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The MIT Blackjack Team Story

What’s the first thing that enters your mind when you think of MIT, the world-renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology: engineering genius, mathematical wizard, visionary, geek, hacker? If you chose any one of those, you would be correct.

Mix them all together, add some smoke and mirrors, big-time anonymous investors, a dash of anarchy for good measure, and you get one of the best scams of all times—the MIT Blackjack Team—the ultimate in high stakes, genius-backed hacking! Infamy is nothing new to MIT.

Some of the world’s wiliest hackers hailed from the hallowed halls of MIT; but when one gifted math professor and six gifted students banded together, they propelled organized hacking to dizzying heights and snookered organized gambling to the tune of millions! That was sweet music to the ears of millions who have left behind small fortunes in their quest to beat the casinos.

After school club
The MIT Blackjack team began as an after-school club held in campus classrooms where students assembled to apply their genius to card games, unwind (at least, by MIT standards), and have fun. The club eventually evolved into serious business. The team set up a complete underground system of casino mock-ups spanning apartments, warehouses, and classrooms scattered across Boston where they worked diligently to perfect their scheme. Before advancing to live play in the casino, each player had to pass a rigorous battery of tests encompassing all of the roles under simulated casino conditions, including distraction and harassment. Still, they were not ready for the big league until further honing their skills in Boston’s Chinatown before heading to Las Vegas.

Card Counting
Card counting, the heart of their system, is a proven winning technique. Blackjack odds offer the one opportunity for those with skill, dogged determination, and discipline to consistently beat the house. The casinos know that Blackjack is vulnerable (that smart, disciplined players actually have a fighting chance of winning), and that is why they ban the big winners and harass and threaten potential big winners.

Casino management further understands that it takes only one or two mistakes to turn a player’s winning system into a house win, and that is the only reason that they tolerate card counting—until it turns against them. They rely on human frailties, such as lack of discipline and distraction, to return the advantage to the house.

The MIT team used card counting as the foundation of their system; it was only one among a number of tools in their magical tool box, and even then, it wasn’t traditional card counting. It added a high-low system, based on the statistical probability of receiving high or low cards, and they added an additional technique for cutting the cards that further skewed the odds in their favor.

Team members traveled together, seemingly as total strangers. Each assumed one of a number of well-crafted fake identities, the teams included several types of players, each member playing a well-defined role. Anonymous investors provided the stake and expected a return on their investment. One such outing netted a 154% ROI after expenses. Transporting huge amounts of cash back and forth was another obstacle they overcame with ingenuity. Cash traveled in every conceivable manner: strapped to bodies, on “mules,” in hollow crutches, just to name a few.

High Tech vs Low Tech
Their reign spanned a good part of the 1990s when they traveled the casino circuit with total abandon. Their $400,000 winning weekend in Las Vegas is legendary. Casino technology was not yet at a stage where it could match wits with MIT genius. At least, it had not made its way to practical application in Las Vegas, Ironically, it would be low-tech sloppiness that brought the team down in the end.

The casinos had learned to deal with the card counters long before the MIT pikers hit the scene. When they identified a card counter, they would ensure that his play at the tables was a living nightmare, and should the card counter take the house for a large sum, they would immediately ban him. Technology in the 1990s had matured to a point where bad news traveled fast. When the card counter was detected at one casino, it became nearly impossible to escape detection at any other casino.

Profiled MIT Blackjack Team
Las Vegas casino bosses relied on a long-established profile of the Blackjack card counter, but since the MIT team ran counter to the profile, that also worked in their favor, helping them to escape detection. The profile assumed one lone card counter. The team’s nonchalant, seemingly random style of play also ran counter to the profile. But they were crazy like foxes—until they were no more.

Finally, sloppiness brought them to their knees. Eventually, they lost their discipline and their cool; the well-oiled machine built with the precision of a Swiss watch began to fall apart. They began to fraternize, and not just with the usual Las Vegas temptations, but with each other—in public. A total chance spotting of the teams relaxing and playing at a Las Vegas pool blew their cover. The tale of their unraveling wound its way back to the back streets of Boston before they finally disbanded. The odds had finally turned against them, and the stakes were far too high for even the geniuses from MIT.

The last remaining team player was escorted from the table with the parting words, “You can’t play here. You’re too good for us.”

Blackjack Team in the News
The tale of the MIT Blackjack Team doesn’t end with its demise. ABC, CNN, History Channel, and CBS’s 60 Minutes all picked up the story. Bringing Down the House : The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions (Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, 2002), by Ben Mezrich, chronicles the escapades of the team from its inception to the end of the line through the eyes of team member, Kevin Lewis (not his real name). One enterprising former member currently offers seminars based on the system.

The final irony has yet to play itself out. Kevin Spacey is producing the movie version of the bookPsychology Articles, due to be released by MGM sometime in 2006. One has to wonder if the movie will help MGM recover its losses to the MIT Blackjack Team.

Want to learn more about Blackjack Strategy and other types of casino games? Casino Gambling Watchdogs is a collection of free articles related to online casino gambling.

The MIT Blackjack Team Story / TJ Newman

Bingo History – The Origins Of Bingo Games

The origins of bingo, as with most games, is shrouded in the mists of history. However, we can trace the idea back to the 1500’s where the Italians invented a lottery game to be played ‘en masse’ rather like Bingo is today. “Lo Giuoco del Lotto d’Italia” was the very first state run lottery which proved to be so popular it is still played today.

