Dave Irvine
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While his peers at MIT were perfecting their keg stands, Irvine spent his weekends doing math…in Vegas. Through the mid-‘90s, Irvine and the other specially selected members of the MIT Blackjack Team took Sin City casinos for millions using a card counting scheme that eventually got them banned from every blackjack table in town.
Although they weren’t technically doing anything illegal, the notoriety of Irvine and his crew approaches the level of Ocean’s Eleven in casino circles. Their exploits were chronicled in Ben Mezrich’s bestselling book “Bringing Down the House,” and are about to get even further exposure with the March 28 release of “21,” starring Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth and Kevin Spacey.
The film’s opening could effectively extend Irvine’s blacklist to casinos worldwide, but he and fellow team member Mike Aponte are still cashing in the chips by passing on their techniques at their Blackjack Institute. Metromix talked with Irvine about the glory days, the tactics he used and being made to feel like a criminal.
The book kind of jumps right into the fray, but how did you first get involved with the MIT Blackjack Team?
My housemate in 1993, Mike Aponte, was on the team, but I didn’t know it at the time. He would disappear and come back with $100 bills; always had a lot of cash lying around. We were poor college kids, and here he is buying sushi with hundreds. He finally let me in on the secret of what he was doing and let me play on the team.
That’s really how it came across. On the one hand, it was this secret cabal of math kids, but you got the impression that anyone with big enough huevos could do it.
Counting cards, anyone can do it, really. The theory’s pretty straightforward and it’s really just a matter of practice. The fact that we were MIT students kind of makes it unique and people are really impressed with that for whatever reason, but at the same time it could have been any college. It’s probably more our entrepreneurial spirit that’s got as much to do with it as our math skills. If not more.
You were a spotter for the team. That’s kind of a different skill set, right?
It is a different position than the big player. [My goal was] to sample as many tables as possible and find that hot table. Once you do, you pass it on and start mining away. The big player [has to] come in and look the part, make the big bets and all that kind of stuff. You have to have not only the technical skills but the persona and the “act.”
The team had a good six-year run, but what would you have done to stretch it out, knowing what you know now?
That’s a good question. The short answer would have been not to bet as much. We would have probably flown under the radar for longer. There were plenty of times where we changed strategy when the casinos started to figure it out.
By 1994, we had switched to the call-in game where we would have the spotter and big player concept. And that was done to throw casinos off, because if you come in in the middle of a shoe (deck), how can you possibly be counting cards?
Then we went to a “gorilla” big player concept. That’s different from a big player in that when they get called into a big shoe, they don’t even need to know how to count. All they need to do is read signals from a signaler who is counting at that table. They’re relatively easy to train, and when casinos started picking off our players it didn’t matter as much.
Hollywood seems to have this “Goodfellas” vision of casino security, where they take you to the back room and beat the crap out of you. But you’ve recounted in the past that it’s typically pretty cordial. Were there ever any notable exceptions?
Like you said, it was usually pretty cordial. There were a few hairy moments. Certainly the casinos tried to use strong-arm tactics on us in terms of intimidation, trying to put that pressure on you as if you’re a criminal. You know you’re not, and they know you’re not, but they try and make you feel that way.
