The MIT Blackjack Team is by far the most famous blackjack card counting team in the history of the game. The MIT Blackjack Team has since stopped playing as the investors parted ways. However, from 1979 – 1993 the MIT Blackjack Team won tons of money in casinos all over the world spanning from the United States to small Island casinos. The team used its strict practices and organization to beat the casinos at their own game for the better part of over two decades.
The team initially formed in 1979 after a mini-course was taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The course was titled “How to Gamble if You Must” and after watching the presentation, several MIT students decided to use the card counting techniques these used to form a blackjack team. Initially the MIT Blackjack Team consisted of students and ex-students from MIT, Harvard University and the Harvard Business School.
In 1979, the MIT Blackjack Team members traveled to Atlantic City to test out their new techniques. The system they used ended up not working out and they lost all of the money that they had saved up. In 1980 there were only two players remaining on the team, so they needed to teach the course to new students in hopes of building a team. The team was eventually filled with two more players, who all went to Atlantic City with $5K that they received from an investor. They ended up winning some money this time, but after a few months, the money had stopped rolling in.
After these unsuccessful attempts at beating the casinos at their own game, the team broke up again. This is when J.P. Massar and Bill Kaplan ended up meeting in a restaurant out of all places and developed a friendship. Kaplan was already a successful blackjack player and had run his own successful team already. He went to Atlantic City with J.P. and watched his team play and they were again very unsuccessful. Kaplan decided he would be interested in running the MIT Blackjack Team if it were to be run his way.
Once the new team was formed, they received a massive pool of money known as their “bank”. They had $89K in their bank to beat the casinos and the new system turned out to work. The strict system that Kaplan taught the new MIT Blackjack Team worked incredibly. In fact, under Kaplan’s guidance, the MIT Blackjack Team players started earning around $100/hour on average from playing blackjack and the investors were seeing incredible returns.
At the peak of the MIT Blackjack Team’s success, they had about 70 players on the team with specific roles and jobs to complete. They were all making huge amounts of money and it started a massive rush of other blackjack teams forming. There are still numerous very large blackjack teams running to this day, however none were as well known or as large as the MIT Blackjack Team.