The MIT blackjack team is the most famous blackjack team in the history of the game. Using advanced tracking strategies, the players were able to gain a collective statistical advantage against casinos in order to make millions. The team was actually much larger than those in the movies that their story inspired. The MIT team was famous not only for making so much money, but also for revolutionizing team play and keeping so many active players in casinos at once without drawing attention.
Working in small groups, the team used scattered players to track decks in multi-deck games. These players did not fluctuate their bets, and they played perfect basic strategy in order to lose as little money as possible over days at a time of play. When one of the scattered “spotters” would count a high concentration of advantage cards in a shoe, he or she would signal to one of the “big players” to sit down and play a few hands with massive bets. Because the big players never placed bets in games with disadvantageous card compositions, they effectively flipped the houses’ edges.