Bringing Down the House

At 3:10 A.M., Barry Chow looked like he was about to pass out. Three empty martini glasses sat on the felt in front of him. He leaned forward on both elbows, staring at his cards. Truth be told, his name wasn't Barry Chow. It was Kevin Lewis. And he wasn't drunk. The splotches on his cheeks had been painted on. His pile of chips--$30,000 worth--wouldn't impress the people who knew him well. They'd be more interested in the ratty duffel bag under his chair.

Kevin breathed deeply, calming himself. He'd done this a hundred times.

He reached for three purple chips, worth $500 each. Out of the corner of his eye he found his spotter--a redhead wearing a low-cut blouse and too much makeup. Nobody would have guessed she had studied electrical engineering at MIT and now was an honors student at Harvard Business School. He watched for her signal. A bent right arm would tell him to double his bet. Both arms folded and he'd push most of his chips into the circle. Arms flat at her sides and he'd drop to the lowest possible bet.

She didn't (continued on page 136) House(continued from page 114) do any of these things. Instead, she ran her hand through her hair.

Kevin gathered his chips. "That's it for me," he said, slurring his words.

Her signal had nothing to do with the deck, or with the running count that had won him 30 grand in less than an hour. A hand in the hair meant only one thing. Get out. Get moving. Now.

Kevin slung the duffel over his shoulder. He was about to toss the dealer a tip when he caught sight of the suits. Three of them, rushing around the craps table. Big, burly men with narrow eyes. He darted toward the door.

A minute later he was on the Strip, safe among the crowd. He sat on a bench and put the bag on his lap. A few minutes later, the spotter dropped down next to him, lighting a cigarette. Her hands were shaking. "Think we should call it a night?"

"Let's try the Stardust. My face is still good there."

He put both hands on the bag, feeling the bills inside. A little over $1 million, all in hundreds: Kevin's bankroll.

Most of his friends were back in Boston at school--taking tests, drinking beer, arguing about the Red Sox. He was in Las Vegas, living large. A math whiz, Kevin had gone to MIT to study electrical engineering. But during weekend excursions to Vegas, he partied with the likes of Michael Jordan, Howard Stern, Dennis Rodman and Kevin Costner. He met a former Rams cheerleader and flew her in whenever he came to town. He had been chased off a riverboat in Louisiana. He narrowly escaped being thrown into a Bahamian jail. He'd been tailed by private detectives with guns holstered to their waists and had his photo faxed around the globe by agencies hired to protect their employers' money.

Along the way, Kevin amassed a small fortune, which he kept in neat stacks in a closet by his bed. Although nobody is sure how much money he had made, it was said to be between $1 million and $5 million--all of it legal.

In the Beginning

Kevin's blackjack education had begun three years earlier. He had stayed in Cambridge during the summer after his junior year to work in a chemistry lab. When he wasn't shuffling test tubes or working out at the campus gym, he hung with two classmates who shared an apartment near campus. Jason Fisher and Andre Martinez were a study in contrasts. Fisher was a hulk of a guy, while Martinez was barely five-foot-four and couldn't have weighed more than 130 pounds. Both had dropped out of MIT the previous year; Fisher because of a family emergency and Martinez because, as rumor had it, he'd been expelled. When Kevin teased his friends about being slackers, Fisher replied: "We think of ourselves as emancipated. We're working our way up to slacker."

Although they didn't have jobs, the roommates always had cash. One day Kevin said, "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you two were selling drugs."

"White slavery," Martinez replied.

"Seriously," Kevin said. "Where the hell do you guys go on weekends? You have been gone every Friday this summer."

Martinez looked over at Fisher, who shrugged. Martinez reached into his back pocket and tossed something onto the table. It landed with a soft thud, a stack of cash about two inches thick. Kevin picked it up and flipped through the bills. Hundreds. A hundred hundreds. Ten grand.

Kevin's eyes widened.

Martinez smiled. "Blackjack," he said. "It's the only game worth playing."

Quick Study

Martinez and Fisher agreed to let Kevin accompany them that weekend to Atlantic City. After they had settled into their luxury suite at the Tropicana, Fisher wandered off and Kevin walked with Martinez to the blackjack tables.

"Do you know basic strategy?"Martinez asked.

