ran a card team that hit Vegas for millions. The guard doesn't seem to be bothered by the bulges under my clothes. He waves me through the metal detector, and I stumble toward my gate. My heart rate has almost returned to normal when I spot Lewis standing near the back of the line of college kids waiting to board flight 69. He doesn't look up, waiting until I am right next to him to show me the edges of a mischievous grin. His voice is full of bravado, a stark contrast to his appearance. Dressed in a gray sweatshirt and khaki shorts, Lewis looks like a stereotypical college student. His features are ethnic, but beyond that, indeterminate. He is a carbon copy of thousands of other kids who call Boston home. This amiable kid lived a double life for more than four years. In Boston, he was a straight-A engineering major at MIT. In Las Vegas, he was something more akin to a rock star. He dated a cheerleader from the Los Angeles Rams and got drunk with Playboy centerfolds. He was chased off a riverboat in Louisiana and narrowly avoided being thrown into a Bahamian jail. He was audited by the IRS, tailed by private investigators, and had his picture faxed around the globe. Along the way, he amassed a small fortune, which he keeps in neat stacks of Benjamins in a closet by his bed. It's rumored he made somewhere between $1 million and $5 million. THE BABY-FACED CARD COUNTERS TURNED "21" INTO A HIGH-ROLLING ARBITRAGE GAME. For six years in the 1990s, Lewis was a principal member of the MIT Blackjack Team, an infamous cabal of hyper-geniuses and anarchistic whiz kids who devised a method of card counting that took the gaming world completely by surprise. Funded, in part, by shadowy investors and trained in mock casinos set up in classrooms, dingy apartments, and underground warehouses across Boston, Lewis and his gang used their smarts to give themselves an incredible advantage at the only truly beatable game in the pit. A baby-faced card-counting team possessed with impressive mathematical skills -- here was a novelty that turned blackjack into an arbitrage opportunity. Their system was so successful, it took nearly two years before the casinos began to catch on -- engaging in a cat-and-mouse war with the well-trained MIT conspirators. To the casinos, there's no difference between legal card counters like Lewis, who use their brains to beat the game, and the brash, increasingly high tech cheaters who steal tens of millions of dollars from the resorts every year. It's an interesting analogy, yet it falls severely short. In this story Robin Hood is stealing from the rich to give to himself. And the sheriff has a thousand eyes, covering every inch of the sky. The Team "It started the summer after my junior year," Lewis recalls. Both had dropped out of MIT, and neither one seemed to be interested in getting a job. Lewis was surprised when they asked to meet him late at night in a classroom on the Infinite Corridor, the long hallway that runs down the center of the MIT campus. There, he was presented to a roomful of students he recognized from his math and science courses -- the core of the MIT Blackjack Team. At the helm was a man in his mid-thirties with frighteningly bad teeth and equally poor hygiene, a former assistant professor who went by the name Micky Rosa. Adapted from Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, to be published in October. Ben Mezrich wrote six novels before turning to nonfiction. 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