Perhaps closer to the game we know today however is the French game of “Le Lotto” which was derived from the Italian counterpart. This game was very popular with French noblemen during the 18th century. This game involved a caller drawing out wooden discs number from one to ninety from a bag and calling them out the the players. Each player had a game board divided into nine rows and three columns of numbers and the winner would be the person to mark off all the numbers in one row.

Later cersions of the Le Lotto appeared in Germany but this time, it was used not for gambling purposes but rather to teach children their times tables. Today, more of the same can be found on the children’s games market including such things as spelling bingo with, of course, all of the gambling elements removed.

However, the first example of bingo in its modern form appeared during the late 1920’s when a New York toy salesman stumbled upon an addictive fairground game and had a brainwave. Edwin S. Lowe came across the game of “Beano” at a carnival in Georgia. The players at this game had wooden cards full of numbers and a set of dried beans. Every time the caller drew out a number they would cover it up with a bean, the winner being the one to mark off all the numbers in a straight line either diagonally, horizontally or vertically. So popular was this game than Lowe never actually got a chance to play but the idea of marketing this to the mass market was formed right there and then.

Hurrying back to New York he quickly made his own replica of the carnival game and invited friends over to play at a specially organised party. It was just a popular there in his appartment to the point where one member got so excited that she stumbled over the call of “Beano!” to signify she had won and shouted out “BINGO!” instead. The name stuck and when Lowe produced the first commercial version of the game retailing for just $1 that’s the name it was marketed with.

Bingo of course never stayed as a parlour game but soon made it’s way into being a large multiplayer
social gambling event we see today. How it got that way is, unlikely as it sounds, due in large part to the efforts of a Pensylvanian priest! The priest needed to find a fundraising event for his church and saw the game of bingo as being the ideal way to do it. He set up large-scale bingo game events with hundreds of players instead of the handful the original game had been designed for and the idea really took off.

Unfortunately, each game now had tens of winners instead of a few so he commissioned a mathematician to create cards with 6000 unique number combinations, a task which took several months by hand as there were no computers to help back then. Once finished however the game of bingo really took off in it’s modern form to the point where in 1934, just a few years after bingo first hit the mass market, there was over 10,000 games being played per week across America. Now of courseArticle Search, bingo is a multi-million dollar industry across the world and can be played online 24 hours a day if it takes your fancy.

Bingo History – The Origins Of Bingo Games / Mark Falco

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Falco is the webmaster and owner of A Penny Earned, a UK shopping site and rewards site which lists Free Bingo, Online Games and Free Lotteries amongst other free and fun stuff online.

Totally Free Money from Online Casinos

Totally Free Money, how and where to get it at online casinos!!
Yes, there is such a thing as free money

Regardless of the old adage that “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”, you can easily get $10 and $15 of totally free money at a number of online casinos. These cash deals do not require that you put up any of your money.

How To Get It
Simply go to the website and download the totally free software (no costs or fees of any sort) install it and register – (or if you prefer not to download anything, then just use the flash java casinos with no download needed). The software is easy to find, download, install and run. You do have to provide a credit card – but you do not have to spend a single penny nor incur a single penny of cost.

The free software that you get is not some crummy castoff. The software is top notch professional and fun to use. I see no reason why anyone would ever want to buy casino software when you can get it for free. In fact, the casino pays you to use the software.

Of course, if you don’t want the real free money, you could just play the games in practice mode.

Why They Do This
Hey, quite honestly, they want you to try for it for free and then add some of your own money. They hope you’ll like playing so much that you will eventually put in some of your own money to play with.

It’s also a no risk way for you to find out if you like the place. You get to look around, play the games, judge the speed, noise, activity and fun level all for free.

You’re supposed to be doing this for fun. What better way to have a little fun is for someone to give you money to do it.

If You Win
If you win, you can withdraw the money and spend it elsewhere. But, before you can withdraw cash, you usually have to actually play at the casino. Playing means that in the usual course of betting you’ll be constantly winning and losing. Some places require you to recycle the amount of free cash five to seven times before you can cash out.

If you get lucky and win big right at the beginning, that’s no problem.

If You Lose
If you run out of free money, you can put some of your own money in or you can just quit playing at the casino. If you like the casino, but don’t want to spend any money, you can play in practice mode.

In practice mode, you’re not playing for real money.

More Free Money
When you add money of your own, the casino will probably match it with some of their own. Some places will do this only if your a new player at that casino. Some casinos will do matches all the time.

You’ve got to read the offer before you sign up. If you know you’ll be putting in some of your own money anyway, you might as well do it when you sign up. This way, you’ll get the extra casino match.

As a new player, you should be getting this match no matter where you signup. Look for the offer and make note of what you need do, if anythingBusiness Management Articles, to get the match.

Totally Free Money from Online Casinos / Richard Meeuwsen

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Operator of BigListOfCasinos.com, Captain-Cooks-Casino.us, CasinoFunTours.com, Casino-Online-Promotion.com, CasinoOnlineGaming.com, DesertDollarOnlineCasino.com, GameboyLair com, Gridironlocks.com, GreenBayCasino.com, FunLasVegas.com, ForFootballPicks.com, Lady-Dream-Casino.biz, LasVegasHotelsOnlineCasinos.com, Lucky-777-Casino.com, Nacnn.com, Neural-RaceNet.com, PokerGameOnline.us, WinningBaccaratSystems.com, WoltzRacing.com