Went to see the movie "21". It's about a really bright M.I.T. student named Ben Campbell (real life name 'James Ma') who wants to get into Harvard Medical school. He has gotten straight A's, almost the max SAT scores, done all kinds of extra curricular activities, but desperately needs a scholarship to avoid the $300,000 cost of Harvard Medical school. The movie plays on white male frustration with set asides and affirmative action, as the dean in charge of awarding the scholarship tells Ben that while Ben's qualifications sound good, there are 79 candidates for the scholarship all with similar grades, and that last year's winner was a one-legged Asian immigrant, what could Ben do as a white male non-minority to "leap off the page"?
Kevin Spacey plays an M.I.T. mathematics professor. Spacey notices that Ben is a really bright student, and invites him to an after school black jack card counting club. At first Ben thinks it is a diversion, but Spacey keeps making the point that they are in business according to a system, they are not gambling. Gambling is any diversion from the system. He admires Ben and tells Ben that he is able to rule his emotions and be cold and calculating under any circumstances. Ben is still not sure, and at first goes back to his $8 per hour job as the assistant manager at tailor shop selling $1000 suits.
Of course one of the girls on the 5 player team comes to visit him at work to entice him to consider the possibilities of blackjack. Eventually he does, and although at first he says he is only in the game long enough to earn the $300,000 he needs for Harvard, he gets hooked on the lifestyle. Eventually the girl who came to see him gets involved with Ben romantically during the height of the excitement in Vegas. Spacey works some strings for Ben to relieve Ben of some of his assignments so that Ben can come to Vegas.
The movie realistically describes what card counters must learn to play. This particular group plays by having spotters at several tables always making minimum bets and counting cards until the table goes hot. They then make a signal, in this case stretching with their arms behind them, to tell one of the two big money players to come in and bet big. As the big money player, (Ben was selected by Spacey for this role to replace a fellow named Fisher who has somewhat mysteriously disappeared from the team), comes to the table, he will hear the spotter say something that has a code word in it for the current count of the deck, for example "Oh, this drink is too sweet", or "This is just like in the magazine". Sweet might mean +14, and magazine might mean +17. He then sits there, bets big, and keeps the count from there. The spotter stays, continuing to play small, and in case the big player gets too caught up in the moment of winning big, the spotter will remind the big player that the table has gone cold via a signal like rubbing her hair. The spotter is supposed to immediately stop betting.
One night Ben looses control of his emotions, and despite being told by one of the other counters that the table has gone cold. He makes a $100,000 bet, then doubles it down, and loses it all!
Kevin Spacey is livid, telling Ben he will pay it all back, one way or another.
Also in the movie is a couple of guys working in "Loss Prevention", one of whom owned a big casino that had been taken years ago for "seven figures" by Spacey, and caused the guy now doing loss prevention to lose his casino. He's waiting for the chance to meet up again with Spacey, who had never been seen again since that night. The loss prevention guy plays just as much of a villain as Spacey, and is lamenting with his partner how they are being replaced by the casinos going to "facial recognition" software. He studies the tables, asks for a casino camera video tape of a table to be rewound, (is chided by his boss that now everything is digital, there are no tapes), and spots the stretching sign being given to the Ben that is causing some of casino tables to lose big.
I had thought that the movie would be based on the book "Million Dollar Blackjack" by Ken Uston
. Ken Uston (January 12, 1935 - September 19, 1987) was a famous blackjack player, strategist, and author, credited with popularizing the concept of team play. In his book he talks about how he and a group of other M.I.T. students took the casinos for large sums of money. They even pioneered things like shoe based computers that would calculate the odds.
I think a movie based on the team's actual events could have been even more interesting.
Although the movie was basically correct in it's portrayal of the casinos and card counting, some things that were exagerated or errors stood out:
- Counts were being shown as high as +17. That very rarely happens in a shoe game. In 8 hours of play, with typical counting systems, you might be lucky to find the count as high as 5 just two or three times.
- Many casinos if they feel threatened about losing, may do a short shuffle which means when a new player sits down the cards are immediately shuffled, which means the big player never gets a chance to bet big.
- They forgot about the patriot act, which may have some affect on the amount of chips that can be cashed in at one time.
- Casinos limit the spread between high and low bets to limit their losses when the deck goes in favor of the player
The movie refered to doing things to avoid getting banned from the casinos.
According to http://www.uston.com/intro.htm:
- Ken challenged the legality of the exclusion of skilled blackjack players. He told Harry Reasoner on "60 Minutes" in 1981, "Basically I am just using skill in a casino. I'm not cheating, I'm not doing anything other than trying to use my brain. And the fact that I'm not allowed to play bothers me. It would be as if Bobby Fisher not allowed to play chess, or Pete Rose not allowed to play baseball, or Charles Goren isn't allowed to play bridge. And I like to play blackjack and I feel that in a way my skill is-effectively hampered me in this profession, and it's unusual. Sort of against the American Way."
Although state supreme courts have ruled it is illegal to ban card counters, the gaming commissions have tighted the rules to make it much more difficult for card counters to win.
