MIT Blackjack Team - Blackjack and Card Counting

Blackjack and Card Counting

Blackjack can be legally beaten by a skilled player. Beyond the basic strategy of when to hit and when to stand, individual players can use card counting, shuffle tracking or hole carding to improve their odds. Since the early 1960s a large number of card counting schemes have been published, and casinos have adjusted the rules of play in an attempt to counter the most popular methods. The basic theme of card counting is that since a low card is usually bad and a high card is usually good and since the cards that have already been used since the last shuffle cannot be at the top of the deck and therefore cannot be drawn, the counter can keep track of the high and low cards that have already been played and know the probability of getting a high (10,J,Q,K,A) as compared to low, (2,3,4,5,6).

Six MIT students and residents of Burton House at MIT taught themselves card-counting in 1979. Determined to put their newly discovered knowledge to work, the group traveled to Atlantic City during spring break of 1979 to win their fortunes. After this, the group went their separate ways when most of them graduated in May, some never gambled again, but two members, J.P. Massar and Jonathan, maintained an avid interest in card counting and remained in Cambridge, MA, home to MIT. They offered a course on blackjack for MIT's January 1980 Independent Activities Period (IAP), during which anyone can teach pretty much anything.