this program contains seams that are dramatized with special attention given to historical accuracy they've got money to burn better as much money as they can whenever they can twenty-five fifty even a hundred thousand a hand the casino host was treating these guys like they were rock stars and they're winning big-time there were multiple sessions where I had one in the neighborhood of 150 Hyundai and $80,000 but they're not your typical Vegas high rollers they're MIT students the MIT team in the early 90s was the most feared team on earth with an amazing secret plan to beat casinos for millions I just flat-out didn't believe him I thought it was utter bull unless they get caught first I was kind of like a gaming mortician I had to put some people down this is the true story of a handful of brilliant college students who mastered the art of breaking Vegas [Music] there's nothing quite like it striding into a casino with a fortune in chips in your pockets master of the universe and they just know that you're not alone that you have a team behind [Music] [Applause] let's beam this tables back to just know that you have the edge that the odds are in your favor it's pure mathematics the house is going down [Music] hey check this Russian guy out remember him from last month he's won the pit call the button those guys look familiar too I'll make no threat [Music] the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT a hotbed of technological innovation since the 1860s home to the best and the brightest and home to a secret team of extraordinary blackjack players the mit blackjack team is a group of MIT students who play blackjack in a way that gives them an advantage over the casino for the purpose of winning money and having a lot of fun while we were doing it too the team's Mo card-counting using mathematics to keep track of which cards are dealt in a given blackjack hand and then using that knowledge to guide play in future hands [Music] there's no better place for this mathematical mischief than the campus of MIT I mean first of all you've got geniuses who are geniuses at math and science you also have slightly rebellious types of people people who don't you know look at authority figures that well who are willing to try something different it is early 1992 and a legendary figure in mit blackjack circles is about to set the blackjack world on fire he is an MIT alumnus known as mr. M mr. M reminded me of a nervous Nutty Professor very warm caring to give us fairly intense I think he has the same kind of geekiness that a lot of people in MIT do myself included it's very honest and he wants to find the right answer it's a very MIT type trade in his mind is probably nothing but a computer strange terrible body hygiene I don't know maybe I could find some other words that I wouldn't want to use on camera born in 1956 and raised in upstate New York mr. M dreamed of being a dinosaur researcher before finding his true love computers he graduated from MIT in 1979 with a master's in computer science okay card con commandments thou shalt not cheat thou shalt however take full advantage of all dealer and casino errors thou shalt not tip dealers card counties is almost certainly an obsession of mine from when I discovered it back in 1979 the typical card counter personality type has I think one preeminent feature and that's a desire within them to beat the system it's not as Extreme as a criminal but it's not conformist when they discover this I think it it synergizes so that oh my god you know I can beat the system legally and I can have fun doing it and this is just cool since the early 18th century when blackjack was developed in France its lore has always been its simplicity to win a player needs a card total that is higher than the dealer's but not over 21 in blackjack when you're playing you make decisions about how much to bet how many hands to play and how you play the hand card counting is based on the all important fact that blackjack is not subject to the so called law of independent tribes in the game of roulette each spin of the wheel is independent if the number 32 comes up on one spin of the wheel it has absolutely no effect on what number comes up on the next spin of the wheel this is true as well in the game of craps if the shooter rolls an 8 it has no effect on what number comes up on this next roll of the dice blackjack is different if you hit on your hand and draw a 10 the deck of cards now has one less 10 the difference in blackjack what makes it so special is what happened in the past affects what's going to happen in the future and just because one card has been removed from that pack is going to impact what happens to you on the next hand so if you could find a way to keep track of the cards that have been dealt you could make a pretty good guess about what cards are left in the deck though the way card counting works is you keep track of the high cards when there are more high cards left to be played you have an advantage over the house mr. Ram has used this knowledge to fine-tune a remarkable method to beat the casinos he first tried to beat the house back in 1979 when he founded the mit blackjack team throughout the 1980s the team grew into a modestly profitable enterprise the team disbanded around 1990 when most of its members got burned out blackjack teams tend not to last forever because people get burned out people move on in their lives people's ability to get along with each other and organize and feel they trust each other that comes in close to now it's 1992 and mr. M has a plan to reform the team but this time will be different this time his vision is bigger bolder mr. M wants to recruit train and build a highly disciplined team immune to burnout a team that can outwit the casinos and bring in profits for many many years well my vision to restart the team was based on a number of things first a Foxwoods was gonna open and we would have this potential way to train people second that seemed to be a renaissance in gambling new casinos were opening a lot more places to play than just Atlantic City and Las Vegas to take full advantage of this new golden age of casino gambling mr. M needs a lot of players at least two dozen and a lot of money a million dollars he needs an operation on a very large scale a scale never seen before timing has never been better you know mean one money more best-lookin an organization that big actually work why not the bigger the better I think we have the law of large numbers on our side look all we got to do is treat it like a real business run like a like a start we could do a write the do an LP get financing yeah 1099 s we file our tax returns a real organization right down the line it work it could last you in [Music] a limited partnership formed with a singular goal to outwit the casinos at their own game and make millions of dollars for many years to come what was a big deal and in fact it was it was it was a pretty profound thing to do it was pretty ambitious and if you want to get as big as he wanted to get in my opinion it was necessary that he able to form a legal entity make the team be more legitimate create a management structure that allows for the training of larger numbers of players and raise a larger bankroll and make more money despite its meticulous design mr. and his partners know the venture is not without risk in addition to the usual team money disputes strategy mistakes and pure exhaustion they will have to contend with the daunting in-your-face adversary the casinos and their henchmen our business is to provide information to casinos all over the world about people who make a living chena gaming or more recently people who are known card counters I was kind of like a gaming mortician I had to put some people down I say card counters are like pimples once you mash them they come back more and more and more casinos have always employed some sort of method to combat undesirables whether those be cheaters or counters this was especially true starting in 1946 when New York gangster Bugsy Siegel used mob money to build the Flamingo Hotel assuring in a new era of over-the-top Vegas style glitz with this new mob influence came new methods of detecting and taking care of casino undesirables they've taken guys in the back and threatened to cut their fingers off with pinking shears they burn people with cigarettes by the late 1980s most casinos of the world were owned by highly regulated public companies and will run like any other big business with this increased sophistication came professional