Card Counting

For years, people from all over the world have flocked to Las Vegas, Atlantic City and New Orleans to visit casinos in the hopes of striking it rich. For six Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students, that dream became a reality. It is reported that during the mid 1990’s six MIT students took Las Vegas, Atlantic City and New Orleans for tens of millions of dollars playing blackjack and counting cards. But these weren’t just your average university students, these were brilliant, MIT educated minds being melded and put to work to make millions playing cards. This was more a job than it was for fun.

The team was organized and compiled by MIT Professor Mickey Rosa; however the money for these lavish Vegas trips was coming from several outside sources that to this day are unknown. From there, Mickey proceeded to recruit the brightest and best mathematical minds from MIT to form what was known as the MIT Blackjack Team.

Although the team consisted of six members, two members were the real reason Mickey and his investors made millions during this time. Kevin Lewis, as he is known as in the book, whose real name is Jeff Ma, was the main character in the entire scheme and other members state that none of what happened would have been possible without Lewis. The other main character is Jason Fisher, real name Mike Aponte, also had a vital role in the years of success for the MIT Blackjack Team.

In September 2003, Ben Mezrich wrote a book called Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions. Although the book is an entertaining read and sure to entice blackjack enthusiasts, several of the real MIT Blackjack Team members to this day lay claim that most of the information written in the book is false and was substantially fictional. According to an April 2008 Boston Globe article “Bringing Down the House is not a work of ‘nonfiction’ in any meaningful sense of the world.” In fact, the Globe reporter went on to say that Mezrich not only exaggerated freely, but invented whole parts of the story, including pivotal events in the book that never happened to anyone.