| NARRATOR (JOHN
SIMM): This is the story of how a group of
gamblers fleeced the casinos for millions.
ANTHONY CURTIS: The buzz for me was the
potential, it was unlimited, and I could make
money without punching a clock. I could have a
tonne of fun, certainly women were going to love
me and it was great.
SEMYON DUKACH: I was excited about the idea
of going against this big establishment, this
David & Goliath kind of situation. And beating
them, and for them not even realising that we're
beating them.
NARRATOR: But these were no ordinary
gamblers, they were brilliant students with an
extraordinary secret that meant they simply
couldn't lose. Their secret would draw them in to
the world of mobsters and underground societies,
hidden gadgets and high tech surveillance.
BEVERLEY GRIFFIN: I think it started as a
lark, and then it got really serious when they
started winning some serious amounts of money, and
then it got to be a threat.
NARRATOR: At the heart of this story was a
beautiful mathematical formula, one so perfect it
was guaranteed to make them millions.
NARRATOR: On the 23 May 1995, three well
dressed twenty somethings entered an exclusive
casino in Monaco. They headed straight for the
Blackjack tables.
KATIE LILIENKAMP: We kind of picked one
that looked like it was reasonable, it looked like
the dealer shuffled in a reasonable way and held
the cards in a reasonable way for us to be able to
play.
ANDY BLOCH: I got a lot of money, so I was
pulling out the money, I was betting you know
whatever we could bet, a couple of thousand per
hand. I think I ended up winning about like twenty
one thousand, or twenty seven thousand on that
round.
NARRATOR: In just under an hour they'd won
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
SEMYON DUKACH: We bet and we played, it was
a lot of fun, I ended up winning a lot, which was
great.
NARRATOR: It was easy money and it was
clear they were going to make millions, because
this was more than a lucky streak. They were
brilliant young scientists and that night was the
culmination of a forty year search for the perfect
gambling formula.
The idea of the perfect formula began with
a Vegas legend. In the early 1950s a man known as
Greasy John played a card game called Blackjack.
He got his nickname from never being without a
huge basket of fried chicken. He was so repellent
no one could bare to share his table. He played
for hours on end, just him against the dealer, and
night after night he'd win. Clearly he had a
system, but no one could work out what it was.
Then at the height of his success Greasy John
suffered a massive heart attack. Whatever his
secret was he took it to the grave. Greasy John's
story entered gambling folk lore, whoever could
crack his strategy would have the key to enormous
wealth.
In 1959 Edward Thorp was an exceptional
young scientist, about to join the world renowned
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He excelled
in Physics, Chemistry and anything to do with
Mathematics.
Dr EDWARD THORP: The way I, I got
interested in Blackjack was an accident, you might
say purely by chance. It happened one Christmas, I
was going with my wife to Las Vegas for a low cost
fun vacation, but I wasn't planning to gamble
because I knew that, that was a loser for almost
everybody.
NARRATOR: Purely as an academic exercise,
Thorp decided to try his hand at Blackjack. But he
didn't want to hit the tables unprepared. So he
turned to the scientific journals, and hidden
within an obscure publication Thorp found a
mathematical paper that was the very first to
outline a Blackjack strategy.
Dr EDWARD THORP: And it showed that you
could lose at the rate of only six tenths of a
percent in the long run. So I said well, I'll risk
ten dollars on this and have some fun.
NARRATOR: This primitive strategy did not
offer a way of winning, it merely gave the player
a set of simple rules to prevent them from losing
so quickly. But Thorp thought he could do better,
because he'd realised there was something special
about Blackjack. The odds of winning worked in a
different way to almost every other gambling game.
In terms of mathematical probability gambling
games work in one of two ways, in Russian Roulette
a bullet is loaded in to a barrel of six chambers.
Every time the barrel is spun, there is a one in
six chance of firing the bullet.
Dr KEITH DEVLIN: When you're playing
Russian Roulette, if you spin the chamber before
you pull the trigger every time, then each pull of
the trigger is an independent event, the gun has
no memory, spinning the chamber destroys all
memory of what's happened before.
NARRATOR: In other words, spin the barrel
every time and the probability of firing the
bullet never changes. It's always one in six. But
there's another way of playing Russian Roulette,
when you don't spin the barrel between shots, but
just keep on pulling the trigger.