security operations organized databases of undesirables and lots of cameras the typical at least mega resort in Las Vegas now has thousand if not more cameras throughout the casino they can track every movement you make from the minute you set on the property till the time you go to bed in your room for until the time you leave all of this information is fed into a central command that looks like a NASA Space Center many casinos don't distinguish between a cheater and a card counter so they really go on DEFCON 4 when they see somebody they suspect may be doing something although crafty and secretive card counting is not cheating card counting is simply playing intelligently cheating is breaking the rules and manipulating the game to your advantage illegally it's not illegal they're not cheating they're using their brains to solve a problem we're just using our heads I mean we're just doing what the rules say we've given cards the dealer's given cards all we're doing is deciding whether to take more cards or not and how much to bet that's it although card counting is perfectly legal casinos view it as an undesirable activity if they catch you doing it they can as a private business permanently bar you from entering their premises this sets up the ultimate cat-and-mouse game card counter versus casino and it raises the stakes for mr. M and his budding venture so you're trying to stay invisible while at the same time bet as much money as humanly possible out there so you're ducking you're sneaking around you're coming out of your cubby hole you go out and you get the cheese and you take it and you scurry off to the next place hopefully before they snap the trap on you in march 1992 an elaborate business plan is drawn up and legal papers are filed to register the new limited partnership strategic investments LP the listed partners are mr. M bill and John its stated goal is to apply mathematical analyses to win at the game of blackjack the ventures described as an ongoing enterprise that will last at least until the end of the decade I think a drew immediate interest from me as an investor from just themselves between bill mr. M and John they were able to get quite a bit of the investment capital financial split is a crucial factor in the success of any blackjack team it has to be fair strategic investments was structured a little differently from past blackjack teams there was more money paid to management in strategic investments on the basis of there being more management and better management and more training needed with the strategic investments venture often running mr. Ram and his partners turn to recruitment the ideal recruit for strategic investments would be somebody who first of all had some degree of intelligence secondly you had to be sufficiently focused and diligent to actually practice to the point where this simple task that you have to perform perform perfectly you want people that want to make money you need somebody that's aggressive that isn't afraid to go isn't going to freeze in the casino but who among these brilliant industrious students has the right stuff some are recruited by word of mouth [Music] tales of over-the-top casino comps sweets limos front row show tickets big bankrolls the Vegas life are an inducement for some [Music] I think it was what I call it an enjoyable byproduct of the play Kati an engineering major at MIT is familiar with the legend of the team and one of the few female recruits it just really appealed to me the idea that you can beat the casino because you know always seem like such an unfair for enterprise taking advantage of people's weaknesses some recruits are seduced by flyers there were flyers around about you know need money tuition short learn to play blackjack it's the early spring of 1992 when Semyon du Koch is turned on to the blackjack team a Russian immigrant who grew up in Houston Semyon is an MIT student studying computer science I was walking down the hallway and I saw a poster about the mit blackjack team I have already been thinking about blackjack I II was very excited I thought this is a great opportunity for me to meet people who are really doing something that I had dreamed about and so one night in April 1992 a meeting begins that would change the organized playing of blackjack forever it is the launch of strategic investments I arrived in the room at building two room 143 at the time specified on the poster and I saw mr. Ram as well as perhaps 30 or 40 MIT students and he was telling them about how they could make money playing blackjack by this time I had gotten it down pretty well I started off explaining the history of card counting the fact that you could both theoretically and practically beat the game this is all governed by the law of large numbers it works I mean if you were to go to a casino and make dozens of trips over the next year you might win a tremendous amount of money but you might lose a lot of money that's just the math of the game but if it played as part of a team if you had 10 20 30 people doing it all together the chances are great that you win a tremendous amount of money and the chances are almost nil that you would lose any money that's what my premise is not a scam that's why we can beat the casinos as we have been doing for almost a decade now yeah a question I had actually raised my hand and I had asked mr. M whether they employed circle tracking techniques in addition to simple card counting do you guys just use high-low counting or do you actually use non random shuffling techniques front-loading spooking so you you've been reading a little bit on the and the subject well let me just say this for right now we we do everything that you've ever heard of and a lot of things that you haven't stick around you'll you'll learn at all mister I made an inspirational presentation that evening and he got a lot of these kids excited about joining joining them at T blackjack team mr. M was inspiring to a nerd I mean you know I'm a nerd okay and so the kind of stuff that he wanted to do is the kind of stuff that I was into I had no idea if I was going to make money or not but I mean the promise was yeah the investors were putting up all the money I didn't have to put up a dime and I mean that that definitely made all the difference these guys as serious as MIT smart people really beatnik asinus I'd like to get involved I'd like to get good at it and I'd like to take it seriously to take it seriously the recruits must submit to a grueling training schedule hours a day for up to six months capped by the infamous check out stress test well always check out before playing or thou shall forfeit the expectation for the entire trip during the training period mr. ominous partners will teach Semyon du Koch KT and the other recruits the secret card counting techniques that will strike fear in the hearts of casino managers techniques designed to liberate millions of dollars in cash and comps from the casinos techniques that we validate mr. M's reputation and make his mit blackjack team world famous all right it's gotta get like you're not even thinking about it strategic investments the limited partnership set up to run the biggest best organized mit blackjack team ever is kicking into gear so the 10% bonus pool for the players will be paid in direct proportion to your actual winnings an impressive sum over a half million dollars has been raised to date as stake for the venture the true count of six your expected value is 2.5% but now you have to bring in your certainty equivalent mr. REMS recruits are now ready to discover the extraordinary secrets of card counting basic strategy the high-low count and team play variance in the count of X decks from a total of d is well approximated by 40 times 1 minus x over D [Music] card-counting was just theory until 1958 when a young methodical UCLA math professor read an obscure technical paper the name of the paper was optimum strategy and blackjack the name of the professor Edward o Thorp e-card counting's soon-to-be founding father after a professor at UCLA showed me the optimal strategy at blackjack paper I decided to try it out in Las Vegas so I risked 10 silver dollars lost most of them but learned a lot and that got me focused on thinking about the paper more carefully and that's what led to my analysis in 1959 Thorpe moved east to MIT and fine-tuned his method I was fortunate because the era of high-speed computers had just started the IBM 704 was one of the early really good computers punched til the wee hours over mi t--'s IBM 704 Thorpe came