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Author | Ben Mezrich |
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Language | English |
Subject | Blackjack |
Genre | Non-fiction † |
Publisher | Free Press |
Publication date | September 9, 2003 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print, e-book |
Pages | 257 pp |
ISBN | 1-4176-6563-7 |
Followed by | Busting Vegas |
Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions is a 2003 book by Ben Mezrich about a group of MIT card counters commonly known as the MIT Blackjack Team. Though the book is classified as non-fiction, The Boston Globe alleges that the book contains significant fictional elements, that many of the key events propelling the drama did not occur in real life, and that others were exaggerated greatly. [1] The book was adapted into the movies 21 and The Last Casino .
The book's main character is Kevin Lewis, an MIT graduate who was invited to join the MIT Blackjack Team in 1993. Lewis was recruited by two of the team's top players, Jason Fisher and Andre Martinez. The team was financed by a colorful character named Micky Rosa, who had organized at least one other team to play the Vegas strip. This new team was the most profitable yet. Personality conflicts and card counting deterrent efforts at the casinos eventually ended this incarnation of the MIT Blackjack Team.
As revealed in the 2008 paperback edition of the book, Kevin Lewis's real name is Jeff Ma, an MIT student who graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1994. Ma has since gone on to found a fantasy sports company called Citizen Sports (a stock market simulation game). [2]
Mezrich acknowledges that Lewis is the sole major character based on a single, real-life individual; other characters are composites. Nonetheless, Lewis does things in the book that Ma himself says did not occur. [1]
One of the team leaders , Jason Fisher, is modeled in part after Mike Aponte. After his professional card counting career, Aponte went on to win the 2004 World Series of Blackjack, and started a company called the Blackjack Institute. Mike also has his own blog.
The team's principal leader, Micky Rosa is a composite character based primarily on Bill Kaplan, JP Massar, and John Chang. [1] Bill Kaplan founded and led the MIT Blackjack Team in the 1980s and co-managed the team with Massar and Chang from 1992 to 1993, during which time Jeff Ma joined the then nearly 80 person team. [3] [4] Chang has questioned the book's veracity, telling The Boston Globe, "I don't even know if you want to call the things in there exaggerations, because they're so exaggerated they're basically untrue." [1] Whether the MIT Blackjack Team was "founded ... in the 1980s" is in dispute. An article in The Tech, January 16, 1980, suggests that Roger Demaree and JP Massar were already running the team and teaching a hundred MIT students to play blackjack by the third week of the 1980s, implying that the team had been founded in the late 1970s, before Kaplan joined, although Demaree and Massar have mostly avoided publicity. [5]
In its March 2008 edition, Boston magazine ran an article investigating long-lingering claims that the book was substantially fictional. [6] The Boston Globe followed up with a more detailed story on April 6, 2008. [1]
Though published as a factual account and originally categorized under "Current Events" in the hardcover Free Press edition, Bringing Down the House "is not a work of 'nonfiction' in any meaningful sense of the word," according to Globe reporter Drake Bennett. Mezrich not only exaggerated freely, according to sources for both articles, but invented whole parts of the story, including some pivotal events in the book that never happened to anyone.
The book contains the following disclaimer:
The names of many of the characters and locations in this book have been changed, as they have certain physical characteristics and other descriptive details. Some events and characters are also composites of several individual events or persons. [7]
This disclaimer allows broad leeway to take actual events and real people and alter them in any way the author sees fit.
The following events described in Bringing Down the House did not occur:
Though not originally intended to have a sequel, Mezrich followed this book with Busting Vegas ( ISBN 0060575123). Busting Vegas is about another splinter group from the MIT Blackjack Team. The events depicted in Busting Vegas actually took place before Bringing Down the House. Despite heavy marketing, Busting Vegas did not do as well as Bringing Down the House. It did, however, briefly appear on The New York Times Best Seller list. Despite again being listed as non-fiction, Busting Vegas showed similar inaccuracies in recounting the facts, with the main character Semyon Dukach contesting several events depicted in the book. [8]
A film adaptation of the book, titled 21 (so as not to cause confusion with the unrelated 2003 Steve Martin-Queen Latifah vehicle Bringing Down the House ), was released in theaters on March 28, 2008. [9] The film is from Columbia Pictures and was directed by Robert Luketic.