Dr KEITH DEVLIN: If it doesn't go off and
you pull the trigger again, the second pull of the
trigger is not an independent event, because the
odds have changed of you getting an explosion.
NARRATOR: Each time the trigger is pulled
the probability of firing the bullet rises.
Initially from one in six, right down to a dead
cert. The odds change because they are dependent
on what has happened on the previous pull of the
trigger. What Ed Thorp realised was this
dependence is exactly what happens in a game of
Blackjack, and it's because of how the cards must
be dealt. In casino Blackjack, you have to beat
the dealer, and a winning hand is the one which is
closest to the value of twenty-one as possible.
But if you go above twenty-one you lose, or bust.
Critically in most casino games, after each round
the cards are always returned to the deck, so they
can be played in the next hand. But in Blackjack
used cards are not returned, but set aside. This
means the odds of getting winning cards change as
the game progresses. Because the deck is made up
of fewer and fewer cards for every hand.
Dr KEITH DEVLIN: The thing that makes
Blackjack different is each hand is not an
independent event, the cards actually do have a
memory of the previous hands, and a good player
can also have a memory of those previous hands.
NARRATOR: Back at M.I.T. Ed Thorp realised
he could use the fact the odds change with every
hand to his advantage. And improve upon the very
basic strategy he'd found in the scientific
journal.
Dr EDWARD THORP: So I went back to the
article that I had used the strategy from, and
began to read, and in about a minute or two I saw
that there was an idea from mathematics that would
almost certainly work.
NARRATOR: Thorp's idea was to calculate how
removing certain cards from the deck affected the
odds of winning. Pretty soon he uncovered
something significant. In terms of manipulating
the odds of winning, some cards were more
important than others. And it was because of a
critical rule of Blackjack. During a game a player
could stick, that is refuse to draw further cards
whatever the current value of their hand. So a
player with a hand of fifteen could stick to
reduce their chances of going bust. But the rules
said the dealer could not stick until their hand
reached at least seventeen. So if a player had
stuck at fifteen and the dealer had sixteen, the
dealer would be forced to draw again, and risk
getting a high value card to bust and lose. So if
there were more high value cards than low value
cards still in the deck, then the dealer was more
likely to go bust, and the advantage would swing
toward the player. Thorp realised that if he could
somehow keep track of how many of these beneficial
high value cards were still in the deck, then he
could develop a strategy for winning at Blackjack.
Dr EDWARD THORP: It was a real rush because
I knew that I had found something that nobody
believed was possible. The whole thing was really
exciting, probably the most satisfying thing was I
knew something that nobody had known before.
NARRATOR: The strategy Thorp outlined was
beautifully simple. He felt memorising the exact
value of every card would be far too difficult, so
he developed a strategy that relied on
approximations and the very simplest mental
arithmetic. First Thorp divided the cards in to
three groups, then he assigned each group an
averaged value. He gave the twos through to the
sixes a value of plus one, because removing these
cards from the deck was good for the player. He
gave sevens, eights and nines a value of zero, but
to the tens, aces and face cards he gave a value
of minus one, because removing these cards was bad
for the player, because without them in the deck
the dealer was less likely to go bust. The system
was named the High Low count.
ANTHONY CURTIS: So let's just take some
cards off the top of the deck, and we'll identify
them as either good cards for us or bad cards.
First off the top of the deck is a queen, that's a
ten value card, we would like that to be in the
deck but it's now out, so we assign a negative
value to this, often it's negative one. Next card,
five, that just happens to be the best card for
the dealer, this is now out of the pack so we
assign a positive one to that. Next card king,
negative one. Four, that's a positive one. Nine,
this is actually a neutral card, so we go on and
on through the pack, giving positive and
negatives.
NARRATOR: Using the High Low count system a
player would simply keep a running total of the
value of the cards that had been played, adding or
subtracting one, every time a card was revealed.
When the High Low count was a negative value the
deck favoured the casino considerably. When the
count reached zero the casino had a marginal
advantage. But when the count became positive the
deck swung in the player's favour.
ANTHONY CURTIS: So it would look something
like this, minus one, even. Minus one, I'm adding
and subtracting. Even, plus one, plus two, plus
three. At this point we might make a bet with a
high running count of plus three, although it's
early in the pack.