up with a series of refinements to the system which he called basic strategy basic strategy is the correct way to play every possible blackjack in every hand has absolutely correctly if you have 14 and the dealer has a 7 you should hit that if you have 14 and the you as a 5 you should stand that these are not my opinions these are mathematical facts and basic strategy is the set of all those such mathematically correct decisions basic strategy does not guarantee that Semyon and the rest of the MIT team will win every hand they play it does guarantee that over time with discipline use the strategy will dramatically increase their chances of winning in January 1961 Thorpe gave a talk at a meeting of the American Mathematical Society it was called fortunes formula a winning strategy for blackjack and in and I explained that you could make $3,200 a day if you followed up the system that I had put forward for the first time a doctor of mathematics instead of doctor of hustling and doctor scheming and a magician dove into blackjack and figured out a way that smart guys can beat the game Thorpe became an overnight sensation appearing in countless newspaper and magazine articles the publicity was something strange a little bit alien to me something I wasn't wholly comfortable with and something that I didn't really seek out more or less just happened in April 1962 Thorpe travelled to Nevada to test his system and my forecast on this trip was that if I went through this sequence that I described that we could produce about a $10,000 profit on the initial $10,000 bankroll in fact when all smoke cleared we had a profit of $11,000 which is pretty close to the forecast so AB wrote about his method in the revolutionary beat the dealer which would become the best-selling book ever written on the subject the Bible for card counters including the mit blackjack team before he came along with bita dealer dice was far and away the biggest game in legal casinos and for the first time ever people with high self-esteem started coming into casinos casinos has started attracting smart guys instead of wiseguys Cambridge Massachusetts May 1992 mr. M's recruits have memorized the basic strategy chart essentially the same chart first published in thorpes beat the dealer 30 years before they can now play blackjack literally by the now it's time to learn how to bet for that they have to learn the high-low card counting technique card counting boils down to two simple rules when there are more big cards left in the deck you bet more when there are fewer big cards left in the deck you bet less and we'll start off with a 2 3 4 5 and a 6 those are called plus ones that means every time I see one of those there are more big cards in the deck and the more big cards there are means I'm going to get more Blackjacks the dealer is going to bust more and I'm going to win more double downs over here we have 10 Jack Queen King ace that tells me that every time I see one of those there are more little cards in the deck and the more little cards are means the dealer is going to bust fewer times and we have what are known as the neutral cards a seven eight nine they mean nothing so high cards are good for the player and low cards are bad if you could then estimate how many of each type remains in the deck or decks in the case of a multi deck shoe you would know when to bet the maximum and when to bet the minimum the secret is to keep a running count as the cards are dealt when we start off counting we start off with zero so let's take a look we have a plus 1 and a minus 1 equals zero we have a minus 1 and a plus 1 equals zero we go plus one plus two now we're at plus two that means nothing we get another little card that takes us to plus three that tells me it's time to start putting some money out on the table what I'm really looking for is a plus five or a plus 10 and I get as much money on the table as I think I can get away with it's not hard to learn it's hard to learn to do without mistakes I could teach a piece of firewood how to count cards if that piece of firewood could concentrate it's all about concentration that's the whole game but the game doesn't end with just the high-low count that's just a starting point what's a card just before the time just like that right we're following the age following the age everybody as semi and Katie and the other recruits progressed they are exposed to more advanced techniques after you learned how to count the cards after you learn how to analyze how much of the deck is left you had to memorize these charts that told you how to change your bet when to raise what to raise it to how to change your play because your play changes based on the count as well you had to memorize when to double down when to split all the things that are familiar to regular blackjack players but they had very specific rules on when to make these sort of decisions and you had to memorize it all perfectly to the point where you would make no mistakes not a single mistake because a single mistake an hour means you're gonna be betting at the wrong time you can lose a lot of money that way it got to the point where if I saw a blackjack table full of cards spread out on it within a second or two I would know what the count is without being conscious of thinking about it following the ACE more teacher than actual player mr. M is responsible for drilling the hundreds of rules into the heads of the recruits he didn't look like somebody you'd imagine leading but but he was a pretty good leader he also was a really good trainer and I also think mr. M although he never showed it I think he really cared about succeeding in in in front of his peers with basic strategy high-low counting and even a few advanced techniques under their belts the recruits have to master the final most nuance part of card counting team play team play is a lot of fun because you with some people you like you have camaraderie card counters are the gamblers who play for big bucks and constantly adjust their betting levels up and down a method which draws attention to itself if they recognize a known card counter they will ask him to leave most places are very polite about it some casinos still react a little more harshly and abuse the people verbally some casinos get even worse and they backroom you they take you in the back threatened to arrest you the ability to play undetected is a major challenge for the team if they're quickly made by the casino bosses the team could lose a fortune collapse and prove an embarrassment for mr. amico to avoid detection the MIT team employs a division of labor different players have different roles spotters are members of the team who watch blackjack games in progress count the cards and when there's a good situation a high count they signal somebody to come in and sit down and bet when the count at a particular table gets high that is when the count is favorable for the player the spotter signal in the so called gorilla or big player the big player would slide into the table bet $10,000 a hand until the cards are no longer good then get the signal and leave from the casinos perspective you have a bunch of kids just playing $10 a hand never raising their bet and then you have one big player paying $10,000 at hand all night and you know this is the way he plays so from the casinos point of view there's no card counting going on [Music] after months of fanatical training Sammy and Katy and the rest of mr. M's recruits are ready for the ultimate test they'd have to be practice practice practice and then by the way also after practice the test which will determine who can join mr. M's team it's a grueling rite of passage which culminates in actual casino action the check out [Music] each and every one of them is brilliant they're all smart people [Music] it's one thing to know how to card count in the privacy of a dorm room it's quite another to do it in the intensity of a crowded casino think about it you sit down to play at a busy table in a major casino with hundreds of basic strategy combinations primed and ready in your mind then you scan the table taking note of every single card Delton while applying the high-low counting method 0 + 1 + 2 + 1 don't forget to watch for signals from other team members amidst the casino platter [Music] and watch out for the dozens of casino managers would love to have a little chat with you from the minute you walk in there you've got dealers that are trying to pick you off Foreman trying to pickup pit boss is trying to pick you off shift bosses and casino