MIT Blackjack King Takes SMTP Public 108
An anonymous reader writes "Semyon Dukach is at it again. Thumbing his nose at the establishment, that is. Dukach, a former leader of the MIT blackjack team, has taken his small company, SMTP, public today in the hopes of overturning the field of e-mail delivery and management. SMTP might sound boring, but it's the latest vehicle in Dukach's quest to 'make a couple billion and then try to help the world' (without the aid of venture capitalists or investment bankers). Given his track record, people might not want to bet against him."
Re:Blackjack team? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Blackjack team? (Score:4, Informative)
The computers were concealed in their heads. They counted cards, and did the math in their heads. It is fairly easy if you have the discipline.
Re:Blackjack team? (Score:4, Informative)
The computers were concealed in their heads. They counted cards, and did the math in their heads. It is fairly easy if you have the discipline.
The MIT card-counting team was the book Bringing Down the House (the one they made the movie of). Semyon Dukach was not in that book, but in the following Ben Mezrich book, Breaking Vegas, which had a more sophisticated (and harder to accomplish) set of techniques.
Re:Blackjack team? (Score:5, Informative)
Wired had a nice bit on it: Hacking Las Vegas [wired.com] (Written by Ben Mezrich, I think it may be an excerpt from his book).
Or if you want a Hollywood Bastardization (Based on the True Story) there's 21 [wikipedia.org]
At the time, the casinos made it easy to stay liquid. This was before the era of the CTR — the cash transaction report — which obligates the casinos to report any transaction greater than $10,000. "In the old days," Tay explains, "you'd win a quarter-million dollars, and they'd give it to you in cash. On New Year's 1996, I walked from the Mirage to the MGM Grand with a paper New Year's hat filled with $180,000." Back in Boston, Lewis and his friends kept the money in cash, declaring the winnings in the "other" category on their IRS forms. "You'd find $100 bills all over my apartment. Dig in my laundry, there would be $100,000 under my socks."
Re:It's funny cause it's true. (Score:4, Informative)
Get it? You might not want to bet against him? Because he was a card shark?
The term is "card sharp"