FREE BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE: THE INSIDE STORY OF SIX MIT STUDENTS WHO TOOK VEGAS FOR MILLIONS PDF Ben Mezrich | 320 pages | 06 May 2004 | Cornerstone | 9780099468233 | English | London, United Kingdom 21, Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions In the movie 21an unorthodox math professor named Micky Rosa Kevin Spacey leads the team. The 21 true story reveals that the real MIT Blackjack Team was led by three individuals, none of whom were professors. Arguably, the most notable is Bill Kaplan, a Harvard Business school graduate who had also done his undergraduate studies at Harvard. John Chang and J. Massar were also very much the basis for 21 's Micky Rosa. Massar, and John Chang, the fact is there is little, if anything, that resembles either of us except that he started and ran the team and Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions focused on running the team as a business," says Bill Kaplan. John Chang graduated from MIT in with a degree in electrical engineering. An influential member of the original team, Chang would later re-team with Bill Kaplan as a co-manager in the early s. Massar "Mr. M" in the History Channel documentary Breaking Vegas was an MIT alum who had helped Kaplan manage the original team in the early s, shortly after the first casinos opened in Atlantic City. Jeff Ma, the real life Ben Campbell, came from a well-to-do family. One of the reasons I ended up not going to Harvard Medical School is because of blackjack and all the money I could make there. Former team leader John Chang said that the movie's scholarship interview is a plot device that "never happened" in real life. You know that Campbell never gets to keep what he made — otherwise, why would he be applying? The real Jeff Ma Ben from the movie says that his father is very much alive and well, unlike the character's father in the movie. His parents and his sister were his guests at the 21 movie premiere at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. Their Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions life counterparts, Jeff Ma and Jane Willis, were never a couple. In fact, Jane and her boyfriend, who were both "math geeks," were recruited by Jeff Ma in the early s. Jeff knew them and had been friends with both of them. Jane Willis and her boyfriend later married and divorced. Inshe got remarried to Rich Davey. Their wedding was held in a Catholic church located behind the Tropicana and across from the Mandalay Bay casinos in Las Vegas. The movie shows the characters talking on cell phones and playing blackjack at the Red Rock and Planet Hollywood casinos, which didn't open until andrespectively. The 21 true story reveals that the real MIT Blackjack Team, on which the movie was based, played in the early s. It was started by Bill Kaplan part of the inspiration for Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions Spacey's characterwho founded the team on the same business principles and practices that he had employed in starting and running a Vegas based team for the previous three years. One of the players we trained in late and was John Chang. In addition to presenting a variety of strategies for success at blackjack, it also includes Thorp's "Basic Strategy" chart. Learn how to use the chart to make decisions when playing blackjack. The movie falsely makes the team out to be an MIT only club. In reality, there were members from other schools, including Harvard and Princeton. In the movie, we're expected to believe that Micky Rosa Kevin Spacey provided the startup money for the team. In real life, the team leaders J. Creating a company allowed the team to recruit its players and raise venture capital as a legal entity. The money came from past players and the team leaders, including Bill Kaplan, who says that he also received investment capital from his former college roommate, a number of his Havard Business School sectionmates, and other friends and family. The company is further explored in the History Channel documentary Breaking Vegaswhich also examines the rigorous "checkouts" that the players had to endure. Masser "Mr. M" in the documentary required that players be able to play through 10 shoes, while only making a limited number of counting mistakes. Strategic Investments LP disbanded on December 31, as the result of banned players, long losing streaks, and a lack of time due to more profitable business opportunities in the real estate market Bill Kaplan. Shortly after SI was terminated, one of its former players, Semyon Dukach, created his own team, which employed 60 players in 5 cities. Semyon's team operated under the guise Amphibian Investments. The movie 21 and Ben Mezrich's book, Bringing Down the Housewere both based on a smaller team that was an offshoot of Amphibian Investments. The movie shows Ben using flash cards to practice the various code words, which were used to represent the count. The Spotter conveys the count to the Big Player by casually using the code word in a sentence. However, after this point, the odds are in your favor. It is okay to bet semi-recklessly. Thorp's book was the team's blackjack Bible. The book's "Basic Strategy" chart reveals a set of mathematically correct decisions to employ when playing blackjack view the "Basic Strategy" chart. Mike Aponte, who the Fisher character is based on, addressed this question by saying, "There are some parts in the book where I just scratch my head because obviously Ben Mezrich, the author, took artistic liberties. Martinez, [Jeff Ma] and I had a friend who was king of the Asian nightclub scene. On Chinese New Year, he invited us to a private party in Chinatown. When we arrived, we saw they had a few blackjack tables set up. It wasn't much, but they were playing for real money. Despite various voices on the internet coming out against the movie's mostly white, non-Asian cast some Facebook users have even called for a boycott of the filmthe real MIT Blackjack Team's former members were not offended. Mike Aponte, the basis for the Fisher character, says that they did carry most of the money on their persons when going through airport security. This is because cash was easily recognized by security through the x-ray machine. If they had a lot of chips, they stored them in carry-on bags. Mike says that security usually didn't realize the number of chips that were actually there BlackJackInfo. Ben Mezrich's book Bringing Down the House describes much more elaborate techniques that the players used to smuggle money. The methods include using fake umbrellas, laptop computers, plaster casts and hollow crutches. The author even quotes the book's main character, Kevin Lewis, whose real life counterpart is Jeff Ma. But Ma said that he never described such techniques to Mezrich, or knew of anyone using them. Jeff Ma said that the first time that he had heard of such cloak-and-dagger tactics was when he read Mezrich's book. In an interview with Quint from Ain't It Cool NewsJeff Ma, the real life individual on whom the movie's main character is based, said the following, "I realized it's not really a movie about me. It's not like an autobiographical documentary about my life. It's a cool movie about stuff that we did and a lot of the stuff that we did is very on point and true in the movie, but the storyline has changed quite a bit. I think what it does do well though is it captures the excitement of what we pulled off during our playing days. Mezrich's book has faced scrutiny. Ben Mezrich began his literary career writing techno-thriller fiction. Students Who Took Vegas for Millionson which the movie 21 is based, has faced scrutiny for its embellishment and massaging of the facts that make up the MIT Blackjack Team's true story. Mezrich attempted to defend such accusations by saying, "Every word on the page isn't supposed to be fact-checkable. In the movie, Ben's weekends as a high roller nearly cause him to lose his two closest friends, who no longer want him to participate Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions them in a robotics competition. Former MIT team leader John Chang responded to this scene in his blog by saying, "Starting from the part where Ben loses control at the Red Rock and loses K, the movie takes off on a tangent that has no resemblance to reality. Our players were far too disciplined to even think of doing something like that. As I see it, that entire scene is a plot device to end the movie - create a conflict between Campbell and Rosa that leads up to the switcheroo finale. In the movie, Cole Williams Laurence Fishburne is a casino security expert who investigates the team. Fishburne's character was not specifically based on any single real life individual. The 21 movie's true story reveals that the real MIT Blackjack Team was investigated by Griffin Investigationsa security agency that had been used by casinos worldwide.