The exploits of the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Blackjack Team will be chronicled with a film from Columbia Pictures called 21. The films release date is scheduled for late March.

The film will be based on the best selling book by Ben Mezrich called Bringing Down The House. 21 will star Kevin Spacey, Laurence Fishburne and Kate Bosworth. It will revolve around the 1979 MIT students that used math-based tactics to beat casinos at selected blackjack games.

The MIT Blackjack Team was spawned from a course taught at MIT called How To Gamble If You Must based on Independent Activities Period (IAP). This course was based in poker and the students extended it to include blackjack and card counting methods.

At first all but two of the group failed to make money in a trail run in Atlantic City but the two of the group members did make money was determined to continue and started a further IAP course.

Four players came out of that second group forming a new team of four players with a $5,000 stake from an outside investor.

The next several weeks proved very successful and the team grew with new members and training. They could not overcome internal strife though and the group disbanded with reportedly at least one million dollars in bankroll.


- 2008-01-13