BEATING LAS VEGAS
What are your thoughts ahead of the release of the film ‘21’? Have you been able to get a sneak preview?
Yeah I saw it about a month ago, I went to the screening down at Sony with Laurence Fishburne and Ben Mezrich, the author of Bringing Down the House, and I really liked it. I think that one of the things that people often get caught up on when there’s a movie or a book that is inspired by a true story, is how accurate it is. This movie is not a documentary, it’s a feature film and it’s supposed to be entertaining. What was incredible to me was how well they were able to capture some of the moments in the run that we had, although the story itself has changed quite a bit which is a good thing as it makes it more fun and entertaining. But there are many moments in the film that are eerily similar to what actually happened.
I wouldn’t even call it a dramatisation of the event I would describe it as a film that is inspired by a book. So what does that mean exactly? Well it takes a lot of the themes and actions and characters from the book and creates a very compelling and riveting feature film around those concepts.
It must be a surreal feeling to have a part of your life story put into film?
It was beyond surreal, having Laurence Fishburne sitting next to me at the screening, and having parts of your life acted out by people like Kevin Spacey, Laurence Fishburne and Kate Bosworth. I mean that is unbelievable.
Have you heard from any of the other MIT team about the film?
Not really, but there are a couple of them who are coming with me to the premiere of the movie which is exciting. It’s interesting because our perceptions of what happened during that time often change, so to come back and see all this on screen is just what you said earlier; surreal! And yes I will be very interested to know what the other guys think. Now I think there is a certain amount of surprise in terms of how the story changes form the book, and for me that surprise was good, I like what they did with that, it’s cool. I don’t know if everyone will feel that way, but I certainly did. I think that some of the worst movies that are based on books are the ones that try to be incredibly accurate to the book. I mean there’s already a book written about that so why would you want a movie which is exactly the same?
What was your reaction to the book Bringing Down the House? Was it something that you were comfortable with at the time?
It’s funny that you should mention it because at the time I wasn’t. I was kind of happy but not really that comfortable with it, and it took me a few years to get completely comfortable with the notion. Part of that was the public’s perception of the book, and their perception of my depiction in the book, but the reaction was so positive that I couldn’t help but feel comfortable with the idea of me being the protagonist and my story being a book. I hope the movie has the same reaction and to be honest I think it will.
It must have been equally as surreal for you back in your MIT days. Describe what it was like for you when you started out.
Well my first experience going to Vegas was incredible, you know you fly in, see the lights, get picked up by a limo etc… I remember my first trip was to the Mirage, and we had a beautiful 2 bedroom suite with an enormous living room and dining room and there was marble everywhere. In fact I remember how much marble there was, it was ridiculous, like being in the Taj Mahal. When you’re 21-years-old and you’re experiencing Vegas for the first time it really is a trip! I mean I’m from a pretty modest upbringing; my Dad was a professor and my Mum was a nurse so it wasn’t like we would go and stay at these beautiful suites or hotels. So experiencing Vegas for the first time was surreal, and that whole experience of going down and gambling and making money was almost secondary to the event of actually being there.
Obviously it sounds like a lot of fun, and makes a great story for a movie. But you were essentially building a business–was that how you approached it from the start, with a business head?
One the reasons that I started in this was because my roommates were going to Vegas quite regularly, and I wanted to hang out with them, and they said “if you want to hang out with us then you’re going to have to learn this and come to Vegas with us”. So I agreed and learned everything and went to Vegas with them, and saw how much money was available and at that time of my life, that sort of amount was ridiculous so I couldn’t pass that up. The real next step that you alluded to was that we took this and treated it much more as a business and tried to grow it and make as much money as we could.
Did you expect the level of success that you achieved?
Yes I think we did to some degree. I think we always expected to win and to win a certain amount, and we knew the mathematics behind it. So I don’t think there was any element of surprise in us winning or losing.
Were there times when you had to pinch yourselves with the amount of money you were winning, and the fact that you were having a great time doing it?
The funny thing about it is that the fun aspect was always secondary because it was all about work and business to us. It was fun from the camaraderie and team aspect but we weren’t getting to go out and drink and party in Vegas, we were there to work and make money.
