It was announced on January 8th, 2008 that by late March 2008, worldwide film viewers will now see the premier of the brand new Hollywood film that shows the life and adventures of the MIT blackjack teams and stars well-known actors Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne.
The movie is entitled 21 and will be released by Columbia Pictures. The movie is based on the famous book "Bringing Down the House" authored by Ben Mezrich. The main plot of the movie centers around a group of students in the institute who learned how to use math based strategies in order to edge out casinos in blackjack games in 1979.
The root of the MIT Blackjack group was a course called How to Gamble if you Must, which was taught in school in January 1979 which is know widely known as the Independent Activities Period. Some students from a living organization called Burton-Conner and who usually played poker, joined the course and learn about the game of blackjack and card counting. These group tried what they have learned in Atlantic but initially found no luck.
The two remaining people from the course were determined to succeeds and begin an advanced IAP course. This helped to develop a more intensive training for blackjack. A new group of players with $5,000 traveled back to Atlantic City for another go in the game. The team achieves reasonable success.
The result attracted new attention to the team but that type of success was not repeated, resulting in internal fighting and breaking up of the team. Some of the members still have connections with the blackjack circuit up until now. An darker element in the movie may be the rumors that the identity of the blackjack team members were revealed to the casino PI firm Griffin Investigations, which in turn affected their operations.
Thursday, January 17 , 2008
Kim Watson