NARRATOR: Simply by keeping track of a
single number a player could predict when the deck
turned in their favour. They could then put out a
huge bet and wipe out the casino. What was
remarkable about Thorp's strategy was that even
though it was beautifully simple its effect was
dramatic. It flipped the advantage from around
five percent in favour of the casinos to one
percent in favour of the player. Now and for the
very first time since the days of Greasy John a
player might have a chance of winning big money.
But the system only worked on paper. Thorp had to
test it in a casino for real. The penniless
academic needed a big money backer. News that a
mathematician with a winning formula needed help
to make millions filtered through the gambling
underworld all the way to the mob.
Dr EDWARD THORP: They wanted to put up a
hundred thousand dollars to bankroll this. What I
elected to do is only take a ten thousand dollar
bankroll, I thought that that's all I needed and
if anything happened it wouldn't seem like so much
money to them so I wouldn't have any serious
problems afterwards.
NARRATOR: So in the spring of 1961,
bankrolled by hoodlums, Thorp embarked upon the
first field trial of his new strategy. Despite the
mob's demands for bigger bets and quicker profits,
Thorp kept his cool. And stuck rigidly to his
strategy. Over three days and three nights without
rest Thorp more than doubled the mob's money,
turning their ten thousand dollars in to over
twenty one thousand. There was no doubt about it,
his strategy worked. Thorp released his winning
card counting strategy on the world in a book. It
was an instant success.
ANTHONY CURTIS: To people in the business
Ed Thorp is the Godfather. He brought to light the
possibility to defeat this game, and it was out
there but nobody had really told the masses, so
er, so Ed was the man, no doubt.
NARRATOR: The casinos began to lose
millions, something had to be done to stop what
became known as the card counters, and fast. They
began phase one of an arms race that has gone on
ever since.
ANTHONY CURTIS: When they felt there was a
problem to be dealt with they implemented their
own countermeasures. And those countermeasures
would run the gambit all the way from the worse
countermeasure was to take the guy in the back and
beat him senseless, so that, you know that worked
real well for a while. But they couldn't really do
that, so they resorted to other things.
NARRATOR: First the casinos tried changing
the rules. The card counting system relied on not
reusing cards already played. Shuffling used cards
back in to the deck simply killed the count. So
weapon number one was to shuffle whenever the
casino wanted.
ANTHONY CURTIS: They would just wait until
the counter put out the big bet, and they would
shuffle. But if they'd see a big bet come out,
they figured that the counter wants that deck
dealt, and they don't oblige, they shuffle it
away.
NARRATOR: The shuffling worked. But it
worked a little too well. Continual shuffling took
time, and most gamblers lost interest and left the
tables. After only six weeks the casino bosses
were forced to withdraw the shuffle. They were
back to square one. So they tried a new tack, what
might be harder than counting with a single deck
of fifty-two cards? Counting with over four
hundred cards. Weapon number two was the Professor
Stopper, a huge card shoe designed to hold over
eight decks.
ANTHONY CURTIS: So they began increasing
the number of decks, you know going from one to, I
don't know if two decks got in there at some
point, but then four decks, and six decks, and
eight decks, and you know on and on and on,
thinking that that would thwart the player.
NARRATOR: But the casinos had misunderstood
the Thorp formula. And underestimated the
counters. It was just as easy to perform the High
Low count with multiple decks as it was with a
single deck. A counter could still win big, it
just took a little longer for the card shoe to
become favourable. So, despite the Professor
Stoppers, the counters continued to fleece the
casinos. And then, at last, the casinos got
clever. They decided to set a thief to catch a
thief, and taught their dealers to count cards the
Thorp way.
ANTHONY CURTIS: They eventually got to the
point where they started saying well, let's just,
let's beat them at their own game, let's find
them. Dealers in certain places would be taught to
actually recognise the moves of a card counter.
Sometimes in a casino you'll see a boss walk up,
grab the disc cards, and start fanning to the disc
cards, well he's conducting a quick count of the
cards, to say ok is it positive or negative, and
is that why you've just raised your bet.
NARRATOR: Once the casino dealers could
count cards themselves they could easily identify
a counter by their telltale behaviour pattern.
