<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>When most people stare at a card deck, they see a stack of paper-thin rectangles stamped with an ornate pattern. Jeff Ma sees negative and positive values.
The 32-year-old Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate spoke about his experiences outwitting legendary Las Vegas casinos at blackjack in the IMU Main Lounge on Wednesday night. As a member of a group dubbed "hyper-geniuses," Ma and friends meticulously studied card-counting, a legal strategy based on probability formulas.
The group, the MIT Blackjack Team, refined a strategy introduced by MIT Professor Edward Thorp and won roughly $5 million over six years. Ma pocketed roughly half of the 10-member group's earnings.
"People call us 'ultra-geniuses,' but I could teach anyone in this room how to card-count," he said. The difference between his team and those he sees on flights to Nevada is, "We really took it to a point where we treated it like a business."
The Boston native described a typical outing to an audience, a great many of whom were rapidly took notes. The MIT group logged an average 20 hours at the tables between midnight Saturday and midnight Sunday - between which they spent hours refining strategy and setting earnings goals.
Ma challenged the 550 attending to consider alternative career paths than those the academic system deems acceptable.
"Don't be restricted by what society says you should do as long as you're learning and being challenged and it's legal," he said.
When a friend introduced him to the blackjack team in the fall of 1994, Ma said he felt interested to join but apprehensive.
"I mean, how could you go and gamble and make money off of it?" he remembered thinking.
After graduation in 1994, Ma moved to Chicago to trade stocks. Lonely for his college buddies, Ma saw bimonthly trips to America's playground as an opportunity to eat great food and spend time with close friends. Making up to $130,000 in a weekend proved a perk, he added.</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>The more time he spent trading equities in the pit, Ma's perspective on gambling and stock trading games changed.
"I understand the numbers and the risk in blackjack more than in trading," he said, adding, "Trading seemed more like gambling than blackjack."
Blackjack is the only casino game subject to continuous probability, Ma said. While the likelihood of winning is the same with every spin of the wheel or toss of the dice in roulette and craps, the cards you have seen in blackjack affect those you will see.
Ma worked with author Ben Mezrich to turn his story - under an alias he used in Vegas, "Kevin Lewis" - into a nonfiction book, Bringing Down The House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions. The book's success had Hollywood calling, and a feature film starring Topher Grace and Kevin Spacey is in the pre-production stage, Ma said.
Because of his unprecedented success outsmarting the casinos and the overwhelming amount of media attention he's received from his adventures, Ma knows he can never return to the blackjack tables in Vegas, opting instead to shoot craps.
"I just go out there now like all the other people who fly out happy and fly home sad," he said.
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