Ever since the late 1800s when the original men who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, well, broke the bank at Monte Carlo, there have been several huge runs by gamblers that have had even the largest casinos tugging nervously at their collars.
Next time you’re trying your luck at the bet365 casino tables, why not dare to dream a little bigger? Perhaps you could be like one of these punters…
3. The MIT Blackjack Team
Short of fictionalised bank-breaking in films like Rain Man, this group of Michigan Institute of Technology (MIT) students are probably the most famous advantage casino gamblers in the world. Their exploits have since been shown in Hollywood via the Kevin Spacey film 21.
The MIT Blackjack Team began as an after-school mathematics club, when a group of students decided to use statistical systems and card counting to beat the game of blackjack at Atlantic City and Las Vegas casinos.
These students took the idea of card counting, in which blackjack players gain a slight edge over the casino, to entirely new levels. Their team-based approach minimised the chances of being caught and disguised the card counting betting patterns that casino staff had learned to recognise.
In one weekend alone, the team took home $40,000. Eventually they were forced to move to smaller or even overseas casinos, and many members quit the team which disbanded them. It is rumoured that the team earned over $5 million in their few short years.
2. Archie Karas
This Greek-American gambler is an absolute legend in the world of gambling. Many consider him to be one of the greatest gamblers of all time, though he has both won and lost small fortunes innumerable times.
Archie Karas is most famous for his frankly ridiculous winning streak of the early 1990s. Between 1992 and 1995, he turned his last $50 into more than $40 million in the longest and largest winning streak ever documented. He went on to lose all of it in the space of a few weeks.
Karas still lives in Las Vegas today and while he’s always running up or losing some multi-million bankroll or another, he’s never managed to match that three-year run of 1992 to 1995.
1. Edward Thorp
As impressive as the MIT Blackjack Team were, they would literally not exist without Edward Thorp. Thorp is the card counter. He invented the original system and there would not be blackjack advantage players at casinos without him.
A mathematics professor with a master’s degree in physics and a doctorate in mathematics, Thorp was an adult before he even set foot in a casino in the 1960s. On a trip to Las Vegas, he played blackjack and was convinced there was a mathematically sound way for players to negate or overcome the house edge.
He studied every facet of the game and ran simulations on his university’s computer, looking at literally billions of blackjack hands using a computer that filled a room. Eventually he realised what every blackjack player knows: larger cards are advantageous to the house, and players should bet more when they left the deck. Thorp’s card-counting method gave a roughly 1 to 5 percent edge over the house.
Consequently, his future trips to Las Vegas were much more profitable; a typical weekend might net Thorp over $70,000 ($530,000 in 2016). Naturally, the casinos assumed he was cheating but could of course not work out how. He was banned from many casinos, and in 1962 he wrote his book Beat The Dealer which became an instant hit.
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