Anyone who enjoys the game of blackjack and dreams about winning vast sums of money needs to read Ben Mezrich’s book, “Bringing Down the House.”

The full title of the book is “Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions” and whilst the author swore the book was work of non-fiction, it does contain significant functional elements about the real MIT Card Counting Team that did actually make millions of dollars between 1979 and the early 21st Century.

The book was later made into the hit film “21” starring Kevin Spacey but the real members of the MIT team have said of the book and film that whilst entertaining, many of the events either never took place or were greatly exaggerated.

The MIT team was a real group of students and ex-students of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Business School and Harvard University who devised a card counting strategy that saw them earn nearly $170 per hour in the height of their playing days, thanks to the players having a 2% edge over the house instead of being a 0.5 to 1% underdog.

Potential new members were scouted at the various universities and each candidate was taught the system but then had a baptism of fire where they had to count 8-10 six deck shoes almost perfectly before going onto more intensive training before being allowed to be real money players in the casino.

Over the course of twenty years the team had to don various disguises as they were frequently ejected from the casinos because of their extreme winnings and eventually, thanks in part to cheat detection methods being introduced into casinos such as facial recognition software, they were banned from most of the major casinos across the world!

Whilst card counting is not actually illegal, casinos frown upon the activity as it ultimately costs them money, and lots of it if the player is good and has an adequate bankroll. Today it is almost impossible to count cards as many casinos, including all online blackjack providers, shuffle the cards continuously or after each completed hand. I would strongly suggest watching the exciting film “21” or to read the aforementioned book for a great, if slightly over the top, insight into one of the greatest blackjack stories of all time.