Mit Blackjack Team Wiki

Busting Vegas (stylized as Busting Vega$) is a 2005 book by Ben Mezrich about a group of MIT card counters and blackjack players commonly known as the MIT Blackjack Team.The subtitle of the original, hardcover edition was The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees, but the subtitle of the subsequent paperback editions was A True Story of Monumental Excess, Sex, Love, Violence,. The episode 'Professor Blackjack' is about MIT professor Edward O. Thorp's (portrayed by Jonathan Dickson) computer-based research on the Kelly criterion that was applied in real Vegas casinos in the form of computer aided card-counting schemes with very successful results. Manny Kimmell, a known mob associate, provided the venture capital for.

• Directed by Robert Luketic. With Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, Aaron Yoo. '21' is the fact-based story about six MIT students who were trained to become experts in card counting and subsequently took Vegas casinos for millions in winnings.
• Jeff Ma '94, MIT Blackjack Team member, inspiration for the movie 21, founder of Citizen Sports, consultant to the Portland Trail Blazers Erika Ebbel '04: Miss Massachusetts 2004; competed in Miss America Pageant.

Busting Vegas (stylized as Busting Vega$) is a 2005 book by Ben Mezrich about a group of MITcard counters and blackjack players commonly known as the MIT Blackjack Team. The subtitle of the original, hardcover edition was The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees,^[1] but the subtitle of the subsequent paperback editions was A True Story of Monumental Excess, Sex, Love, Violence, and Beating the Odds.^[2]

While represented as non-fiction by Mezrich, the book contains significant fictional elements. The book is a sequel to Bringing Down the House; however, the team discussed in Busting Vegas were primarily active prior to the team discussed in Bringing Down the House.^[3]

Synopsis[edit]

The book's protagonist, Semyon Dukach, is recruited by team leader Victor Cassius while attending MIT to play on a highly specialised blackjack team. They employ advanced advantage play strategies like card steering and Ace sequencing. The team deals with the crises of success, and one of the players develops a substance abuse problem that will ultimately prove their downfall. An aggressive investigation by casinos into the teams' various false identities forces them to travel outside of America to continue play, culminating in a high tension climax in Monte Carlo after being caught steering cards.

Characters[edit]

Semyon Dukach[edit]

Semyon Dukach is a real person and MIT alum. The story is primarily based on his experiences and told from his perspective.

Victor Cassius[edit]

Victor Cassius is a composite character. Many of the events involving Victor appear to be drawn from the experiences of Johnny Chang including the plane crash detailed at the start of the book.^[3]

Allie Simpson[edit]

Another composite character at least partly based on an MIT team member known only as 'Katie' who appeared in the History Channel documentary 'Breaking Vegas'.

Factual Inaccuracies[edit]

• The team never got robbed by a casino executive on a golf course in Aruba. This story is allegedly based on the experiences of one of Johnny Chang's associates.^[3]
• Semyon was not abducted at gunpoint outside a casino in Atlantic City. This story was based on an experience he had while working delivering pizzas in Houston, and had no connection to blackjack or gambling.^[3]
• The team that played in Monte Carlo consisted of Semyon, Andy Bloch and Katie.^[3]
• Semyon did reach out to a casino private investigator to help locate a teammate, but not due to drug use.^[3]
• There was no player on the team with whom Semyon had a romantic relationship. In fact he was married with a child at the time of the events in the book.^[3]
• Semyon did not at any point meet Ben Mezrich in a brothel.^[3]
• Ben Mezrich did not learn or use these techniques himself. Semyon demonstrated steering a 10 card for him once.^[3]

References[edit]

1. ^https://www.amazon.com/Busting-Vegas-Brought-Casinos-Their/dp/0060575115
2. ^https://www.amazon.com/Busting-Vegas-Monumental-Violence-Beating/dp/0060575123
3. ^ ^abcdefghi'ThePOGG Interviews - Semyon Dukach - MIT Card Counting Team Captain'. Retrieved 10 November 2012.

