How did the movie deal happen?Two months before the book came out, I wrote an article about it for Wired. A few days later, a guy calls saying he's got Kevin Spacey on the phone and he wants to talk to me. I'm a huge Spacey fan, but I didn't believe it. My mom thought it was some of my friends pranking me. But after I met with him, he said he wanted to make the movie. We sold it to MGM, which was funny because they owned one of the casinos the players were kicked out of.

The book doesn't have a dramatic ending: The team gets discovered, and the group ultimately disbands. Was the story Hollywood-ed up for the movie?Sure, they had to turn it into more of a Hollywood thriller. But they let us have input. I read the screenplays; they had me and the MIT kids on the set. They shot some scenes just a few blocks from my place in Boston, so I got to hang out with the actors. I haven't seen the final movie yet, but I know they kept the feel of it alive.

Has it become impossible to count cards now that most casinos use automatic shufflers, not to mention face-recognition software?It's hard, but it still goes on. There's another MIT blackjack team now. There are more big-money casinos now than there were in the '90s. They just can't do it for years without getting found out.