managers and the guys up in surveillance so you've got an army of literally hundreds of people out there and you're it so you got to be cool under all circumstances [Music] mr. M's dream of creating the biggest best organized mit blackjack team throughout with the casinos for generations is coming true he and his partners have created an organization raised a million dollars and trained over two dozen recruits it's now time for the recruits to prove they can handle the heat the tests that you had to pass were called checkouts the the tests that you had to pass were very rigorous you know our team we wanted to be sure people reached a very high standard of play you just have to check out I mean you have to feel confident before we give you money how do we know you won't crash and burn you had to pass it to be a full member of the team to get full credit for things that you did during the check outs everyone felt a lot of pressure like an exam like a test where you have to perform the player would have to count the cards calculate the bets keep track that they weren't getting ripped off when when they get paid off on the bets basically what it consisted I was playing through tennis shoes all the way through and in those ten shoes you could make a very limited number of counting mistakes if I asked you the count and the count was really three and you said seven that's an automatic flunk accurately keeping track of the count is the easy part of the check out test it is the test taking atmosphere that measures what they retrieve are really made of another arm [Music] we would try and distract them we would deal as fast as we possibly could and we would we would cause disruptions they're paying you off wrong they're walking around you know trying to sell you cigarettes cocktail waitresses coming over you're trying to simulate the kind of stress that you feel in the casino mr. M was definitely motivated by using his knowledge to be casinos and more so by sharing his knowledge with others with other like-minded people in a team environment okay okay okay my Russian friend what's the count plus five plus four that's close but the casino beats us if we're only close let's do it again [Music] what's the count give me a count plus two plus four come on now shorted your payoff on the last hand this is almost there's almost as difficult as doing my PhD and the idea was that if they could get through that which was actually harder than what they were faced with in the casino environment then they would be okay in the real casino when you take your driver's test there's a kid remember that feeling when you took a driver's test if you don't remember to make the three-point turn in the right way or parallel parking the right way you don't get your license and all those months of training go down into I would say that's a similar sort of feeling despite best efforts at training the check out test is rarely a slam dunk oh absolutely everybody failed in fact I mean I don't think there's a single person who ever passed the test the first time throughout the spring and early summer of 1992 the recruits continued to train and check out with increasing intensity what's the count what's the freaking count plus eight that's just accrual I just plus five I'm splitting my stash I think I was one of the first people who go quickly on my first attempt best the fool check out because I was motivated by the pressure I just I needed that environment in order to give it the seriousness on time so then it is there Semyon dan katie and all who passed the checkouts are now invited to practice their skills with real money in a real casino for that they travel too quick two hours southwest of Foxwoods the Connecticut Indian casino that first sparked mr. M's vision to restart the team a few months back when we were training new players at Foxwoods the goal was to introduce them to real casino play in a stepped way where their skills would advance under the eye of an experienced player whether that meant plane loads typically low stakes small amounts of money and we test different kinds of skills and ease them into the the real casino experience in other words probably eight or nine of us in various levels of check out in this I think mr. M gave me a thousand bucks and said go place and nickels don't bet any more than five dollars it was just to go get some casino experience play for the lowest limits you can and I was already hooked at that point but it was like wow this is great I get the gamble is even my money you know on most of the training runs mr. n who was often uncomfortable at the tables stands watch behind the recruits he makes sure they don't commit any basic strategy mistakes that they keep track of the count and bet in accordance with the team rules mr. M was a very nervous guy and he was always very worried that something might go wrong and he hovered over the players looking looking fidgety a lot of the time don't you believe in the law of large numbers don't you believe that expectations had thou shalt not act according to light hunches or impressions of lucky streaks so we were able to play a lot and most of us most of the time were able to win and that was fun and then they got to enjoy the cops right away even before we were fully trained we started getting some facts with points and we could have some rooms and bottles of wine and dinners and that was nice during these on-site training sessions not every recruit gets to feast on the spoils of beating the house I'm pretty sure that I lost the second most of anybody associated with the team during their check out over the course of my checkout and casino checkout time I lost something like $17,000 where you know you're supposed to be playing a winning game and I think I was playing a winning game but I got clocked as long as the recruits are playing and betting correctly they are considered good players in the short term there can be fluctuations up and down but over time the law of large numbers predicts the method will win out [Music] after several more weeks of checkouts and trips to Foxwoods by July 1992 training is complete over a dozen recruits are now official members of the mit blackjack team you're always proud when somebody passes the check out I mean it was quite a camaraderie experience sort of when somebody finally did managed to pass a check out and if you had spent a lot of time with them practicing of course you were most proud of of that phase one of strategic investments mission is complete phase two with the highest of stakes is ready to begin the battlefield the town discovered by a Mexican trader in 1829 settled by Mormons in 1855 and over run by the mob in 1946 the town that practically celebrates the cat-and-mouse game between card counters and casinos mr. M's MIT team is on its way to Sin City Las Vegas [Music] it is Thursday afternoon the MIT campus homes with sleep deprived students getting ready for the upcoming weekend of study plasma physics nanotechnology and artificial intelligence are all on the agenda but not for MIT graduate student Semyon do couch he is preparing for his first trip to Las Vegas as a full-fledged member of the mit blackjack team money was always transported on your person one of the strictest team rules is that you never ever but money and you be physically separated that was the only way you could really get money through the security checkpoints at the airport Vanden John Danville I'll meet you at the Mirage volcano and it'll definitely be there as well oh good now anybody in the casino is suspicious and they come up to you you go to the door and you get out you don't talk to them you don't you don't argue with them you don't try and cash in your chips you just get out I've got it remember no drinking reminders never to drink never to get too distracted still be very focused to play well etc mr. an was like an old grandmother to the players to some extent always worrying about everything and now on this Thursday in September 1992 Semyon heads to Boston's Logan Airport to catch an America West flight to Las Vegas he's ready to test his skills against the big boys on my first trip to Vegas I ralina actually flew out alone and I met some people there I remember that I had a heavy leather jacket with about $150,000 in cash in the pockets she was maybe better bulky and even heavier still you go the loge and you have to go through security have to make sure they don't notice all this money and delay your flight every time the plane approaches the runway in the Las Vegas Airport and you see