At the turn of the 1980s, a group of students from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) embarked on a venture that was as risky as it was fascinating: beating the Las Vegas casinos at their own game, blackjack.
A close-knit and methodical team
The adventure began in the early 1980s, when Bill Kaplan, a Harvard graduate and enthusiast of statistics applied to gambling, took charge of what would become one of the most famous teams in the history of blackjack.
Kaplan had already conducted experiments on his own in Las Vegas casinos. His new approach was simple but relentless: to transform the game into a collective enterprise, organised like a company with its investors, players, coaches and strict rules.
The team members were carefully selected: brilliant students from MIT, but also from other prestigious universities such as Harvard and Stanford. All were trained intensively, sometimes for weeks, to memorise sequences, count cards in real time and manage their stress in the face of pressure from the casinos.
Science at the service of gambling
The core of the strategy was based on card counting, a method used to assess whether the player or the dealer had the advantage as the cards were dealt.
Each card was assigned a numerical value: some increased the player’s advantage, others reduced it. By mentally adding up these values, players knew when to bet big or fold.
But the team’s ingenuity lay above all in its coordination. Rather than letting a single player attract attention, the members played as a network. Some stayed at the table betting small amounts, keeping the ‘count’ in memory. When it became favourable, a big bettor would enter the scene, placing spectacular bets at the decisive moment.
Mike Aponte, a former member of the team, said:
“What was important was being comfortable, being able to deal with the attention, because money just attracts attention.
The golden age: millions of dollars won
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the MIT Blackjack Team won millions of dollars at tables in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and Canada.
The group operated like a real business. Investors provided the initial capital, sometimes up to several hundred thousand dollars. Profits were then distributed among shareholders and players, with accounts kept meticulously.
The casinos’ response
Of course, the casinos did not remain passive. Although card counting is not prohibited by law, establishments consider this practice a direct threat.
Security teams became increasingly vigilant. Surveillance cameras scrutinised every move. Facial recognition software began to be used.
Some members of the MIT Team were arrested, interrogated, and even banned for life from the largest casinos in Nevada. Mike Aponte recalls a student who got into trouble at a casino in the Bahamas:
“He wore glasses, he had a very meek personality, and he just looked really smart. He was really smart – he was a PHD student. He was up about $20,000 or $30,000 (£12,000 or £18,000) and the casino figured out he was card counting and they brought the police in. They threw them in jail and confiscated not only all the money they’d won but the team money they’d brought with them. That player and his wife – they never played for the team again.”
By the late 1990s, pressure from casinos and sophisticated surveillance methods had gotten the better of the group.
Bill Kaplan:
“As a player it’s an amazing experience, but as a manager we might have 10, 20, 30 people playing in five different casino locales, some in Las Vegas, some in New Orleans, some in Canada, and we’re keeping track of their play, we’re trying to make sure no-one’s stealing money.”
The team fragmented into several competing subgroups, less disciplined, sometimes betrayed by ego or greed. The legend began to crack.
Kaplan decided to retire quietly, believing that the mathematical advantage, although real, was becoming increasingly difficult to exploit in the face of the countermeasures put in place.
The story of an impossible challenge that became a legend
The MIT Blackjack Team was not just a bunch of students looking to get rich. Their adventure was a real-life experiment on the limits of the system, a confrontation between human intelligence and organised chance.
Although the team no longer exists today, its legacy lives on. It has inspired generations of gamblers, mathematicians and filmmakers, while reminding us that, when it comes to gambling, critical thinking remains the best weapon.