Kevin Spacey produced the film, and also portrays the character of Micky Rosa. Other cast members include Laurence Fishburne, Kate Bosworth, Jim Sturgess, Jacob Pitts, Liza Lapira, Aaron Yoo, and Sam Golzari. [10] [11] Jeff Ma, Bill Kaplan, and Henry Houh, another team player from the 1990s, have brief cameo roles in the movie. 21 was filmed outside the buildings of MIT, in Boston University classrooms and dorms, throughout Cambridge and Boston, and in Las Vegas.
Says Mezrich, "...Kevin Spacey came to me about making a movie. He read the Wired adaptation [12] of the book and became interested... The funny thing is filming may take place in casinos such as The Mirage and Caesar's Palace, where the real thing happened." [13]
Blackjack is a casino banking game. It is the most widely played casino banking game in the world. It uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as "twenty-one". This family of card games also includes the European games vingt-et-un and pontoon, and the Russian game Ochko. The game is a comparing card game where players compete against the dealer, rather than each other.
Card counting is a blackjack strategy used to determine whether the player or the dealer has an advantage on the next hand.
The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students and ex-students. The students were from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and other leading colleges; they used card counting techniques and more sophisticated strategies to beat casinos at blackjack worldwide. The team and its successors operated successfully from 1979 through the beginning of the 21st century. Many other blackjack teams around the world have been formed with the goal of beating the casinos.
Ben Mezrich is an American author.
Breaking Vegas is an American television series that premiered on the History Channel in 2004. The series covers the great lengths people have gone to make money, sometimes illegally, from casinos.
Andrew Elliot Bloch is a professional poker player. He holds two electrical engineering degrees from MIT and a JD from Harvard Law School.
The Last Casino is a 2004 English-French-Cantonese-language Canadian drama film about a card counting scheme. The film was produced by Greg Dummett, Lorraine Richard and Madeleine Henri, directed by Pierre Gill and written by Steven Westren. The Last Casino stars Charles Martin Smith as Barnes, Katharine Isabelle as Elyse, Kris Lemche as Scott, Julian Richings as Orr and Albert Chung as George.
Blackjack is a video game simulation of the card game blackjack. It was designed by Bob Whitehead for the Atari Video Computer System. The game allows up to three players to play a variation of blackjack. Each player is given 200 chips where they can bet 1 to 25 of each round. The game ends for a player when they either run out of chips or earns 1000 chips or more.
The World Series of Blackjack is a televised blackjack tournament created and produced by the cable network GSN. It is a closed tournament; players are either invited to play or attempt to win a spot via a satellite tournament. Rounds are edited into 1-hour episodes and broadcast on GSN. Matt Vasgersian and Max Rubin provided commentary for the first two seasons. Tiki Arsenault was the dealer for Season 1 as Deanna Bacon was the dealer for Seasons 2 and 3 while Jessica Knight was the dealer for Season 4.
David Irvine is an engineer and professional blackjack player and a former member of the MIT Blackjack Team. Irvine was a part of the blackjack team featured in the best selling book, Bringing Down the House, by Ben Mezrich. Irvine was one of the members of a team of MIT students that won millions at blackjack tables around the world by counting cards. The story of the MIT Blackjack Team was made into a major motion picture, 21, which was released in theaters on March 28, 2008. In 2004, Irvine co-founded a company called the Blackjack Institute with business partner Mike Aponte that provides instructional products and services on how to win at blackjack. Irvine has spoken at various events describing his experiences with the team, including the Global Gaming Expo Conference in 2007, the Chicago University Private Equity Network in 2006, among other events. Irvine is also the co-owner of an engineering consulting company called SBR Technologies, Inc., that focuses on the use of a wastewater treatment process called the sequencing batch reactor.