"Keep hitting until you get 17 if the dealer's showing a high card," Kevin replied. "When the dealer is showing a weak card, stick with your first two cards. Double down on 11, hoping to draw a face card for 21."

"That's a start," Martinez said. He extended his hand, offering Kevin half of his stack of bills. Five thousand, cash.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Kevin asked.

After the first few hands, Kevin's nerves settled. The shuffle of the chips lulled him. Although he was a whiz with numbers, his entire knowledge of basic strategy had come from a cable TV special: It was a framework of plays developed in the Fifties by four Army mathematicians. They had played 10s of thousands of hands and published their results in the Journal of the American Statistical Association.

Kevin had never bothered to study basic strategy because he gambled only occasionally--and he wasn't sure how much of a difference it made. Was skill that much of a factor in a game like blackjack? Didn't it boil down to luck of the draw?

Martinez played smoothly, barely looking at his cards. He kept his bets around $200, but every now and then jumped to $500 and once even laid down $1000, getting lucky with a pair of kings. He never celebrated when he won, never complained when he lost. His play seemed to follow basic strategy, except for a few odd executions. Once, with a $200 bet, he hit on a 16 against a dealer's two. He drew a two for an 18 to win the hand. Another time he doubled on an eight, managing to draw an ace. Toward the end of the shoe, he began raising his bets, taking advantage of a hot streak. Kevin began to win himself. When the shuffle card came out, signaling the end of the shoe, the dealer raised her hands.

"That went well," Kevin said. He and Martinez were up a few thousand dollars. It was time to get a drink and celebrate. Martinez caught his eye.

"You see that last run?" he whispered.

"We got lucky. A lot of high cards."

"Actually, it was 19 face cards and three aces set among eight unremarkable lows. So now, near the top of that stack of unshuffled cards, there is a string of predominantly high cards, about 30 deep."

"I don't follow."

"You know that high cards favor the player, right?" Martinez said.

"Sure. Because the dealer has to hit up to 16, with more high cards, she'll bust more often."

"That's one reason. So if you knew that a run like that was about to come out of the deck, couldn't you take advantage of the situation? Raise your basic bets, change your strategy, win a lot of hands with a lot of money on the table?"

"But she's shuffling the cards."

Martinez smiled. "Right in front of us."

"There's no way to track them."

"There isn't?"

The play went quietly. Kevin and Martinez remained about even with the house. As the shoe reached the halfway point, Kevin relaxed, assuming that Martinez had been screwing with him.

Over the next four rounds, Martinez won nearly $6000. After the shoe emptied, Martinez scooped up his chips and stepped away from the table. Kevin followed him. When they had passed out of the high-stakes area, he grabbed (continued on page 151)House(continued from page 136) Martinez by the shoulders.

"How the fuck did you do that?"

Blackjack 404

The answer is known as counting cards--keeping track of the high and low cards in a shoe to give a player an advantage. After they had returned to Boston, Kevin read up on blackjack theory at the MIT library and confirmed much of what Fisher and Martinez had been telling him. The game was beatable. But as Kevin understood it, counting had two major flaws. First, a player's percentage over the house was too low. Even the most complex systems aimed at an edge of, at most, two percent; to make any money, you needed an enormous stake, and moving that kind of money around would draw attention. Because counting cards doesn't affect the outcome--i.e., it's not technically cheating--a casino couldn't have you arrested. But it could banish you. In the end, card counting was a neat parlor trick, but it didn't seem like a way to make money. At least not the kind of money his friends threw around.

Three weeks into the fall term of his senior year, Kevin was taking a late-night swim when Fisher and Martinez showed up at the pool. "There's someone we'd like you to meet," Fisher said.

They walked together to a classroom located halfway down the Infinite Corridor, the long hallway of rooms that runs through the center of campus.

"Kevin, this is Micky Rosa," Martinez said. "He used to teach here, back in prehistoric times."

"I still teach here," Micky said as he shook Kevin's hand. "But now I teach for profit."

Micky introduced each of the seven people who filled desks at the front of the room. Kevin recognized three of them. There was Kianna, a beautiful Asian who also majored in electrical engineering and was the only woman in the group; Michael, a blond tennis jock; and Brian, a senior who, like Kevin, had grown up near Boston. The others were strangers; three appeared to be Chinese. They all had the MIT aura about them: studious, awkward and slightly superior.

