[dl] Big Screen
The man who first told the story of this month's
big-screen gambling movie, 21, is proof that the house
doesn't always win. By Eric Celeste
Sin City
Cinema
The movie 21
is one in a long line of gambling
films. We think these three are the
best bets.
Ocean's
Eleven,
2001
It gets the appeal of Vegas right:
whiskey on the rocks, sleek suits,
effortlessly cool. There, nothing's
as it seems. And George Clooney's
quote reveals the perfect
understanding of card-counting
strategy: "… When that perfect hand
comes along, you bet, and you bet
big; then you take the house."
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Croupier,
1998
Clive Owen is spectacular as a struggling writer who takes a job
as a croupier -- the roulette-wheel operator in a European casino.
As he falls in love with an in-debt gambler and partakes in a plan
to rob the casino, we see the seductive pull of the gambling
life.
Rounders,
1998
The thrust of the story is ridiculous: A brilliant law student
takes on the New York Russian poker mafia to win his stake for
Vegas. Also, the love-story subplot gets in the way. But the poker
scenes are great fun, primarily because of the head Russian card
shark, played by John Malkovich. His is an oft-imitated
performance. -- E.C.
While at a Super Bowl
party in the late '90s, Ben Mezrich ran into an acquaintance, a
former MIT student, who he assumed now worked for a software
company. During the game's halftime show, Mezrich's friend let him
in on a secret. He was part of the MIT blackjack team, a group of
supersmart math wizards who made hundreds of thousands of dollars
by counting cards -- a legal but casino-angering practice of a
player placing large bets after he or she has determined the
previous run of low cards suggests more high cards to come, which
favors the player. (As complicated as that sounds, it's actually
slightly more complicated than that; see the sidebar "Card Counting
the MIT Way.")
Mezrich, a 1991 Harvard graduate, was so intrigued,
he convinced his buddy to let him not only watch the team in action
but also take part in some of their team card-counting forays --
that is, until the casinos got wise and banned them. The experience
formed the basis of Mezrich's 2002 best seller, Bringing Down
the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas
for Millions. We talked to Mezrich just before the scheduled
March 28 release of 21, the feature film based on his book
and starring Kevin Spacey.
How did you get the
story?I knew the main characters, and I knew they
had tons of money. Once they told me about the MIT blackjack team,
I convinced them to let me go with them, watch them, and write
about them.
So you were along for the
whole ride?No, I met them after they were already
together and having success, and the book starts a few years before
that, in the early '90s. But I basically joined the team, and then,
once they'd dissolved because they were being kicked out of
casinos, I spent six months in Vegas writing the book.
Were you putting down
$10,000 bets too?No, I wasn't a guy making big
bets. I was a "gorilla" player, just doing whatever I was told to
do, making small bets and gathering information so the big players
could make their big bets. I'm good at math, but I'm not great at
math.
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.
Can you, personally, bet
in those casinos now?I would definitely be
kicked out if I tried to bet big. But I don't. I go back to
Vegas every few months, and I still like to play, but just
normal bets -- $25 a hand or whatever. I'm more into poker now.
But I'm not a great poker player. I'm not a gambler. I'm a
storyteller.
Do you think the movie will
spur folks to give blackjack and card counting a
try?Movies are so much bigger than books, so I'm
sure it will. I see people reading my book on the flight to Vegas.
I see it all the time. That's the worst thing you could
do. The MIT blackjack team practiced for six months for hours a day
before trying it. And they had a team. And they were MIT students.
But everyone has a dream when they go to Vegas.
Card Counting the MIT Way
Blackjack is the only casino game with a memory. When
you play craps, your last roll has no effect on the dice on your
next roll. But in blackjack, when a low card -- six or lower -- is
dealt, there is one less low card in the deck, even when the
dealing is done from a stack that is six decks deep. That changes
the odds that another similar card will come. Slightly.
In 1963, an MIT professor named Edward Thorp ran
simulations which showed that the more low cards remaining in the
deck or decks, the more the outcome favors the dealer. The more
high cards remaining, the more it favors the player. (That's over
the long run, anyway.)
This "Hi-Lo system" was used by the MIT blackjack
team Ben Mezrich accompanied. They scored sets of cards based on
their face value plus or minus a certain number of points. Like
this:
Cards two through six were worth their face value
plus one.
Cards 10 through Ace were worth their face value
minus one.
Cards seven through nine had a neutral value of
zero.
The teams kept a running count based on those values
and adjusted the count based on how far the dealer was into his or
her six decks, called a shoe in Vegas parlance. From there, quite a
bit more math was involved, including factoring in each particular
casino's edge over the players -- based on that casino's house
rules. Bottom line for the card counters: It's pretty
complicated.
What made it even harder, as is demonstrated in
21, is that the strategy required a team in order to work
well, in part because operating as a team made it more difficult to
get caught. Herein is the lesson for anyone who thinks he or she
might like to give card counting a shot: Although card counting is
not illegal, casinos can ban you for any reason, and most take the
official position that card counters interfere with the gaming fun
of other customers. So before you give it a try, keep in mind that
the only thing you can count on is that counting cards will put a
quick end to your Vegas fun. -- E.C.