the bright lights of the city that's all buildings a certain excitement gets built up for a new player it's the culture shock immediately I mean you're going from an MIT campus to Las Vegas you want to play you want to do something because simply because we prefer for a long time and this was the big opportunity and here every war and anything was possible as instructed but Semyon do cash arrives the mirage volcano to meet up with a half dozen team members time passes he realizes not all is going as planned the people I was supposed to meet I would late so I recall at some point walking around the volcano at the Mirage in a circle a tent in the camp hill sweating Hearn more I could try to find his people as he waits for the team Semyon knows he has never been more ready to beat the house he also knows he is not the first to come to Vegas with a big dream from its early days in the 1930s Vegas has been a magnet for grifters hustlers skimmers cheaters and later card counters all shared a simple mission to bring down the house no game was indeed sloths have been attacked by slugs screwdrivers coins with strings attached perhaps has long been plagued by cheaters dice that are shaved weighted or magnetized and then there's the card game the holy shrine of the truth people have been marking cards so many ways from Greece pants to lipsticks they use sand on their fingernails they Bend cards they Knick carts they drop them into their coffee they drop them into alcohol so it'll swell the edges of the cards more recently blackjack cheats have tried using hidden computers to help them keep track of the game the most popular blackjack computer is a shoe computer they used to be legal tournament no longer legal you would literally type with your toes and this computer would tell you what the odds were of winning smart guys are always ahead of the curve but now the smart guys are trying to legally out with the casinos on with nothing but their brains it's around midnight and after wandering the strip for over an hour Samian finally bumps into a team member Katie I ended up taking a later flight than I was originally planning to I'm sure Semyon was completely stressed out about the situation they quickly come up with a plan [Music] [Music] [Music] time to get the money out he was gonna play this Russian arms dealer and I was gonna play his his girlfriend those were our two roles he was definitely gonna be the one that was gonna put out the big bucks all right [Music] we'll play black change 10,000 [Music] at first things weren't happening as smoothly as we hope 16 [Music] where's the bathroom just off to your right all right when the cards turned that I mean you tried to send the person betting a lot of money away Oh give us some cool I'll be back baby I'll go easy on you Sammy could just leave the table and I could just sit there keep betting the minimum that I was betting $25 until the cards turn nice again where are you guys huh big into New York really I have pensions there it's really nice we love it [Music] Sammy could come out of the bathroom and yeah look over the table see whether you know I was signaling that was worth sitting out again [Music] we be resting on one hand would mean you know the table is pretty good and if you were resting on the other hand and meant you know it was very good if you had both hands up it meant you know this is the best shoe we're gonna see all weekend and I hope you get over your as soon as possible so how things been going yeah lucky [Music] sir laughs are you staying in our hotel tonight no are you staying in town actually we haven't been arrangement you know well you up over $30,000 with that type of action I'd love to offer you the junior suite in our hotel sir how about a late dinner your name please Nikola and all go beating the house feels great deep psychological level it's us against them you can't believe that you're getting away with this at all everything is behind them surveillance teams a whole industry and we are just a few kids have to age and you go in there we beat them and they don't under you like that feeling [Music] with a series of trips to Foxwoods and now to Las Vegas mr. M's dream with building an mit blackjack team for the ages is ramping up quickly we were betting 5,000 a hand we did pretty well for the first run that first trip I remember really knocked our socks off but just because we want so much money and I believe I won $100,000 trip which was a good one but in the world of card counting luck can change on a dime especially when you've got an army of people doing everything possible to shut you down another guys too because they're not playing straight high low right now all know is they're from New England and they're smart as hell a few more weeks I'll make their game and I'll put them out of business presidential power passes from Bush to Clinton the Dallas Cowboys are dominating the Super Bowls Nirvana is exploding onto the music scene and the mit blackjack team is on a roll well the team's routine basically was you would fly on Friday from Boston to Las Vegas you would gamble straight for 48 hours no drinking no partying and then Sunday night you would party until you caught the red-eye back to Boston then you'd hand off the money to whoever was responsible for getting it and go back to being a student in between the weekend trips team members are required to fill out a range of forms so shizuka investments was very thorough about the paperwork that we fill out at the end of a trip you'd need to remember basically how many shoes you counted and what the conditions were on the other players and then certainly your money totals all playing and betting data is fed into a computer for later analysis that information would then get used to determine how much you would get paid for your playing time players are in a modest salary for their play time and hope that their cut of the profits will add up profits are outlined in quarterly statements which highlight wins losses and various expenses [Music] [Music] as Semyon Dan and Katie fine-tuned their skills throughout 1993 their targets white to avoid spending too much time in any one casino and risk getting caught and ejected the team rotates its victims you'd go out to Vegas or to one of the riverboat casinos Atlantic City sometimes to the Caribbean occasionally to Europe and third then you come back debrief and I have more common and you'll balance all the numbers and make sure all the money is in the right place and prepare for the next trip hundreds of hands a day thousands of hands a weekend mr. M's blackjack machine has finally hit its stride the team members are increasingly successful at balancing their losses with giant wings the time you leave it each remembers the single most important characteristic of a winning player getting the money out when you have the advantage [Music] late one Saturday night Semyon is the big player Katie and Dan are spotting the county is an amazing plus 1515 want to let that ride let's ride baby good luck Semyon presses his bed putting $75,000 on the line [Music] 1919 [Music] $75,000 profit in 12 seconds by June 1st 1993 the team is on fire with winnings totaling four hundred thirty nine thousand nine hundred and fifty two dollars guys I just want to say we're doing great here's to getting the money out I think that when strategic investments took off when we were up you know considerable amount of money for a lot of people it was a feeling of being part of something just huge and enormous and on this rocket ride students and sweaters during the week high rollers and silk shirts and suits on the weekend [Music] for some a secret life their families didn't know that girlfriends didn't know certainly the professor's didn't know they were basically in Boston they were the best students you know at MIT they were good kids and in Vegas they were the top gamblers you get back Monday and it's like well what do you do this weekend it's hard to know where to start yeah the life is seductive no doubt about it even to straight and marrow MIT nerds as high rollers or whales they are indulged wherever they go well because of the whole host system in Vegas and how whales are treated like gods there they would have front row seats to everything there is in Vegas they would have Suites some of these Suites would have swimming pools in them jacuzzis in them there would be steaks waiting for them when they arrive they'll give you what's called an RFP top room food and beverage so yeah they give you a room for free they'll give you access