Before watching '21', I was barely aware that blackjack was a beatable game.
Sure I'd heard of people with the 'magical' abilities to track cards and who were able to use their skills in casinos to beat card games and make money, but I'd also heard that this was considered cheating and people caught counting were backroomed and taught a brutal lesson. I knew nothing of the MIT blackjack team, or the book by Ben Mezerich, 'Bringing Down The House', that the movie was based on.

Now, I'd played blackjack years ago, when I was a kid. I like cards and numbers. Blackjack always seemed like a beatable game to me. But I quickly learned it wasn't. Luckily for me I only lost a couple of hundred to learn this lesson before I gave up. Casinos are businesses. They are there to make money for their shareholders, not to give it away. The games are tilted in their favour. You can't make money from blackjack, or so I thought.

21 The Movie
21 is based on Ben Mezerich's book 'Bringing Down The House', which is based on the true life story of the MIT Blackjack Team. The movie came out early 2008, and I myself saw the movie in May 2008. It potrays the life of a MIT student, recruited into the MIT BlackJack Team. The team use a combination of card counting and a division of labour (team play) to take Vegas for Millions! The movie, whilst pretty far from the reality of the actual life experiences of the MIT Blackjack team, was entertaining.

I watched, enjoyed and quickly forgot about the movie. After all, I was no MIT calibre genius. I did not know how to count, had no clue what all this basic strategy stuff was about and where was I going to find a team of geniuses to join up with?

It was a month later that a friend of mine, Zola (not real name), approached me with the idea of giving it a shot. Zola was a business associate and friend. We had been looking at starting a new business venture together for some time, but nothing appropriate had come up so far. We had looked into importing, opening a bureau, manufacturing and several other businesses, but our problem was that we wanted guaranteed success, something that just doesn't happen in business.

Zola thought that here was something that two fairly intelligent guys could sink their teeth into. The movie made it all seem so easy to make money. It would be a great part time hobby, and a way to raise capital for our other ventures.

Researching Card Counting
Now, when I first started looking into card counting, I was not convinced that it was possible. I knew 21 was based on a true story, and that there was some truth behind the story, but how far distorted was the story and more importantly, could someone like me learn to count cards? The movie '21' portrayed the fact that it took a mathematical genius to have any success at card counting. I'm pretty sure that I'm no genius.

Zola and I decided from the beginning that we would not put any money on the line unless we were fully confident it was something that we could do. We would need to test it fully. But first we had to find out how to count cards.

So I plugged 'blackjack', 'card counting', 'MIT' and 'team play' into my good friend google. After all, at this point all I knew about card counting was that it required team play. After a little searching, I came across a DVD called 'Beating BlackJack with Andy Bloch' The name Andy Bloch rang a bell as one of the members of the MIT Team and it seemed the perfect place to start. Who better to learn card counting from, then one of the original members of the MIT Team tnat the movie '21' was based on.

Step 1 - Learn Basic Strategy
Now, whilst I waited for the Beating BlackJack with Andy Bloch DVD to arrive, I scoured some of the multitude of free online resources to learn more about card counting. There are tons of posts all over the interenet about card counting, but very few resources telling you how to do it. Further more, there are even fewer that explain team play, and since that was what I associated card counting with, I tended to ignore the majority of these 'unhelpful' posts.

However, one common theme that came across was something called 'Basic Strategy'.

'Basic Strategy' is a set of mathematically proven playing recommendations on how to play BlackJack to achieve a maximum EV. It tells you when to hit, stand, double, split and surrender. From my poker days, I was well aware of how these kinds of charts worked. You see what cards you have, what the dealer has and the chart tells you what to play.

Basic Strategy is the logical place to start. You need to know how to play the game if you want to beat it.

I came across this neat website with a basic strategy engine. You tell it what kind of game you are playing and it gives you the appropriate chart for that game (i.e. how many decks, local rules etc). Of course, at this point, I was oblivious to all the different variations of blackjack and simply downloaded the first chart I saw.

The chart looked pretty straight forward and most of the plays seemed obvious. Doubling 10 against a dealers 9 or less was a gimme, and hitting 16 or less against a dealers 10 was a no-brainer. This basic strategy stuff was going to be easy-peasy.

Learning to count with Andy Bloch
Within a few days I had my hands on the Beating BlackJack DVD.

I called my buddy Zola around and we watched it. Then we watched it again.
The DVD had shades of the movie '21', with mock situations of Andy Bloch evading casinos Pit Bosses and rushing loot out of the casino. (Of course, Andy Bloch's DVD was made well before the movie '21' so who copied whom eh?).

ZoLa and I watched the DVD several times. It made the whole thing look exciting and easy. Our favourite bit was where the team wins $80,000 in a single hand right at the end! It was so exciting that we couldn't wait to get started.

The DVD laid out exactly what we needed to do to become card counters.
1. Learn Basic Strategy
2. Learn to Count Cards using the simple Hi-Lo system
3, Assign your team roles and hit the casinos!

With basic strategy already under my belt, it was time to learn how to count cards.

Step 2 - Learn how to count cards
Using the DVD to learn to count cards saved a bunch of time. Andy Bloch uses the Hi-Lo system of counting cards, and it was easy to pick up counting as you watched, learned and counted along. At first it was quite difficult to keep up with the count. Seeing a 3 and thinking -1, or a J and thinking +1 is not something that comes naturally. It requires a little bit of practise and conditioning of the mind, but once you start to get the hang of it, it's not too difficult. All you're doing is adding or taking away away 1 from a running count.

I spent a week practicing how to count cards. Running through decks, counting in pairs, dealing to myself whilst I played and counted. By the end of the week I could count down a deck in less than 25 seconds, and I was never off by more than 1, most of the time counting down to a perfect zero.