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Bill Kaplan: Card Counter Extraordinaire
Probably considered to be the King of card counting, Bill Kaplan is best known for his success with the MIT Blackjack team throughout the 80's. Together with J.P. Massar, Kaplan trained and managed a group of MIT students and post graduates who traveled to casinos all over America and managed to "beat the system" by winning what is thought to be millions of dollars through their rigid card counting, shuffle tracking and betting systems. By 1984 Kaplan's face was already too well known by all of the casino managements and he had to back down from his casino play which he described as a sideline. Since then, Kaplan has concentrated on his Real Estate Development Company which he still runs today.
The Introduction to Blackjack
Bill Kaplan was an outstanding student who studied mathematics and statistics at Harvard University. During his time there he read a book called "Beat the Dealer", which at the beginning interested him mainly because of its analyses of statistics and card counting techniques when playing Blackjack. Kaplan graduated from Harvard in 1977 as an outstanding scholar athlete and received a monetary gift. He decided to take a year off before starting Business school and have some fun. He traveled to Las Vegas with a few of his friends to try his luck and precision at the Blackjack tables using the information he had gained from the book he read during his college years.
Bill Kaplan's Las Vegas Blackjack Teams
Kaplan describes his time in Las Vegas as fun. Starting with only $1000 between him and his friends or team mates as he later describes them, Kaplan was able to stay in Las Vegas over 9 months and make nearly 40 times the amount he started with. By using statistical information, card counting and shuffle tracking techniques Kaplan and his team mates were able to increase their wealth dramatically. At first the team bet small amounts and as their pot increased so did the size of their bets. After a year of success, the Las Vegas Blackjack team was disbanded.
The New Start for the MIT Blackjack Team
After a successful year in Vegas, Kaplan came back to Boston to attend Harvard Business School, it was here that he met and joined forces with J.P. Massar who was unsuccessfully running a Blackjack team which was known as the MIT Blackjack Team. Undergraduates from MIT who had taken the Independent Activities Class entitles "How to Gamble if you Must" made up this team. Kaplan observed how they played and realized that they were not playing as a team, each highly skilled statistician wanted to use his own method of card counting and there was no true management and coordination amongst the team players. Bill Kaplan agreed to take on the running of the MIT Blackjack team on condition that he was allowed to run it on his terms which meant strict discipline and training, only one method of card counting and adherence to all of his rules. In the first 10 weeks of play with the new MIT Blackjack Team, Bill Kaplan had succeeded in doubling all of the investments.
The MIT Blackjack Team Lives On
Bill Kaplan turned around the MIT Blackjack Team which ran for nearly 20 years after its initial turnaround in 1979. Each year new recruits were taken on and trained according to Bill Kaplan's original simple methods and disciplines. By 1984 Bill Kaplan was too well known in most of the casinos around America and had to take a back seat in the management of the MIT Blackjack team. That did not stop him continuing to keep his foot in the casino world despite his day job as a successful Real Estate Developer. In 1992 Bill Kaplan again joined in partnership with J. P Massar and John Chang to train a new Blackjack team to infiltrate and win money from the new Foxwood Casino in Massachusetts. As a team they succeeded in raising over a million dollars in investments but to this day have not divulged how much money was made.
Bill Kaplan maintains that he has no real interest in gambling and never did, he just wanted to make money and saw the opportunity in Blackjack which he still believes is the only card game that can be statistically beaten. Thanks to his interest in mathematics, statistics and Computer Science, Bill Kaplan has made millions, he will not disclose how much. Bill Kaplan has been the inspiration for the book" Bringing down the House" and more recently the movie "21" but he still remains a modest mathematician with a passion for Real Estate and card counting!
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