Inspired by a true story, a math nerd at MIT who's recruited by his teacher (Kevin Spacey), to join a secret team of students that are blackjack geniuses, who then spend every weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada using a Hi Lo card counting system to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Inspired by a true story, a math nerd at MIT who's recruited by his teacher (Kevin Spacey), to join a secret team of students that are blackjack geniuses, who then spend every weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada using a Hi Lo card counting system to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I'm sure this movie put ideas into many peoples heads, so who wants to learn to count cards now?

The real MIT team, and also shown in the movie 21, used the hi lo card counting system. Card counting is a card game strategy used to determine when a player has an advantage over the house. The term is used to refer to the tracking of the ratio of high cards to low cards in blackjack.

Basic card counting is a system that will assign a positive, negative, or zero value to each card value available. When a card of any value is dealt, the count will then be adjusted by that card's value. Low cards increase the count, while high cards decrease it for the opposite reason, and values 7-9 do not affect the count.

Here are some basic principles behind card counting: Tens bust all stiff hands and will increase the chance the dealer will lose, high cards are better for the player, low cards are better for the dealer. A high concentration of low values is safer for the dealer. A high ratio of Aces and tens increase the chance of Blackjacks. A low count of Aces also decreases the probability of Blackjack. A high number of ten-value cards also makes the insurance bet more profitable. Regardless of what you may have heard, card counters do not require any special mental abilities to count cards in a hi lo system, mainly because they are not memorizing specific cards, but instead, card counters assign a value to each card , and then they track only the sum of these values.

Card counters do not need special mental abilities to count cards, just some proper training! This is because they are not memorizing any specific cards. Instead, card counters assign a value to each card , and then they track only the sum of these values.

The casino will assume you are a counter if the casinos spots a player changing bets with the count.

Because of the MIT students unique strategy, the casinos had difficulty identifying the members of that team. So by playing as a team, one player would start to play on a table, and bet only the tale minimum while tracking the count. Once the count shows an advantage over the dealer, that member would signal the big money spender to join the table and throw down large amounts of money while the count is in the positive!

It is impossible to "detect" the sequence of the any remaining cards, therefore, card counting is only used as a probability advantage.