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, but can't afford it. Kevin Spacey plays an M.I.T. mathematics professor who notices that Ben is a really bright student, and invites him to an after school black jack card counting club. Eventually Ben agrees to join the team, 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. Later he loses his cool, makes an emotional play that loses $200,000 and he lands on Spacey's bad side.
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.
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.
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.
wow sounds good