21

Yesterday I saw the movie "21" and even thou it has been receiving bad critics I thought it was pretty good and enjoy it a ton. Of course I didn't read the book, so that could be one thing, but still it was entertaining.
Here is the thoughts on the movie from the original Mickey Rosa "Kevin Spacey on the movie" from his blog (actually his name is John Chang, and was the basis for the character in the book):

Today is the world premiere of 21. I saw the movie a couple of weeks ago at the Las Vegas premiere, along with Andy Bloch and some other teammates. Andy wrote a review of the movie and description of the event in his blog.

As Andy points out, it just wasn’t that easy. We didn’t win every time. In fact, we endured months of losing from time to time. Nor did players drink, visit brothels or strip clubs, or play slots in the middle of trips. Our time was too valuable, and our focus too intense to bother. You’d be considered such a losing sucker if you did any of that.

Not depicted well was the plethora of comps from the casinos — suites, fight tickets, front row show tickets, gourmet meals, top-notch wine and champagne (we didn’t drink it, we just brought it home). Not to mention the occasional super comp — a penthouse suite with kitchen, pool table, and piano; tickets to the Super Bowl; a helicopter or private jet ride; skiing in Aspen; yachting on Lake Tahoe; golfing at Shadow Creek; racing stock cars at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. I guess the closest the producers could come to these things and stay within budget was a strip club.

Fishburne’s character Cole, the casino security guy, kidnaps, assaults, and robs the MIT players, and gets away with it. In real life, Bob Nersesian, the gaming lawyer, would have something to say about that! On behalf of blackjack legend James Grosjean, who had been assaulted by Imperial Palace security, he sued the Imperial Palace and won a judgement of $399,000. Also on behalf of James, he sued Caesars Palace and the Griffin detective agency, getting a nice settlement from Caesars and putting Griffin into bankruptcy.

Various articles have come out about me in the last few days. Men’s Vogue, Xconomy, and Peter Woit’s blog are three I know of. Today I was interviewed on Fox Business News by Neil Cavuto. (Click on “Bringing Down the House” to watch the clip.)

I’d like to add a few words about the effect of all this publicity and attention. I expect it will encourage people to play blackjack. Unfortunately, from my experience most people will lose. History bears me out. In 1962 Ed Thorp came out with “Beat the Dealer”, the first book on card counting. It was a best-seller. The casinos initially reacted with panic, instituting awful rules. But when no one played, they brought back the old rules. Surprisingly, they won more than ever before. It turns out that Thorp’s book was the best thing that ever happened to the game, for the casinos.

How can this be? How can casinos offer a beatable game and come out ahead? Learning to play winning blackjack in a casino environment isn’t easy, and almost no one (perhaps no one at all) can do it by reading a book on the plane going to Vegas. This is not to say that learning to do it is impossible or even very difficult. It’s just that you can’t become proficient in a few hours reading a book about it. (If you’re not proficient, your act will suffer and you’ll probably get barred even if you manage to play a winning game on paper.) It would be like swimming a mile by reading about swimming, when in your whole life you’d never done more than soak in your bathtub. You’d probably drown if you tried.

Intelligence is not much help. I’ve seen MIT students (not teammates) make fools of themselves at the tables. Sad to say, they were belligerent, cocky, and ignorant know-it-alls.

One problem is that few people seriously consider gambling a money-making activity. The very word connotes blowing money, not earning it. People go to casinos to “have a good time” — meaning studying how to play well is the last thing on their minds.

Today I will be going to see some houses with my girlfriend, of course we already have the one we are going to buy, for just for curiosity. Also these houses have a heliport, thats pretty cool in case I get an helicopter some time hehehe , althou I might prefer a Jet just kidding hehe.
On poker I played today a little bit of 6max and ended up loosing 2 buy ins. Wasn't playing particularly bad, but manage to have a couple of coolers one set over set and another one set vs straight so not much I could do.