According to the Channel 8 Eyewitness News, Wednesday morning casino executives spent some time with the most notorious card counters in Las Vegas. It was during the Global Gaming Expo that two people from the MIT blackjack team spoke on a card counting scheme. The team stated that they took $10 million from casinos in Las Vegas and across the country.

The two men were Michael Aponte and Dave Irvine and they created a system to count cards in blackjack. A simple explanation of their method is that the more high cards left in the deck the better the odds for the player. The team would bet big when that was the case. The lower the cards remaining in the deck the odds were more on the casinos’ side. If this was the case the men wouldn’t bet. The method was so successful that for a seven year period they received flights, limos, comped rooms and the best fight tickets available from the casinos they visited. It took three years before the casino’s figured out what was happening and another four for the men to be found out.

"The most we ever made in a weekend was about $500,000. We would routinely make $100,000 on a weekend -- no trouble," said Irvine. "We would literally have our pockets bulging out three inches stuffed with $10,000 bricks.

Douglas Florence was the security boss for the Rio during the 90s and tried to figure out who the card counters were. He finally found out and at the Global Gaming Expo helped moderate the discussion with Aponte and Irvine. He says the MIT team helped change casino security forever and helped bring about new technology and face recognition software. The two men have since retired from card counting but will not help casinos in attempts to catch other card counters.

- 2007-11-28