Bringing Down the House
29 December 2003
By Mark Pilarski
Dear Mark,
What do you know about a group of college
students who were featured on NBC Dateline who
beat the casinos in Las Vegas out of millions by
card counting? Doug F.
First, Doug, a quick point of fact. It was ABC
Primetime who did the segment, not NBC Dateline.
Here's how it went down. During the 1990s, six
MIT students by employing card counting
techniques made millions of dollars playing
blackjack in Vegas casinos on the weekends.
Your typical card counter can be spotted easily
because they tend to make large bets for no
apparent reason, but these counters had four
individuals spread out making them as a group
much harder to detect. They used a back-spotter
that would stand and count cards, but not play.
A spotter, who would make small bets at the
table and relay messages to the Gorilla. The
Gorilla would move around from table to table
placing huge bets when the spotter and
back-spotter indicated that there might be an
advantage at a table. And finally, you had the
Big Player, who would play large hands and count
the cards.
Casinos fastidiously keep track on card counters
by employing agencies that seek out, and monitor
suspected card counters. They were caught when
someone from their own inner circle sold their
names to an agency in Las Vegas. After that,
anytime they entered a casino; they were shown
the door.
It is an interesting story, yes, but hardly new.
Ken Uston described the same sophisticated of
team collaboration and mathematical mastery two
decades earlier in his book, The Big Player: How
a Team of Blackjack Players Made a Million
Dollars. But, Doug, if you want to read more
about this group of counters, check out Ben
Mezrich's book, Bringing Down the House: The
Inside Story of Six MIT Students who Took Vegas
for Millions.
Dear Mark,
Do you happen to know the origin of strip poker?
Russell R.
I received a question similar to yours a few
years ago, but to date, I have yet to find the
actual origin of the game strip poker.
I can perceive risk takers of past cultures
sitting around a campfire playing with black
walnut half shells filled with pine resin and
charcoal shaking die trying to induce the
opposite sex to shed a garment or two, but I
still cannot find any lineage of the game.
Your question, Russell, does remind me of a true
story a dear friend shared with me that happened
in a casino in Monaco. An American consultant
working out of Milano, stopped off for an
evening of fun while en route to Paris to pick
up his wife-of French extraction-who'd been
visiting the family farm up around Charleville.
He staked out a roulette table where a gorgeous
brunette, very nearly into a low-cut gown, had
done well early on, but had been on a slide for
the last several spins and clearly didn't have
enough moolah left to play again. She stamped a
pretty little foot and began to leave with the
bravura look that needs no translation: "OK, you
bastards! Just you wait!"
She and my acquaintance had been playing on
opposite sides of the table and were aware of
each other but hadn't actually spoken until she
now stormed past him. He had been quite lucky
and now, like the generous philosopher he was,
he tapped her on the elbow and offered to stake
her for another round or so.
"And why would monsieur want to do that?"
"Blind faith, cash overload, not to mention an
eye for the chic and decorative."
"Too kind, a gallant gesture .... and collateral
?"
"Your underwear-at so much per item."
"Oh, mon Dieu, jamais, jamais; I'm not that kind
... etc., etc."
And so it was arranged that in exchange for his
loan, she would visit the ladies' room and
return leaving in his hands whatever she wore
under the gown-at 30,000 francs per item.
As it turned out, bit by bit, she lost the
90,000 francs and along about dawn withdrew to
her hotel. The consultant, a man of wide-ranging
concepts, well above dreary details, was left
with three items of intimate apparel in his
pockets.
Typically, he failed to dispose of the evidence,
and would his wife ever believe how he got them
out of a pure humanitarian gesture?
Of course not.
Gambling quote of the week: "Vegas holds a warm
place in my heart, although, I used to go in a
$30,000 car and come home in an $800,000 bus."
-actor James Caan
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