MIT students being badass on the big screen -- the '21' movie trailer (Bringing Down The House)
piusuzamere.com
piusuzamere.com
One thing that irritates me slightly - the blackjack team was mainly Asian, from what I've read. The casinos were ready to believe that an irresponsible child of super wealthy Asian parents was throwing down this kind of money at the tables - a stereotype that the MIT team successfully used to avoid detection for some time.
But eh, it still looks like fun. I'll probably go see it. And yeah, I'll probably lose some more money at blackjack.
This reminds me of the Starship Troopers movie, where the Filipino protagonist is played by Casper Van Dien.
Then there's the fact that unless you really have some kind of special ace up your sleeve, you can only make maybe $10-25/hr. If you have the smarts to pull off some fancy gambling thing, you can probably use your limited brainpower elsewhere in more profitable ways. It becomes work like anything else. Doing it is not fun, it requires intense concentration and extensive preparation.
They don't need to be plaing blackjack, even under favorable circumstances. They can find a higher expected return by moving to Wall Street and doing computational finance, or by starting software companies.
That said, have you ever read Thorpe's "beat the dealer"? There is someting kind of great about gaining an edge over a casino like this. For whatever reason, the idea of using math and computer programming to gain an edge over a casino seems to appeal enormously to a subsection of the population.
Apparently MIT doesn't look enough like MIT...
The reunion scene in Good Will Hunting was actually shot on Kresge Oval (I think), but I'm not sure why they went elsewhere for interiors. You may be right.