"Mr. M" Meets Bill Kaplan
In May 1980 JP Massar, known as "Mr. M" in the History Channel documentary, overheard a conversation about professional blackjack at a Cambridge Chinese restaurant. J.P. introduced himself to the speaker, Bill Kaplan, a 1980 Harvard MBA graduate who had run a successful blackjack team based in Las Vegas three years earlier. Kaplan earned his BA at Harvard in 1977 and deferred his admission to Harvard Business School for a year, during which time he moved to Las Vegas and formed a team of blackjack players based on his research and own statistical analysis of the game. Staked by funds he received upon graduation as Harvard's outstanding scholar-athlete, Kaplan generated a 35+ fold rate of return in less than nine months of play during this "year off."
Kaplan continued to run his Las Vegas blackjack team as a sideline while attending Harvard Business School but, by the time of his graduation in May 1980, the players were so "burnt out" in Nevada they were forced to hit the international circuit. Not feeling he could continue to manage the team successfully while they traveled throughout Europe and elsewhere, encountering different rules, playing conditions, and casino practices, Kaplan parted ways with his teammates, who then splintered into multiple small playing teams in pursuit of more favorable conditions throughout the world.
Read more about this topic: MIT Blackjack Team
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