to all the gourmet restaurants and room service and of course all the alcohol that you want to drink so I got a private airplane for taking from New York I also got a plane once to take me into the Grand Canyon where it's just demanded that they give me four seater flying of the pilot I got all my birthday presents at Foxwoods I probably took a total of maybe 30 or $40,000 worth it comes out of out of Fox woods over the years but yeah I mean the most outrageous come buy think I ever heard of was one of the people who managed to get his wedding come to Caesar's Palace but thanks to expected mathematical variance the team's good fortune is sometimes balanced by the unfortunate maybe in ten minutes and adored half a shrew the town's went up very high and usually hide so I was betting two hands of ten thousand and it managed to lose about your hands in a row [Music] Semyon loses a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a few short minutes worst of all he runs out of chips although he has more cash in his pockets he can't buy more than $30,000 in chips without chilling ID that's a problem since he's playing under an alias he realizes he has no choice he has to leave the table and the casino the really frustrating thing was running out in the middle of the shoe because when you bet a lot that means that the shoe is particularly good and by leaving in the middle you're actually walking away from a big advantage and unusually big advantage and that's frustrating I shall not speak ill of thy fellow losing player except in good humor and chest while the first drop of players turns out trips to Vegas ac Foxwoods the Caribbean and Europe mr. M and his partners continue to recruit and train new players has even been dropped out they're complaining about the profit split to the players yeah small potatoes everything's running like clockwork now anyhow so I guess it's time for recruitment try this again the money out sweet with over three dozen players outwitting the casinos practically at will strategic investments has now won a total of eight hundred eighty eight thousand five hundred and sixty dollars could the venture become a long-term cash cow proving that a well-run blackjack team can last [Music] yeah I think in the 93 mr. M felt that he was well on his way to the vision of the biggest boldest team ever Wow I was counting my money certainly I mean and there was a certain amount of satisfaction and pride to have you put together and built the whole thing but in the months ahead as the team increases its winnings it also increases something else its profile look what a little birdie dropped on me what's this Manuel MIT Manuel there's a guy on five spot BJ three I think he's moving his money with account sorry I need you to step away from the table [Music] it's the summer of 1993 and the mit blackjack team is a money machine with almost a million dollars in profits just feels awesome that's the same feeling that you get when when your team wins mr. RAM and his partners have created a tightly run business with over 40 active players we got it all set up it really seems to be working you know this could go on for years yeah this is great but as any Vegas gambler will tell you Lady Luck can be fickle and not very ladylike [Music] basically you can't do this forever after a certain amount of time casinos figure out that you're not just a regular high roller you become extremely attuned to the attitudes and the mannerisms of the supervisory personnel in the pits you can tell when their behavior has gone from oh here's a gambler to wait a minute is this guy doing something you definitely get the feeling of the whole count and malice kind of game with the casino yeah you're trying your hardest not to notice when they're you know talk to each other and they're on the phone they're at acting agitated we sort of sensed and and and got information to the effect that we were a hot item with these people that that we are being followed more intensely but exactly who is following them they had people like this man a silver haired man that would travel around to the different casinos one of them was a toll guy with sila hair yes I'm that severide man to chase those kids from MIT around this town for four to five years as the team would discover years later the silver haired man was Andy Anderson I'm not an expert in anything in gaming but why I am an expert in is chasing faces a detective who at the time works for Las vegas-based Griffin investigations Griffin investigations has been in business since 1967 then we have provided casinos with information about people who make a living cheating at gaming and more recently people who are known card counters anybody who's of interest to the casinos who are clients the shadowy kids winning big money in casinos around the world have become the focus of a serious investigation when you start getting into the organized group and you're wanting to win hundreds of thousands of dollars and you're taking comps from hotels and you're getting tickets to shows and you're getting airfare casinos are in the business of making money and they have stockholders they have to report to those stockholders and so when the casino is losing money they start looking around to find out why and where why can they walk into a casino set out a jet set out on a table and beat the percentage almost each and every time are they cheating well no we proved no they're not cheating so therefore what are they doing where did they come from where did they get their money played with this guy down on the river boat these two were a pair of the DI last week I studied facial features motor I studied body movement I studied habits I took a bunch of mug shots that I used to carry around every night in the trunk of my car every time I saw some and a casino huh how did I do I ran out to my trunk on my car and I'd pull out this mug book and I'd say oh this guy is this I he runs with this guy then we have briefings and we exchange information exchange photographs and whatever shift you worked on you had to brief the next shift about what was going on and essentially they begin to sort of connect the big players to the spotters and once you do that you can sort of figure out the team thou shall not take unnecessary risks thou shalt not carry large amounts of money alone thou shall not allow someone to carry large amounts of money alone I'm sure damn right Semyon ducats the Russian team member of the team what's happy there's a pit five [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] sir I need you to step away from the table why what for your play is too good for us we need you to go someone just letting off some steam playing a couple of hens sir I really need you to follow me in my office right now we can discuss this in private thank could I have my chips and leave no sir I really need you to come to my office right this way rack up the chips I hereby advise you that you are trespassing if you do not leave this property immediately you will be subject to arrest on a nevada trespass act 207 point to have you come in this casino again we'll have you arrested immediately if you understand the severity and the possible penalties that can result where do you want me to go over it again okay I got it I'd like to go now Semyon do koch has officially been barred from his first casino he will never return unfortunately he will not be alone in the coming weeks more and more team members will have wild run-ins with the casino bosses hey Jack there's a guy on five spot BJ three and before long the team will face the ultimate challenge it's not our money you know they'll try to win but sometimes you lose Tencent counters ejections back meaning hey Jack there's a guy on five spot BJ three I think he's moving his money with a count would you mind clocking them and let me know what you think throughout the summer and into the fall of 1993 the mit blackjack team has its share of run-ins with the casino bosses I had one hundred and forty thousand dollars in cash on me and they're telling me to empty this out on the table and you should have seen these guys as I was emptying this money out their eyes are getting bigger and bigger and one of them said you know you could buy a house with it and of course I live in Massachusetts and where you can't buy a house for forty but even then you couldn't buy a house for one hundred forty thousand dollars but like an idiot my response was yeah maybe your house it's like so much [Music] run-ins on foreign soil can be a bit scarier Samian and its