"This is the MIT Blackjack Team," Micky said. "It's been around for two decades. We want you to come aboard."

What's the Count?

As a member of the blackjack team, Kevin would earn a cut of the total winnings. He also could invest his own money, once he had earned some. Everyone gambled except Micky, who organized weekend excursions to Vegas and raised cash from investors who had come to expect returns of 30 percent or more.

Before he could travel, Kevin had to prove he could count cards well enough not to be detected. Over the next few weeks, Micky and the others guided intense practice sessions while sequestered in empty classrooms with the shades pulled. This not only ensured privacy but also simulated the poor lighting of smoke-filled casinos.

"Have you heard of the high-low method?" Micky asked during the first session.

Kevin had read about it. In his 1962 book, Beat the Dealer, former visiting MIT professor Edward Thorp outlined a counting method that allowed players to keep track of the number of high cards left in a shoe. Instead of counting individual cards, players kept track of a single number, known as the running count. This number was added to every time a low card came out of the deck, and subtracted from every time a high card hit the table. The higher the running count, the more high cards were left in the shoe--indicating that the player should raise his bets. When the running count went negative, the player lowered his bets. Depending on the initial stake and the number of hands played, a player could gain a significant advantage.

Kevin had been correct to recognize the flaw in the system--to take advantage of the highs and lows, a player has to drastically raise and lower his bets. That makes it easy for a casino to spot counters. But the MIT players overcame that by working as a team.

Martinez explained the system. "You'll start out as a spotter," he said. "A spotter's job is to find a table with a hot deck. He plays the minimum bet as he counts. Nobody suspects him because he's like everybody else--losing a bit, maybe getting lucky but never varying his bet.

"When the count gets good, the spotter signals a call-in. The call-in is either a gorilla or a big player. A gorilla stumbles over like a drunk rich kid and starts throwing down big bets. He doesn't count the cards, he just bets and waits for the spotter to signal him that the run is over. He's a gorilla, brain-dead. Then when the signal comes, he wanders off in search of his next call-in."

"And a big player?"

"A big player does it all," Martinez said. "It's acting and counting and betting. It's tracking the shuffle and cutting to aces. You carry the big money, and you get yourself known by the casino personnel who will give you a luxury suite, champagne and other goodies to keep you coming back. You get called in by the spotter, but you take over the play. You do things the gorilla can't, like raising the bet as the deck gets hotter, but you have to do it with style so the casino doesn't nail you."

The spotter signaled the gorilla or big player with physical movements such as crossing his arms or putting his hands in his pocket, then passed the count with code words that could be used in a sentence without raising suspicions. For example, glove indicated a count of five (for five fingers), cat was nine (nine lives), football meant 11 (think goalposts) and sweet was 16.

To Kevin, the elaborate signals seemed overly dramatic, especially the fingers-through-the-hair move that indicated danger. What could possibly go wrong?

"You need to understand something," Martinez said. "From the moment you walk into a casino, they're watching you. There are cameras everywhere. There's also a face book put together by this detective agency hired by the casinos, Griffin Detective Agency. Certain card counters have found their way into the book."

"Is your photo there?"

"Not yet. But Micky's on the first page. If they see us with Micky, they might try to back-room us."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"Nothing, really. They try to get you to come to a back room, usually in the basement. It's an intimidation thing. If you go down there, they take your picture, make you sign something. At that point, if you return, you're trespassing. Once they have your photo, you're done."

Into the Pit

Kevin made his debut as a spotter at the MGM Grand. On the second night, Micky assigned him to play the gorilla. As Kevin staggered through the crowd, he located his spotters. Kianna had a seat at the table closest to the elevators. Michael and Brian played near the back of the pit. Martinez sat at a central table next to two black men in silk suits. Kevin was about to start a second pass when he saw Martinez fold his arms.

Clutching his drink, Kevin pushed through the crowd and wedged himself into first base. He jammed his hand into his pocket, pulled out $10,000 in cash and plopped it down on the felt. As the dealer counted out the chips, Kevin offered a wide smile. "How's everyone doing tonight?"

Martinez grunted. "Getting crushed like a carton of eggs."