Card counting took concentration, and it often
showed up in a player's intense expression. Once
identified the casino would simply show the
counters the door. It seemed they had at last
found a way to crush card counting. But then the
counters began to fight back, in a completely
different way.
In 1969 Keith Taft, an engineer, was the
type of card counter the casinos loved. He'd read
the strategy books, he'd practiced obsessively,
day and night, yet he always lost.
KEITH TAFT: So I borrowed I think three
thousand dollars, went to Las Vegas, and I was
betting fifty, seventy five dollars a hand, and
seemed like losing almost every hand.
NARRATOR: Taft was one of those who just
couldn't count cards and fool the dealer at the
same time, because trying to act natural made him
lose the count. What he needed was a way of making
the counting so effortless that he could be free
to concentrate solely on getting away with it. And
then it dawned on him, he would build a machine to
do the counting for him. A Blackjack computer.
KEITH TAFT: I felt I had a well enough
rounded knowledge that I at least could
investigate and find the missing pieces, I needed
to go ahead and come up with some computing,
computing machinery that would beat the casino.
NARRATOR: To help him realise his dream he
recruited his son, Marty.
MARTY TAFT: Hi dad.
KEITH TAFT: Hello son, good to see you.
MARTY TAFT: Good to see you.
KEITH TAFT: How are things?
MARTY TAFT: Very good.
NARRATOR: Bringing down the casinos was
going to be a family affair.
KEITH TAFT: I'd like to share this with
you.
NARRATOR: Two years later, father and son
completed the first ever portable Blackjack
computer.
MARTY TAFT: I remember you building this.
NARRATOR: It was quite a beast.
KEITH TAFT: This was the first computer, as
you can see it's coated with these brass plates,
and it was arranged with an input section, an
arithmetic logic computing section, it had a
random access memory and a read only memory
sections, and I wore the computer here and the
battery set right on top of it. The eyeglasses
plugged in to this connection and the foot
switches plugged in to the lower connector.
NARRATOR: George, as they named their
invention, was operated by four communication
switches, located inside specially modified shoes.
With their toes the player would tap in codes
representing the cards they saw being dealt. This
information was then relayed to the main computer,
which would make its calculations and advise how
to play the next hand through a series of flashing
lights built in to specially modified glasses.
George was one of the most advanced portable
computers of its time, but it wasn't exactly
perfect.
KEITH TAFT: There were some downsides to
wearing this, one is that it's very rectangular,
they always tend to be a spot that would dig in to
your flesh. Also the sodium hydroxide based nickel
cadmium batteries leaked a little bit, and I got
some rather bad burns where it touched my flesh.
NARRATOR: For all its ingenuity the Taft's
hidden computer was never going to work in a
casino. The Taft's knew they had to transform
their bulky prototype in to something more slim
line and practical. Four years later, after the
invention of the microchip, they unveiled David.
Their new creation was no bigger than a pocket
calculator attached to a credit card sized
keyboard.
KEITH TAFT: The hand keyboard was placed on
the thigh, and a hole through the pocket, so that
it could be strapped on to the thigh and operated
with your hands in the pocket normally.
NARRATOR: But David was not just small, it
would take Thorp's High Low count to a whole new
level, and offer players even greater riches. The
beauty of Thorp's original counting method was its
reliance on easy to use mental arithmetic. But
this was also its weakness. Because Thorp's system
had relied on approximations, it did not take in
to account precise value of each card that was
played. So while it worked, there was room for
improvement. The Tafts' realised their computer
could do all the calculations effortlessly, in a
fraction of a second, and using the exact values
for each card. Now a player didn't have to do any
thinking at all. All they'd have to do was input
the cards they saw, and David would do the rest.
MARTY TAFT: The first card you'd see would
be the dealer card. So always we'd put in the
dealer card first, which is five in this case,
we'd buzz tap tap. Then an eight, then the ace
which is eleven, and we'll get our decision.
Stand. Things are going our way.
NARRATOR: The Tafts' computerised version
of Thorp's High Low count dramatically increased a
player's odds of winning. In some cases trebling
them from around a one percent advantage to almost
three percent, and when you're betting big money
those extra few percent can make all the
difference.
MARTY TAFT: Bust, player wins.
