The plot: MIT student Ben Campbell is accepted into Harvard Medical School. He is interviewed as a potential candidate for the prestigious Robinson Scholarship, which will pay for all his school-related expenses. Ben is urged to write an essay which will make him “stand out”; in other words, an essay which will dazzle the recruiter. During an advanced math class, Professor Micky Rosa challenges Ben with a three door variable change problem, which Campbell succeeds in solving. Rosa invites Ben to join MIT's five-member Blackjack Team. The team uses a complex language of hand signals, “spotters” and “big players” to count cards and win large amounts of money at various casinos. Ben has to be urged, but after due consideration he agrees and is welcomed onto the team. After weeks of intensive training, Campbell is given a test at an underground casino, which he passes. All of this surely can be adapted by a lone player playing at home in an online casino, or am I missing something? At one of the world’s most prestigious universities, MIT in Boston, in a mini-course called ‘How to Gamble if you Must’, which was taught in 1979 during an Independent Activities Period (IAP), a number of students from a group known as the Burton 5, named after their residence, who used to play penny-ante poker with each other, learned about blackjack and the possibilities of using card counting methods. In late November 1979, one of the Burton 5 residents contacted Johnny Chang and J. P. Massar and proposed forming a team to travel to Atlantic City and take advantage of the New Jersey Casino Commission’s recent ruling that made it illegal for the Atlantic City casinos to bar card counters. The team, consisting of four players and an investor who put up most of its $5,000 in capital, went off to Atlantic City in late December after months of intense training, and over the next few weeks they doubled and then redoubled its capital. Here’s the challenge: can you learn how to count cards and see if you can break the bank in an online casino sitting in your study at home. Posted on: June 6, 2008
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