Plus 12. The three other players nodded amiably, and Kevin was struck by how huge they were. A lifelong sports fan, he had no trouble recognizing them: Allan Houston, John Starks and Patrick Ewing of the New York Knicks. Houston had $300 down. Starks was betting $250. Ewing had $500 in front of him.

Kevin pushed forward two $500 chips.

Houston shook his head, impressed.

"Hey, Big Money. That's how it's done." He took a handful of cigars out of his pocket and offered them to the table. Ewing and Starks each took one. Martinez declined. Kevin shrugged. Hell, why not? He could be back in Boston pounding beers at a frat party. Instead, here he was smoking cigars with the New York Knicks.

The cards started to come out, but Kevin barely noticed them. He kept one eye on Martinez, waiting for signals to guide his play.

Over the next hour, Kevin led the table in an impressive slaughter. As the gorilla, he racked up $10,000 in profit, earning applause from the crowd by splitting 10s twice and doubling down on an eight. By the time he rose from the table, the players had invited him to party in the celebrity suite at the Mirage. Kevin's head spun. This was better than he had imagined.

Big Play

Kevin quickly proved to be a skilled counter, so on a return trip to the MGM Grand a few weeks later Micky assigned him the role of big player. Kevin was about to take a break when he was called into a plus-14 deck by Michael. Kevin was up $8000 on the weekend; he slid into the table cocky. The count rose. After three rounds, he had moved up to two hands of $10,000 each. A crowd gathered. He drew an 11 and a pair of nines against the dealer's five. It was the most beautiful two hands he had ever seen. He doubled the 11, raising that hand's bet to $20,000. He drew a seven, making a hard 18. Then he split the nines--$10,000 more on the table--and drew a two on one, an eight on the other. He doubled the first hand, drawing an eight. He left the last hand alone.

Now he had $50,000 on the table and three good hands: an 18, a 19 and a 17 against the dealer's five. The odds were enormously in his favor. He leaned back and smiled. He was about to score the biggest win of his life.

His stomach dropped as the dealer turned over his bottom card to reveal a six. The dealer flipped the next card, a 10, for a 21. Kevin's ears rang. The dealer swept the $50,000 off the table.

"Oh my God," somebody said. Kevin clenched his teeth. He could hear Michael breathing heavily. He thought about getting up, but the count was still in double digits. And now the deal was further into the deck.

He moved three stacks of chips--worth $10,000 each--into the playing circles.

The dealer dealt Kevin an 11, a 14 and a pair of sevens, then pulled the worst card in the deck, a six.

Kevin took a deep breath. He doubled down the first hand, adding $10,000 more. He drew a nine for a solid 20. He left the 14 and split the sevens. He got a 10 on each, two 17s. Now he again had $50,000 on the table, betting on a 20, an ugly 14 and two 17s.

The dealer flipped his bottom card, revealing a queen. He now had a 16, the worst possible hand. Kevin was smiling as the dealer drew his next card.

The crowd groaned.

A five. The dealer flipped a goddamn five. On a plus-14 deck, Kevin had lost $100,000 in two hands.

Kevin got up and pushed through the crowd. By the time he reached the elevators, his face had gone numb. Back in his VIP suite, he lay down on the shag carpet, arms outstretched. Overall, the team was way ahead for the month. But it was a painful lesson. No matter the count, the cards could go bad. Even math left room for luck.

On a Roll

Play continued through the winter and spring. In June, Kevin graduated from MIT and found a well-paying job in Boston as a software engineer. But that was largely for appearance. He hadn't told his parents about his gambling; he knew they wouldn't take it well. As far as they knew, he had to travel every few weekends for work. In reality, he and the rest of the team would spirit off to Vegas. They would land in the evening, play all night, crash in their free luxury suites, eat their free gourmet meals, lounge by the pool, watch a prize fight, party with celebs, hit the tables for another shift into Sunday, then fly home on Sunday night, their wads of cash strapped to the bodies of team members assigned to play the mules.

It was great while it lasted.

The first sign of trouble came at New York--New York. Like the city, the casino is a nightmare of pedestrian gridlock. It was hard enough to gamble there on your own; team play was almost impossible. Still, Fisher wanted to give it a shot. He felt that Kevin had played the MGM Grand, the Stardust and the Mirage so heavily in the past year there was a chance that security personnel watching through the overhead cameras (the Eye in the Sky) would put things together. Kevin thought Fisher was being overly cautious but went along.

