Jeff Haney gets tutored by two famous MIT alumni on the inexact science of card counting

By Jeff Haney

Friday, March 2, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.

The Platinum Hotel , a sleek new boutique property on Flamingo Road just east of the Strip, does not offer its guests a casino.

The lack of gaming on site was a significant consideration for Michael Aponte and David Irvine as they were planning the first public seminar linked to their fledgling business.

"Oh, we never even considered a casino hotel," Aponte said, laughing and shaking his head at such an absurd notion.

You see, as former members of the infamous MIT team of card counters, Aponte and Irvine have to be a little circumspect.

In what sometimes feels like a previous lifetime to the two 36-year-olds, they served as key members of the highly organized group of MIT students that won an estimated $10 million from Las Vegas casinos in the 1990s.

And their new venture, which they have dubbed the Blackjack Institute, aims to educate aspiring card counters using the very training techniques the MIT team employed.

Their first public seminar drew about a dozen customers to the Platinum on Saturday at $899 a pop, which includes a full day of personal instruction and take-home material for further practice.

The would-be blackjack whizzes gathered around a long table in a pristine conference room, the hulking towers of Bally's, the Flamingo and Caesars Palace visible through the plate-glass window, and later repaired to a room down the hall to run through drills at a few blackjack tables rented for the occasion.

The group included some absolute novices, as well as one player who has been barred from a couple of casinos but wanted to raise his blackjack skills to a higher level yet.

Not one was willing to share any personal information, cognizant that anonymity is a card counter's best friend. (Aponte and Irvine have long been personae non gratae in Las Vegas casinos.)

"Uh, let's just say I'm not from Vegas," one attendee said.

All of them had designs on developing their skills to make a consistent profit at blackjack. Or at least put a dent in the $1.38 billion that, according to the state Gaming Control Board, Nevada casinos won at their 3,200 or so blackjack tables last year.

"The book changed everything," Aponte said, meaning Ben Mezrich's 2002 best-seller "Bringing Down the House," which chronicled - some say sensationalized - the exploits of the MIT team.

Aponte had retired from blackjack in 2000 after making a nice score with the MIT group, and was devoting his time to nonprofit after-school tutoring programs in the Washington, D.C., area.

"I thought that the blackjack part of my life was over for good," Aponte said.

He didn't even read the book for nearly two years because he heard it contained inaccuracies. It didn't help that the character Jason Fisher, Aponte's fictional alter ego created by Mezrich, comes across as the story's villain.

"After a while, I realized (the book) was a blessing," said Aponte, who studied economics and played football at MIT. "Even though it wasn't all accurate, and some of the characters were skewed, it is an easy, entertaining read and people really seem to like it.

"I started to get asked about it all the time. Nobody cares that my character was the bad guy. They just know that I was one of the main guys in the book."

With the popularity of the book, and with casino-style gambling in the national spotlight thanks in part to the poker craze, Aponte realized he could parlay his notoriety into business opportunities such as the Blackjack Institute.

A Hollywood film version of the book starring Kevin Spacey began shooting last month in Las Vegas and Boston.

Irvine believes the movie, also starring Laurence Fishburne and Kate Bosworth, could change everything all over again.

"The more blackjack goes mainstream, the more people playing blackjack, the more opportunity for all of us," Irvine said.

Card counting devotees love to talk about their "act" - in blackjack, a term meaning guises and disguises and contrived identities designed to throw casino officials off their scent, extending their longevity at the tables before the inevitable tap on the shoulder .

Author Arnold Snyder once described an act created by legendary counter Ken Uston in the 1980s. Uston, who had degrees from Harvard and Yale, dressed down like a "sump pit" worker from Hoover Dam, complete with ragged clothes and dirt under his fingernails, so he wouldn't be identified and thus could count cards to his heart's content.

(Snyder wondered where Uston, a sophisticate who enjoyed life's finer things, found the dirt to place under his nails. Probably from the potted plants in the lobby of the Jockey Club, Snyder speculated.)

Aponte, however, downplayed the importance of elaborate "acts," especially for beginning card counters.

"I get asked a lot of those questions, but it really all comes back to skill level," Aponte said. "What good is an act if you can't keep the count accurately?

"The best act is looking natural, looking like any other gambler at the table. And the best way to achieve that is to work hard on your game and make sure your skills are at a high level."

To that end, Aponte and Irvine focus on the basics of card counting: maintaining an accurate count, sizing your bets accordingly, having blackjack's basic strategy down pat, and knowing when to deviate from basic strategy as the count dictates.

"We structure our seminars the exact same way we were trained for the MIT team," Irvine said. "It's one step at a time. You master a step, then move on to the next step."

Advanced, fancy techniques such as tracking shuffles or trying to predict when an ace will appear seem "sexy," Irvine said, but straight card counting got the job done for the MIT team.

"Those other techniques might be a little cooler sounding, but 99.9 percent of the money that the MIT team won came from counting cards, exactly what we're learning here today," Irvine told the seminar's participants. "Beyond this, it's just a matter of getting proficient at it.

"If you practice, you can reach that next level in a matter of months. Everyone goes through it - you'll reach a eureka moment, where you realize, hey, I can do this."

Sure, an act helps, Irvine said, but even Laurence Olivier would get barred once he's pegged as a skillful card counter.

Meanwhile, a few minor tricks can extend a counter's casino life span.

For Irvine, that meant playing under a variety of assumed names during his card counting career.

"I used the name Vincent Vega, a character from 'Pulp Fiction,' for a while," Irvine said. "Until one day a pit supervisor came up and said, 'Vince?' I just sat there. 'Vince?' I didn't move. 'Vince?' Oh, yeah, that's me! After that, I always used Dave as my first name with different last names.

"It's fine to have an act. But just remember what you told them."

After his stint on the MIT team, Irvine, the son of a Notre Dame professor, obtained a master's degree in biological engineering from Cornell and an MBA from Purdue.

Irvine operates an engineering firm, but plans to keep a hand in blackjack. He sees a miniboom for blackjack, thanks to more televised tournaments and the Spacey movie.

"Casinos are selling hope," Irvine said. "Nobody comes to Vegas and says, 'I'm going to lose today!' They know blackjack is the game that can be beaten, and it will always have that appeal."

Although Aponte and Irvine would seem to have a lot to offer to the gaming industry, perhaps as counter-catchers or consultants, the mere suggestion almost made them shudder.

"No," Aponte said. "I could never go to the dark side."