NARRATOR: The Tafts' computer had taken
card counting in to a new era. David had its card
counting debut in a casino in April 1977, and made
forty thousand dollars in the first week. But the
Tafts weren't satisfied with building one device.
They set up a production line, to flood the market
with David clones, for ten thousand dollars a
piece. Card counting was back, and now with hidden
computers it was both more accurate and easier to
get away with.
But the casinos caught on. Rumours spread
that card counting was once again rife. Things
were about to get nasty. On the evening of May
11th 1977, Marty Taft made his usual journey to
the Blackjack tables, but this time things were
different, the casinos were on to him.
MARTY TAFT: They had a security guard
standing right there, if I even moved a muscle
he'd like grab me, like this.
NARRATOR: A search in the back room
revealed Marty's hidden computer.
MARTY TAFT: They threatened they'd take me
for a ride, but they also forcefully stripped me
to photograph the equipment being on me and all
that. It was very tense.
NARRATOR: The security guards had never
seen anything like the Taft computer before, but
they were pretty sure that whatever it was, he was
using it to cheat.
MARTY TAFT: I still remember the security
guard sitting there and telling me, "you're in a
world of hurt boy, you're going away for five
years minimum, now get talking."
NARRATOR: But the Taft computer was so
advanced the police couldn't work out what it was
used for, neither could the FBI. As they couldn't
be certain that he'd used the device for cheating,
Marty was off the hook. But the real trouble had
only just begun. If card counters were going to
use hidden machines to help them win, then the
casinos had no choice but to strike back, hard. So
in 1985 the casinos used their power and lobbied
to change the law. The new Nevada Devices law made
it illegal to use any card counting machine. If a
computer counter was caught, they could face ten
years behind bars.
It should all have been over for the card
counters. But then a very different type of player
entered town.
M.I.T., the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in Boston, one of the most prestigious
schools of science in the world, and home to some
of the smartest minds.
BILL HECHT: Your typical M.I.T. student is
among the best of the best. They're obviously very
bright people. They're lingua franca is,
mathematics and science.
NARRATOR: But M.I.T. students are more than
just mathematicians, they are people with a
reputation for free thinking.
BILL HECHT: There's a kind of
unconventional behaviour, a kind of way to look at
the system and say gee there's a loop hole, let's
exploit it. That's a very M.I.T. kind of trait.
NARRATOR: This maverick attitude meant
M.I.T. was full of students doing outrageous
things just for the hell of it. And in 1992 one
such maverick student in search of a thrill was
Semyon Dukach.
SEMYON DUKACH: I was just walking down the
hall and I saw a poster, and it said you know win
a few thousand dollars over the summer, have fun
in Vegas, beat the Casinos. Sounded good to me.
NARRATOR: The poster was for a respectable
sounding organisation named Strategic Investments.
But in reality it was an underground club run by
secretive investors. When Semyon met them he
learnt they had a new take on Ed Thorp's original
card counting system. One that would allow
counters to go undetected in a casino. But it had
nothing to do with hidden computers, it was a
revolutionary new approach. In the past card
counters had failed because the casinos invariably
spotted them. This was because all counters
followed a procedure known as bet spreading,
that's betting small when the deck was bad, and
only switching to big bets when the deck was
favourable. The club realised card counters would
be practically undetectable if they avoided bet
spreading by working as a team of people, each
following a different betting strategy.
BILL HECHT: If you simply went to Las Vegas
and counted cards you'd probably be caught up
fairly quickly. If you assemble a team of people
who know how to count cards, and also understand
the ins and outs of the gaming, what you can do is
assemble a group of people who are much more
likely to be successful over a long period of
time.
NARRATOR: The new approach was team play,
and for the very first time a single conspicuous
Blackjack card counter made way for the hidden
super team. Semyon's team revolved around three
M.I.T. whiz kids, all of them expert
mathematicians who could make it all look
effortless because of their brain power. First
there was Andy Bloch, a computer prodigy with a
degree in electrical engineering. He played the
role of the spotter, it was his job not to make
money but to count cards, and watch for the
critical moment when a deck turned positive. Then
there was Katie Lilienkamp, student engineer and
probability expert. Katie was the controller. Her
job was to bet small, confirm the spotter's count
and calculate the perfect moment for the big
attack. Lastly there was Semyon, computer science
and internet guru, the big player. He'd wait for
the controller's secret signal, then land the
table with a massive wining bet at just the right
moment. Central to the strategy was the big
player's ability to look like a lucky loner, and
bet vast sums without arousing suspicion. To carry
this off Semyon had to adopt a new identity.