21 is a 2008 American heist drama film directed by Robert Luketic and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. The film is inspired by the story of the MIT Blackjack Team as told in Bringing Down the House, the best-selling 2003 book by Ben Mezrich. IMDb offers a brief summary of the film: "21 is about six MIT students who become trained to be experts in card counting in Black Jack and subsequently took Las Vegas casinos for millions in winnings." The film stars Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Bosworth, Liza Lapira, Jacob Pitts, Aaron Yoo, and Kieu Chinh. 21 was a box office success and was the number one film in the United States and Canada during its first and second weekends of release, despite some mixed reviews.
The Blackjack Hall of Fame honors the greatest blackjack experts, authors, and professional players in history. It was launched in 2002, and its physical premises are in San Diego, California.
Mike Aponte, also known as MIT Mike, is a professional blackjack player and a former member of the MIT Blackjack Team. Aponte was part of a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students that legally won millions playing blackjack at casinos around the world by counting cards. He is the basis for one of the main characters, Jason Fisher, in the book, Bringing Down the House, by Ben Mezrich, which inspired the motion picture, 21.
Advantage gambling, or advantage play, refers to legal methods used to gain an advantage while gambling, in contrast to cheating. The term usually refers to house-banked casino games, but can also refer to games played against other players, such as poker. Someone who practices advantage gambling is often referred to as an advantage player, or AP. Unlike cheating, which is by definition illegal, advantage play exploits innate characteristics of a particular game to give the player an advantage relative to the house or other players. While not illegal, advantage play may result in players being banned by certain casinos.
Jeff Ma or Jeffrey Ma is a former member of the MIT Blackjack Team in the mid-1990s. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy. He attended MIT where he graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1994. He was the basis for the main character of the book Bringing Down the House and the film 21. Ma also co-founded PROTRADE and does consulting work for professional sports teams including the Portland Trail Blazers and San Francisco 49ers. He cofounded Citizen Sports, a sport-information website and iPhone application based in San Francisco, which was acquired by Yahoo! in May 2010.
Semyon Dukach is an American entrepreneur and former professional blackjack player. He is the founding partner of One Way Ventures, a venture capital fund that backs immigrant entrepreneurs.
Busting Vegas is a 2005 book by Ben Mezrich about a group of MIT card counters and blackjack players commonly known as the MIT Blackjack Team. The subtitle of the original, hardcover edition was The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees, but the subtitle of the subsequent paperback editions was A True Story of Monumental Excess, Sex, Love, Violence, and Beating the Odds.
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is the name given by gambling authors to the four U.S. Army engineers who first discovered in the 1950s the best playing strategy in the casino game of Blackjack that can be formulated on the basis of the player's and the dealer's cards. The so-called Basic Strategy, which was subsequently refined through the use of computers and combinatorial analysis, loses the least money to the casino in the long term.
Nathaniel Tilton is an American former professional blackjack player, author of The Blackjack Life, and Certified Financial Planner.
Al Francesco is an American blackjack player and gambling strategist. Considered to be “The Godfather of Blackjack”, Francesco is recognized as the creator of the team play concept, the “big player” strategy, and the drop card method. Beginning in 1971, Francesco personally recruited and trained disciplined card counters to work together in teams to beat the casinos. Franceso's teams of blackjack players would station themselves at various blackjack tables to count the decks, and when the mathematical odds turned in their favor, the counters would signal a “Big Player” to come to the table and place large wagers until the edge was lost and once again favored the dealer. While most card counters would eventually be discovered by casinos through their betting patterns and banned from further play, Francesco's unique team concept helped his players evade detection and continue winning.