Partially because the crowds and the layout limited his movement, Kevin lost $7000 in the first hour of play. Inside, he cursed Fisher for making him play this amusement park. He caught sight of one of the new spotters, Jill, who had crossed her arms. He ambled over. "I sure hope my sister remembers to feed my cat," she said. Plus nine. Kevin bet $700 and followed the cards up to $2000 a hand. In 10 minutes he won $17,000. Maybe New York wasn't so bad after all.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jill run her hand deep through her red hair. Shit. Too late. A barrel-chested man in a dark suit stepped from behind the dealer and leaned over Kevin's shoulder.

"Sir, a word, please?"

Kevin could tell from his tone that the man wasn't about to offer a free room. Kevin reminded himself to stay calm. He scooped up his chips. "Actually, I was on my way out. That goddamn roller coaster is driving me nuts."

The man blocked his path. His name tag said "Alfred, Shift Manager."

"Sir, you are no longer permitted to play blackjack at our casino."

Kevin could feel the other players staring at him, a few of them wide-eyed. Only Jill continued to study her cards.

"That's fine," Kevin said, his stomach tight. "If you don't want my action, I'll leave."

"Before you go, there are a few questions we would like to ask. If you'd come downstairs...."

Kevin started for the door. He was trying hard not to panic. As he pushed through the crowd, Alfred stayed one step behind him.

"Sir. Sir. Sir!"

Kevin kept moving. Alfred followed all the way to the exit, stopping only when Kevin stepped through the glass doors to the sidewalk.

Betrayed

When Kevin arrived at Micky's apartment, Fisher and Martinez were already there. They didn't look good. After the incident at New York--New York, Kevin had been chased out of Bally's, and Fisher and Martinez had taken to wearing disguises after similar brushups. The team had figured that eventually a few casinos might dissect their security tapes and get wise, but suddenly all of them seemed to be, and even excursions to outposts such as Shreveport, Louisiana and the Bahamas had been disasters. Today Martinez was wearing a hooded gray sweatshirt, and his face was so pale it almost blended into the material. Fisher looked more angry than tired.

"Somebody has sold us out," he announced as Kevin walked in.

Micky rested heavily on the couch. "I got this directly from a source at the detective agency. Someone from MIT sold a list to the agency. Names, yearbook photos, Vegas gambling schedules, estimated profits--everything."

Kevin sat down. "Jesus Christ."

"They sold us out for 25 grand," Martinez said.

"Who----" Kevin said.

"We don't know who--just that it was someone from MIT," Micky replied. "It could be someone on the team or someone who knows about us."

Micky tossed a sheaf of papers into Kevin's lap. It was 20 pages thick. On the top of the second page, Kevin found his photo and vital statistics. Kevin Lewis. Born Weston, MA, 1972. Graduated MIT 1994. Then his home and work addresses, phone numbers and a list of his many aliases.

"They have everything," Kevin whispered. "They know where we live."

Walking Away

The team could continue to hit casinos outside the Strip that hadn't hired Griffin, but they would have to work much harder for much less money, and eventually their reputations would catch up with them. Like Micky, they had been forced into early retirement. Kevin's secret life slowly gave way to his real one. But he didn't leave the team for good until another member had $75,000 in cash stolen from a home safe during a break-in. Though by now he had moved his cash to a bank, Kevin rushed back to his own apartment. The door was locked and everything undisturbed--except for his kitchen table, where an intruder had placed a $500 chip. Kevin got the message: We know where you live, and we're watching.

Martinez tossed something onto the table. It landed with a soft thud. A hundred hundreds. Ten grand.

Kevin still gambles alone and occasionally counts cards at smaller casinos that haven't installed continuous-shuffling machines. Most of his savings have gone into a downtown bar he opened with friends. Martinez and Fisher continue to attack the tables from a base on the West Coast. Because the Griffin betrayal turned the MIT veterans into dinosaurs, the roommates recruited a new crop of fresh-faced whiz kids--16 in all. Last year the team won more than $500,000. The Eye in the Sky is watching.