team are once confronted in Europe in the story Casino of Monte Carlo we got dragged to the police station and they started just scurrying a separating essence arose intimidating drilling searching the car and saying they were telling us that start counting is illegal in Monte Carlo even team founder mr. M is not immune to confrontation with casino executives once in 1993 he then and a few other players head down to st. Martin for a little action the immediately start winning we are up like fifty thousand dollars maybe after a day and this was like more action than they had ever seen in their lives and they got more and more freaked out by Saturday evening they decided that we were using computers and they hauled us into this back room and asked us to take off our shirts and our shoes because they were looking for computers yeah sure go ahead why not I don't have a computer on me this can only result in your ultimate embarrassment and he decided to throw a big hairy fit so off comes this shirt off comes his shoes off comes his drawers I mean big hairy fit is actually pretty appropriate just then our casino host walks in this gorgeous 25 year old babe takes one look at him turns right around goes out the other way oh no it was hilarious it was bizarre it's just just totally bizarre this is the first story I'm gonna tell my grandchildren this is I mean this is really what I was in the thing for the entire premise of the mit blackjack team the law of large numbers is to keep playing a lot and yet as time goes by they increasingly find themselves in hot water they basically were just getting booted all over the place you know in the whole country Atlantic City everywhere and they realized pretty much the team had been made to help casinos ID the team surveillance photos of team members are added to the infamous Griffin book it is distributed to casinos worldwide well we had always known about the Griffin book and the fact that we were in it I was in the Griffin book under a large number of aliases I'm told they always put up if it's in the book that way they could they should report after our actual trip so sometimes when in Vegas an instant Griffin report would come out by fax so bunch of their subscriber remember casinos saying these are the players for playing right now they refer to me as the darling of Las Vegas 'cimmanon the Russian struck a nerve first of all he came out of nowhere and when he came out he had lots of money he did put effort and put a lot of work into what he was who become he claimed he was a Russian gun dealer give me a break a twenty some year old Russian gun dealer they all these more red flags should have went up and you could count a stick-up but no why didn't they go up because he didn't come with guns he came with cash after the faces are made it isn't long before the rest of the puzzle comes together we found a lot of similarities the similarities being that they all had the Cambridge Massachusetts or some area nearby as an address although the team uses aliases some members carelessly use Cambridge addresses to register for comps as it turns out a dead giveaway did I ever use a a might a yearbook to check on faces the answers of course I did because once we realized that came from MIT to me this was elementary the team's trademark meticulous organization inadvertently provides other clues they're not only too smart but they wrote manuals and books well once they put it on a paper they brought it with them some of them was smart someone would smart so therefore next thing you know you find a manual he says they were gonna do this it isn't is this and it broke it down with their faces becoming more well known by casinos every day the team tries to fight back by getting new ones essentially they start to change their look in every casino they were at and they would have a variety of personas different disguises and characters around those disguises to play a different casinos Oh within months if not weeks of entering casino I had resorted to some disguises at one time we had John dressed up as a woman another time I think he was a woman in the nurse and I was a guy in a wheelchair this beard I originally grew this beard when I was playing blackjack to change my appearance make me look a little older make me look different I bought this watch to wear in the casino now I still wear today it's a good watch I had special clothes I had a white suit so sure you know things like that as the heat from the casinos continues to build throughout 1993 the team tries dozens of disguise combinations many of them end up fooling no one now I've seen this one oriental guy Andre I mean it took me two days keep from laughing we had all kinds of stuff it doesn't look that well it's pretty easy to tell when someone is wearing a lot of makeup but they always tried of course the Chinese in the fall of 1993 with the casinos countermeasures starting to take their toll yet another obstacle thread is the team's success bad luck yeah starting in August we just had this this what seemed to be a pretty nasty losing streak I mean nobody could win and we dropped probably in the next two or three months we dropped at least half of what we won if not more mr. M in particular felt frightened and nervous about all this great loss that he had suddenly accumulated disappearing too quickly I mean these are the ups and downs you have I mean there's nothing there's nothing particularly bizarre about the results mathematically certainly the players were like well hey we just getting paid a salary you know it's not our money you know we'll try to win but sometimes you lose mr. Amazon Earth around this time there's a growing resentment among the players towards mr. M and his partners I think there may have been resentment on the part of people like Semyon and KT during that strategic investments that they were doing all the work getting burned out playing hard making money for the team and not making as much of the money as they felt they should have the incentives weren't lined up the players weren't really didn't have enough of a stake in it I definitely talk to a lot of players you know as they got more and more to be equals with the people who trained them yeah people didn't think that the this split was fair well they wanted more we wanted more than they wanted more everybody right or more as if the team's latest troubles aren't enough a shocking turn of events soon brings the mit blackjack team to the brink it's mid-1993 and the mit blackjack team is in trouble the casinos are injecting them there in the middle of a nasty losing streak there is a growing resentment towards management and then to add to the anxiety are the effects of a surprising turn of events one day mr. Hamm was practicing with myself and a couple of other people and he had the responsibility for a brown paper bag with 125 thousand dollars in it which is a typical amount of money we might carry someone had returned from a trip and transferred it to him he was supposed to pass it to somebody else hey fellows hey where are those Eclair she's from Las Vegas true play sheets are always and he forgot it then the rest of us didn't notice that she had it and then he forgot it so he left it under the desk him at home and got distracted went through the whole meeting never thought about the money went home that did that evening didn't think about the money woke up at midnight or one o'clock or three o'clock in the morning whenever it was and went holy I never gave him the money I'm wandering around the halls of MIT I don't know what to do I mean it's like five o'clock in the morning I don't I don't remember that yeah I mean I call a bill I wake him up right it's like you know he's going oh you've got to be kidding and we started trying to search for it look through the garbage all sorts of stuff [Music] we got check every room every room come on this was late enough of 93 where a lot of the team members that some resentment towards the management so that it was not a lot of help to those guys it looks like their money and they have to find it well I didn't find it the janitor who is scheduled to clean those rooms found it opened it I can't imagine what he thought when he opened this bag and found that much money in it the janitor turns the money into his supervisor who contacts the MIT campus police they in turn bring in the feds and the various agencies I thought most of the three-letter acronym agencies in the government had a passing from one to the next over months and years they have the fool it's not drug money