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Comment by geebee | Hacker News Reader

The book was a lot of fun, and the movie looks like it'll be entertaining too. It was a little silly that the book pitched itself as "the book vegas doesn't want you to read," though. Vegas loves this book, and vegas loves this movie. How many people are really going to organize a card counting team talented enough to beat a big casino? This movie will fill hotel rooms and get the kids down at the blackjack table. +1 for Vegas.

One thing that irritates me slightly - the blackjack team was mainly Asian, from what I've read. The casinos were ready to believe that an irresponsible child of super wealthy Asian parents was throwing down this kind of money at the tables - a stereotype that the MIT team successfully used to avoid detection for some time.

But eh, it still looks like fun. I'll probably go see it. And yeah, I'll probably lose some more money at blackjack.

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I've never gambled, but from what I've heard Vegas has a hostile attitude towards cardcounters. This always seemed highly irrational, because often times they bring their silly spouse who gives back to the casino more than the smartypants card counter earns.

Then there's the fact that unless you really have some kind of special ace up your sleeve, you can only make maybe $10-25/hr. If you have the smarts to pull off some fancy gambling thing, you can probably use your limited brainpower elsewhere in more profitable ways. It becomes work like anything else. Doing it is not fun, it requires intense concentration and extensive preparation.

Yeah, the whole thing does seem like a big waste of time. The MIT blackjack team is capable of 1) writing software to calculate the expected value of a bet under variable counts and deck sizes, 2) focusing well enough to keep count under duress, 3) working closely in a tightly coordinated team environment, and 4) finding investors.

They don't need to be plaing blackjack, even under favorable circumstances. They can find a higher expected return by moving to Wall Street and doing computational finance, or by starting software companies.

That said, have you ever read Thorpe's "beat the dealer"? There is someting kind of great about gaining an edge over a casino like this. For whatever reason, the idea of using math and computer programming to gain an edge over a casino seems to appeal enormously to a subsection of the population.

Yes, I think the book explained that the team mainly recruited Asians, half-Asians, and Greeks to take advantage of the pit bosses' racial prejudices. The protagonist, for example, is supposed to be of Anglo/Chinese descent.

This reminds me of the Starship Troopers movie, where the Filipino protagonist is played by Casper Van Dien.

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