There must have been times early on when you thought a pit boss or someone was on to you. How hairy did it get or were you confident that your system was good enough?
Absolutely, I mean there was always the fear in the back of your mind that they were on to you. It’s interesting because I think there’s a cycle when you go into a new casino where you’ve got scrutiny to some degree as a person betting a lot of money, but you also got welcomed with open arms because you were coming in and betting a lot of money. You usually had a honeymoon period where they really liked you and you get established and you have a few trips there are successful. But eventually there was definitely the feeling that they were watching you or that they’re going to catch on. It took the city of Vegas itself a little while to catch on to what exactly we were doing, and during that run you did feel confident that you weren’t going to get caught. However, when that run ended, every casino you went into you expected a higher level of scrutiny than you ever had before.
What was it like once the casinos caught wind of what you were doing?
I think a couple of casinos caught on earlier and maybe didn’t share the information. I think you also saw Vegas evolve during this period, where it became much more collaborative and much less independent. You had Harrah’s buying up a bunch of the properties and Mirage merging with MGM and so on, so you had a lot of information sharing at that point. But when we were initially getting involved there was much less information sharing.
Do you think that anything on this scale could be done again?
It’s hard for me to say as I’ve never really tried to do it, but my guess would be that it would be very hard achieve again for many reasons. Firstly, the information sharing that now goes on, secondly, there are fewer tables that are exploitable, they have things like continuous shufflers now and Vegas is just wiser to the whole thing. But it’s cyclical and I think there’s a possibility in 10-20 years, once this whole thing has died down a little bit that they’ll slip back into their own world of forgetting about the certain counter measures that they use to beat card counters.
Tell us about your sports fantasy site Pro Trade.
I started the company a couple of years ago, and the goal was to create a way for people to trade athletes like they did stocks. So in essence you can buy and sell athletes. Right now if you want to invest in David Beckham you could invest in David Beckham. It would be a poor investment right now, and you’d probably be losing your shirt, but that’s the general principle and we did that in the world of fantasy sports. We have actually launched a number of things around that concept, and one of the things is something called Double Play TV which is a sports video network and we have a selection of videos on there at doubleplaytv. com/jeffma, and they are 4 minute entertaining/educational videos on what we did in terms of card counting.
How successful has the Pro Trade enterprise been?
It’s been very successful in terms of the fact we’ve been able to attract a large number of viewers who are highly engaged with what we’re doing. We have deals with a lot of the big media companies and leagues and things like that because the information from the market is interesting. I think it’s kind of exactly what we thought it would be; a very interesting fantasy sports market and company.
Could your experience be of benefit to the gambling industry in a business sense?
The lessons that I talk to people about are the lessons we learned through blackjack and the blackjack team in terms of how you run an organisation, and there are generic principles that work in any business, whether it’s the teamwork, trust or camaraderie that we had or the goal setting and the organisational skills that we had. From an analytics standpoint, one of the crossovers between blackjack and what we did in sports is try to come up with an analytical framework and come up with better decisions in industries that have most of their decisions made by emotion. Almost taking the emotion out of decision making. There are a lot of parallels between sport and gambling where very intelligent people in both industries make decisions very irrationally and very emotionally. When someone gambles, they lose their head in terms of what’s the right thing to do, and similarly when someone’s rooting for their team, they make decisions based on emotion rather than good business sense. In terms of applying that principle to an online gambling company, you as a company want to have your consumers make as many emotional decisions as they can and not be rational (laughs).
What would be your advice to anybody who sees your story and becomes inspired?
That’s sort of the crux behind these videos that we created, because if you wanted to beat Vegas then you need to decide on what scale you want to do it. If you want to do it on a small scale then it’s easy, you can do it, but you’re going to have to understand that you need to be disciplined and make some decisions that you wouldn’t want to make when you go into a casino. For example you need to decide that you don’t want to drink very much, to be very disciplined with your money, and not to play all of the time, by looking for good opportunities and playing there. Also you’re going to have to practice and prepare a lot before you actually set foot in the casino.
To see Jeff Ma’s Wild World of gambling videos go to www.doubleplaytv. com/jeffma
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