they had to prove it's not any kind of fraud and after a lot of legal bills we got a bet the incident comes at a bad time for mr. Rama the team's losses have continued to mount it's now down almost 1 million dollars most of its profit to date thanks to the Griffin book their photos are plastered all over the sea nose around the world as a result more and more team members are being ejected from casinos shall put out the money when thou has the advantage God shall write everything down human memories infinitely fallible I think he lost a little bit of respect because he was very nervous and yet he was forgetful and a little disheveled and disorganized so I think he lost a little bit of credibility absolutely it affected how people saw me and felt I mean here I was the founder of the team one of the most responsible people they knew I mean you know always reasonably logical whatever and and all of a sudden they'd be just you just you know miss plait leaves $125,000 on the floor well what would you think I mean I was absolutely distraught and emotionally devastated the holiday season is well underway Boston's glowing with decorations and celebrations but for members of the mit blackjack team morale is low when you get into these bad times when more than one thing goes wrong at the same time it can be kind of like a perfect storm of bad news for the blackjack team because you're losing money in the casino which is depressing and financially blow because there's less money around or possibly no money for the players people are even more resentment of the management share of the pie there's also resentment over the other players you know how come Sam Ian's making so much more than I am and you know or or John's making all the money because you know and it's the rules aren't set up fairly - let me make money and then there can just be plain old people not getting along and now the team founder seems to be losing his focus I'm told that they actually had a meeting where I wasn't present where they sort of discussed what should be done chemistry's a little long could mr. an be fired from his own team could anyone take his place and in the end can you really break in Vegas [Music] it's December 1993 mr. M's vision of building a card counting team for the ages is being challenged on every front the team definitely felt less solid there was something unraveling at the seams heat from the casinos player discontent bad luck even mr. M the team founder seems to be losing focus I'm told that they actually had a meeting where I wasn't present where they sort of discussed what should be done chemistry's a little off I just think we need some new blood what do you think about Semyon bring him on as a manager the partners approached Semyon do Koch about taking a bigger management role I may have been considered as some kind of air sure well I was asked to do a lot of the work but they were still gonna keep the bulk of the winnings ended by that point I saw that it was just so much resentment among the players who felt like they were being burned out and they were risking and they were playing and these guys are making all the money that I didn't want a lot of soft with them I thought it was time to just start something new but out of respect to those who trained him Semyon decides to wait until strategic investments disbands before forming another team he doesn't have to wait long strategic investments bill what happened was I basically we called Bill up and said first of all I'm distraught over the money and second of all you've had this horrible losing streak and I'm just like both I'm kind of fed up and I'm angry and I'm depressed you know I just don't want to deal with this anymore I'm out you know if we are making tons of money it'd be one thing but we're not and it's just an amazing headache both from the money thing and and the problems we were having Griffin and players and problems with management versus the players it just became not worth it to me the management having lost that million dollar bounty they felt like it wasn't worth all the long hours they're putting in and all the frustrations that are being cost and they they were ready to give it up and they did by the end of December 1993 strategic investments is no more mr. M's vision to build the biggest best organized blackjack team ever had succeeded partially while the exceptionally large team had experienced several great runs it survived for less than two years ultimately falling victim to play a resentment casino heat and like many organizations uneven management I think the lessons that can be learned from mr. M's attempt to start the greatest MIT team ever are one that if you organize a lot of smart motivated people you're gonna do well the players didn't have any incentive to win but to that you have to have all the members of your organization feel empowered it does seem true that the very ambition the very goals of strategic investments led to its demise I'm convinced that there's a fairly strong link between the lack of incentives and that long run of bad luck with strategic investments officially disbanded Semyon do Koch is now ready to stake his own claim and start a team of his own I think it's fair to say that I took the best of the ideas behind strategic investments in terms of legitimizing and legalizing creating management and oversight and took it to the next level sure and all of this is governed by the law of large numbers it works if you spend the next year making dozens of trips to casinos and if you play by yourself you can win a lot of money but you could also lose a lot of money that's the mass of the game the fact that we started small and the players ended up with being the investors and we won the money ourselves and they grew and grew and grew was there a satisfying strike you play the spotter with deep Samians team which he calls and phibian investments grows throughout the mid-1990s to employ over 60 players in five cities the team's total win is reportedly over four million dollars making it the most successful mit blackjack team ever it became the successful and mighty black tech team and then this reptile team that later had a book written about it was a smaller offshoot by people who probably better acting better at blending into the casinos but didn't have as much of a formal structure organization tax forms etc we won a substantial amount of money after si the main reason that we won was because we were doing things in the way that mr. M wanted to do as part of si so basically his legacy cost the casinos several million dollars over the next few years four or five six million dollars over the next next three years I didn't play blackjack for for a while after that I looked into getting more into poker over the years I got sort of burned out I know and I eventually pretty much got out of the whole thing by 1997-98 the stuff I did before at MIT became more interesting in a lot of ways so I ended up starting a software company with some of them my name age from blackjack over time most members of the original strategic investments team slip away from the shadowy world of blackjack but they're bold plays and pure ambition have become the stuff of legend we do everything that you ever stick around you'll you'll learn it all I think the moral of this story is that essentially if you're smart enough you can beat a system that is unfair conventional wisdom can say something's impossible but it can indeed be possible there are a lot of people who told me oh you'll never make money in casinos you know that system can't possibly work and yet when you try put your trust in people like mr. M we present you with the facts and you believed in them you could go and do it the average visitor to Las Vegas face three-and-a-half nights Gamble's for four hours a day and has a gambling budget of around $500 the dream is simple take that 500 bucks throw caution to the wind and try to break Vegas yes you can break Vegas I would say to people you can break Vegas however to do it you have to be a hundred percent serious about it you need a large bankroll you need to study blackjack and you can only do it for a short amount of time no of course you can't break Vegas you can personally win some money you can walk away from the tables up in a both in a real sense and in a in an expected sense but you I mean you're never gonna bankrupt a casino or take down the city or anything I don't think anybody can really break Las Vegas it's just the big data growth [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]