SEMYON DUKACH: There was one particular
long stint at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, where
I was Nikolai Nogov, the Russian arm's dealer, you
know making my Russian accent to my advantage. And
I typically had a couple of younger women at my
sides, and I was acting a little arrogant, a
little cocky, so I played to their current
stereotype of the Russian Mafia.
NARRATOR: After months of vigorous training
a team hit Vegas.
ANDY BLOCH: Oh we'd be betting up to table
max which was ten thousand dollars a head. We'd
bet probably a total of like a million dollars in
bets, or more.
NARRATOR: Night after night the strategic
investments team milked the casinos and pocketed
millions.
SEMYON DUKACH: We basically felt after a
while that any casino out there we could beat
them.
ANDY BLOCH: We couldn't believe what we
were doing, couldn't believe like how easy it
really was. And couldn't believe that they weren't
kicking us out almost. But you know over time I
realised how well it had all been thought out, and
how hard it really can be for the casino to spot
us and how much we can camouflage what we're
doing.
NARRATOR: At their height there were over
one hundred and twenty five M.I.T. team members
working the card tables in Vegas.
ANTHONY CURTIS: I actually feel the team
play was probably the most significant threat to
the, the casino bottom line. Because here you had
organised groups that had lots of money, that were
figuring out things before hand, it really wasn't
seat of the pants attack, it was, it was highly
choreographed, get the money attacks, with large
sums of money.
NARRATOR: For the very first time card
counting was widespread, organised, and almost
undetectable. But despite doing all the work the
card counters themselves weren't getting rich,
most of their money was going straight to
Strategic Investments mystery backers. So in 1993
Semyon, Andy and Katie broke from the original
group and formed the Amphibians. And they were
convinced they could develop a system that was
even better. For the M.I.T. whiz kids the counting
itself was child's play, so they went back to the
basic playing strategy for Blackjack, to see if
there was room for improvement. They began by
writing a powerful computer program that ran
thousands of simulations of every hand they'd ever
played.
SEMION DUKACH: The computer would pretend
to play you know Blackjack with itself, and we
would try using different techniques and see which
worked better. And just a lot of analysis, a lot
of people brainstorming and thinking, saying hmm
may when this kind of card is coming maybe you
should trying playing this way instead of that
way.
NARRATOR: By re-analysing precisely when to
stick, when to twist, and exactly how much to bet
in any given situation, they worked out the most
efficient strategy yet for maximising their
winnings. Their combination of flawless counting
and an improved playing strategy meant the
Amphibians were playing almost the perfect game,
they seemed unstoppable. Then the arms race
entered a new and decisive phase. In the summer of
1993 the casinos brought in the Griffin
Investigations team, to wipe out card counting
once and for all.
BEVERLEY GRIFFIN: The faster you can get
someone identified and get them stopped from
playing on your game, the more money you've saved
the casino.
NARRATOR: Beverly Griffin began by
gathering information on consistent big winners.
BEVERLEY GRIFFIN: We started collecting the
photographs of the people who were suspected from
the different casinos. And we'd have names that
they had given, sometimes real, sometimes not.
NARRATOR: It was then that Beverley noticed
something unusual. Many of the big winners had
given addresses from around the same area, Boston.
Then she noticed something else, most of her
suspects played only at weekends, and they were
all around college age. Beverley made the
connection. Could these card counting team members
be students at M.I.T.? To find out Beverley
checked the M.I.T. student year books.
BEVERLEY GRIFFIN: And lo and behold there
they were. Looking all scholarly and serious and
not at all like a card counter.
NARRATOR: The M.I.T. yearbooks viewed like
a rogue's gallery of team counters. Beverley now
realised she was up against some of the smartest
minds in America. So the casinos began to develop
facial recognition technology, for quick and
accurate identification of team play suspects. The
basis for the database were the M.I.T. yearbooks.
