Movie 21 – True story or fiction?
The movie “21” was released on March 28th, 2008 and the movie is fact based on Ben Mezrich’s book “Bringing Down the House” which tells the true story of the real MIT Blackjack Team during the 1990s. To be honest, the movie plot was far from the book, but then again even the book wasn’t especially true to the original story, and the original MIT team, either. The movie wasn’t completely fictional, as there were MIT blackjack teams who went to Vegas, counted cards and won some money.
Inspired by the real-life story of the MIT students who took Las Vegas casinos for millions, 21 has been reshaped to fit a simple movie template, but at the end, you must question is the counting cards business really so profitable overall?
Maybe the most important thing to know is that counting cards aren’t so hard at all, and it is not necessary to have “genius level intelligence”. The reason why most people don’t count cards is that people think it is out of their reach. Also, 99% of the people are lazy and don’t want to bother to learn that, as counting cards aren’t fun, and it is mind consuming. Many players go to casinos to have fun and counting cards take the fun out of the experience. Last but not the least, counting cards isn’t that profitable at all. You need about $10.000 in capital to make $10-15 per hour counting cards.
In the movie, “21”, young and highly intelligent student at MIT, Ben, is introduced to math professor and his small secret club of people who are being trained of the skill of card counting at blackjack. After that group goes on secret trips to Las Vegas where using their skills they make hundreds of thousands of dollars in winning blackjack at casino after casino. We already talked about counting cards and the possible profit from it, but is the counting cards in Blackjack legal? It is. Card counting is not a crime and therefore it is not permissible for a casino to detain and question a person suspected of being a card counter. But, casinos have the right to exclude the card counters from playing Blackjack. So, the bottom line is that card counting is legal but it is not tolerated by casinos.
Card counting is a system that allows players to keep track of certain cards played. You don’t need to memorize every card like “the Rainman”. You need to count only certain cards. A low-value card (2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) will add to your count by one point, and a high-value (10, J, Q, K, and A) card subtracts one point from your running count. Neutral cards (7, 8 and 9) are considered as neutrals and will not be counted in the Hi-Lo system. So when you count cards and before the dealing, you calculated +2 or +3 there is a high chance that upcoming cards will be high and there is the advantage for the player to bet big. If the count is -2 or -3, then the advantage is on the dealer side. Card counting is generally based on figuring out the ratio of high and low cards in the deck, based on the cards that have been previously dealt. Those are the basic information about card counting in Blackjack, but for those who are more interested in it, they can look for more information on advanced strategies here.
In the end, movie “21” was an interesting movie. It had an interesting story, but like many times in Hollywood, they exaggerated everything. I would personally like more if there were a more truthful elements in the story. For example, in the movie main character won around $315.000 in less than a year, while the real profit from MIT players was around $25.000 per year each. Also, the movie showed that casino hired private surveillance to monitor MIT players. That is unreal as many floor people and managers in casino also know how to count cards and they see card counters every single day in their casinos. Bet sizes were inflated as well. In one moment of the movie main character thinks to place a $500.000 bet. In fact, MIT players typical bet was “only” $1.000 to $2.000 at most. Besides, no casino would let you bet that much anyway. And even if they did, you certainly couldn’t bet that much and fly under the radar about it.
