21 THE MOVIE - sonypictures.comCard counter Jeff Ma of the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) blackjack team dropped his pseudonym and anonymity this year in the epilogue of Ben Mezrich’s Bringing Down the House, an inside scoop on six MIT students who won millions in Las Vegas in the late 90s.
Now a major motion picture that debuted worldwide Friday, Ma’s story scored number one in the box office and earned $24.1 million under the title “21” in it’s first weekend.
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But it’s not the greed that gets me going, it’s the vicarious thrill of watching these guys beat systems that aren’t supposed to be beat.
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Ma’s secret lasted a decade after his MIT escapade and six years after Mezrich’s novel had first been published. Not only was Ma’s name published, he also appeared on the big screen in a handful of shots as Planet Hollywood Dealer Jeff.
“The climate around gambling back then—it wasn’t the same as it is today,” said Ma in an interview with Mezrich in Vegas last year. “This was before the poker craze, and the resurgence of Vegas. Gambling was still kind of dirty—it wasn’t socially acceptable.”
Ma came from a conservative upbringing in upper-middle-class New England suburbia where he was shipped to Exeter Academy at twelve and naturally transitioned to MIT from there.
Because he feared how he would be perceived, especially by his father, for playing blackjack, Ma kept weekend card-counting expeditions a secret and separate from his life in Boston where he graduated from MIT and first worked as an investment banker at a firm in Chicago.
His double life was preserved on-screen by Ben Cambell (Jim Sturgess, Across the Universe), an MIT whizkid accepted early to Harvard Medical School – an elite educational opportunity he could not afford.
Although the real story is quite compelling, Hollywood naturally found a way to kick it up a notch with fictitious conflict, crafted struggles (tuition for Harvard Med, a fatherless protagonist, teammate love interest, estranged friendship from leading a double life, illegal interrogation by U.S. casino security…), and stretched ending.
“The movie didn’t do the book justice,” is a cliché that can be thrown away here. Yes: there were enough card-counting flaws and strays from the real story to annoy any informed viewer. But the movie wasn’t about teaching moviegoers how to count cards or train team play.
It was about retelling the MIT blackjack experience, a real tale fit for the big screen.
“I am turned on by stories that involve young kids making huge fortunes, and living large,” wrote Mezrich in the Epilogue of his book renamed 21, “But it’s not the greed that gets me going, it’s the vicarious thrill of watching these guys beat systems that aren’t supposed to be beat.”
And they beat the system because they aren’t gambling. Instead, they use large bankrolls to invest in their two percent edge over the casino.
“It’s a combination of math and acting. If you do it right, you make money; if the casinos catch you doing it, they kick you out,” wrote Mezrich, “That’s the purest evidence that its not gambling—casinos love gamblers. They hate card counters.”