From the moment a suspected counter entered a
casino they could be monitored by the hundreds of
cameras on the casino floor. Snapshots could then
be downloaded for computer analysis.
TRAVIS MILLER: Each time he moves I try to
see which shot is going to be the best for him,
that we can use to match him up further down the
road. This would be the perfect shot, he's
directly in the centre of the photo, all we see is
his face, he's looking straight ahead in to the
shot.
NARRATOR: Facial recognition software
analysed the relative position of over eighty
coordinates on a suspects face. As individual as a
fingerprint this information could be run through
the Griffin database of suspected card counters,
and an identification made.
TRAVIS MILLER: And it looks like we have a
perfect match on the very top.
NARRATOR: For the very first time a
suspected team counter could be monitored,
identified and asked to leave before they'd even
played a hand. At last, the casinos had a weapon
to catch the teen counters. At least in Las Vegas.
But the Amphibians weren't worried, when Vegas
became a problem they simply took their team play
strategy on tour.
SEMYON DUKACH: It was a three week trip all
over the Europe with Katie and Andy. We spent some
time in London, in Paris, in a bunch of different
European destinations, playing a very, very strong
game and winning quite a lot. And one of our stops
was the famous casino at Monte Carlo.
NARRATOR: This was going to be their big
night. They were armed with a near flawless
system, honed over some forty years.
ANDY BLOCH: We found a good table, we sat
down, the three of us played, we were able to you
know count cards, and we were winning. Then at one
point Katie got up from the table and she was
going to take a break.
KATIE LILIENKAMP: In the process of coming
back to the table four people actually stopped me
and they wouldn't let me go back to the table.
NARRATOR: Within seconds the table was
surrounded by security guards.
ANDY BLOCH: And we knew at that point in
time that the game was up.
NARRATOR: Semyon and Andy were politely
ushered towards a back room. What happened next
took them completely by surprise.
ANDY BLOCH: There was a security camera up
on one, the opposite wall, and they had the three
of us getting closer together so they could get
one nice shot of the three of us. They pick up the
phone and they're talking in French, and I can
make out a couple of words that they said,
"Griffin Investigations, Las Vegas, Nevada". They
were basically taking our pictures, sending it
over to Las Vegas so that they could check us all
out in the Griffin book.
NARRATOR: What the Amphibians didn't know
was the Griffin Investigations database had gone
world wide, via the internet. Within an instant
the Monaco Casino security guards were able to
positively identify them as known card counters.
ANDY BLOCH: Oh the guy said that if we ever
set foot in the country again we're going to be
really hurt. He was threatening, he basically made
it clear they're going to beat us or probably kill
us if we ever entered the country.
NARRATOR: From that moment it was pretty
much over for the Amphibians. The brilliant
students from M.I.T. had been beaten by casino
technology.
ANDY BLOCH: Once your face gets in the
database as a known card counter unless, unless
you want to have surgery you're career is pretty
much over from any place that subscribes to this
database.
NARRATOR: Card counting had been mortally
wounded. The casinos had triumphed after an arms
race that had lasted over forty years. Edward
Thorp's beautiful mathematical system had finally
been rendered useless, by advances in surveillance
technology. The original members of M.I.T's most
successful team are no longer active counters.
Breaking Vegas was only ever a hobby to them. Andy
Bloch still plays Blackjack, but only
occasionally.
ANDY BLOCH: So I can still play but it gets
harder and harder and you don't want to have to
keep moving around, and you're making less per
hour and you just want to be able to express
yourself, and you can't do that when you're
playing Blackjack, you're trying to act like
you're a fool.
NARRATOR: Andy is now a professional poker
player. Katie Lilienkamp has returned to study
engineering at M.I.T.
KATIE LILIENKAMP: I think they'll probably
always be some people that are able to take
advantage of the game of Blackjack, but er it's
going to be very hard for someone to actually make
a living as a card counter.
NARRATOR: Only Semyon Dukach is still
linked to Blackjack, he teaches others how to
play.
SEMYON DUKACH: I love playing, I love
beating the casinos, I love knowing that my team
was ahead of them, and tricking this huge fifty
billion dollar industry.
NARRATOR: And what about Edward Thorp, the
man who started it all. Well he's taken his
knowledge of how probability really works to the
biggest casino of them all, the stock exchange,
and has made billions.
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