Jeff Ma or Jeffrey Ma (born 1973) was a member of the MIT Blackjack Team in the mid-1990s.^[1] He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy. He attended MIT where he graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1994. He was the basis for the main character of the book Bringing Down the House (where he was renamed Kevin Lewis) and the film 21 (where he was renamed Ben Campbell). Ma also co-founded PROTRADE (a sports stock market website, that has since been shut down)^[2] and does consulting work for professional sports teams including the Portland Trail Blazers and San Francisco 49ers.^[3] He cofounded Citizen Sports, a sport-information website and iPhone application based in San Francisco, which was acquired by Yahoo! in May 2010.^[4]

His first book, The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big In Business, was published in July 2010 by Palgrave Macmillan. Ma is a regular speaker at corporate events and conferences where he talks about how to use data and analytics to make better business decisions.^[5]

Ma made a cameo in the film, 21 as a blackjack dealer named Jeffrey at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino.^[6][7]Jim Sturgess's character, Ben Campbell, refers to Jeffrey as 'my brother from another mother.'

Mit Blackjack Team Wikipedia

Ma is the CEO and Founder of tenXer, a San Francisco-based startup, with the vision to 'make work better and your work better'. TenXer was sold to Twitter in April 2015.^[8]

Ma joined ESPN in November 2014 as their Predictive Analytics Expert. Per this arrangement, he does weekly TV appearances on SportsCenter and contributes as a writer on ESPN.com.

In 2017, Ma started the Bet the Process^[9] podcast, a 'sports gambling and analytics podcast,' and began appearing on The Tony Kornheiser Show podcast, picking college and NFL football games.

Mit Blackjack Team Wiki

In November 2018, Ma was appointed Senior Vice President of Product and Analytics at Duetto.^[10]

In May 2020, Ma became General Manager for Microsoft Startups, a unit focused on recruiting startups to use Microsoft technologies.^[11][12]

References[edit]

1. ^'Jeff Ma, Former MIT Blackjack Whiz, Riffs on Fantasy Sports, Statgeeks, Yahoo'. Wired News. September 2010. Retrieved 25 June 2012.
2. ^Justin Berton (2008-03-27). 'Hollywood deals Jeff Ma a good hand with '21''. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2008-03-29.
3. ^Zack O'Malley Greenburg (2006-10-16). 'Picking Winners'. Forbes. Retrieved 2008-03-29.
4. ^Jason Kincaid (2010-03-17). 'Yahoo Acquires Citizen Sports'. TechCrunch. Retrieved 2010-03-17.
5. ^Keppler Speakers. 'Jeff Ma Corporate Speaker'. Retrieved 2012-10-31.
6. ^'21 (2008)'. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2008-04-30.
7. ^Bowles, Scott (March 25, 2008). 'New film '21' counts on the real deal for inspiration'. USA Today. Retrieved 25 June 2012.
8. ^'Twitter Buys TenXer For Under $50M To Improve Its Tools For Engineers'.
9. ^'Bet The Process (@BetTheProcess) Twitter'. twitter.com. Retrieved 2017-12-15.
10. ^Net, Hospitality. 'Jeff Ma has been appointed Senior Vice President of Product and Analytics at Duetto'. Hospitality Net. Retrieved 2020-02-24.
11. ^'Jeff Ma Takes Helm of Microsoft for Startups Global Team'. Retrieved 2020-09-21.
12. ^'Microsoft Seeks Startup Partnerships in Battle With Amazon Over Cloud'. Retrieved 2020-09-21.

External links[edit]

• Jeff Ma on IMDb
• 'New film '21' counts on the real deal for inspiration', USA Today, March 26, 2008.
• Jeffrey Ma at AtGoogleTalks
• 'Jeff Ma Publishes 'The House Advantage', Hyphen magazine.

Mit Blackjack Team Wiki