MIT Students Break the Bank in Las Vegas

Through the years, a group of math students at the world-famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology has focused their considerable brain power on a very extracurricular activity: gambling — specifically blackjack.

The students realized that blackjack was the only beatable game in casino gambling — and beat it they did. By the 1990s, the team — whose membership rotated over the years — was making regular trips to Las Vegas and winning big.

"They took over $400,000 in one weekend out of the casinos in Las Vegas," says Gordon Adams, a casino security investigator.

The team used a method known as card-counting, which helps players predict when the cards being dealt will be favorable to them. By knowing which cards have been spent and which ones remain in the shoe, savvy players can keep a running "count" which works as a rough predictor of how many high cards are left. High cards work to a player's benefit because they boost the odds that they will beat the dealer.

The MIT players were not the first to count cards. But they used their math expertise — and advanced computer models — to hone their skills to a devastatingly effective science. They wrote computer programs to devise the best strategy for specific situations, then updated their data with real-life experience.

"After a trip to Vegas, we would enter all the information about what happened into the computers," remembers Semyon Dukach, a student who was a member of the team in the early 1990s.

New members of the team were "trained" for weeks or months, starting on MIT's Cambridge, Mass., campus, then getting experience in backroom card games in Boston's Chinatown. Then they would be sent to Vegas, where they would start out as a "mule" carrying cash, then work their way up in the team's hierarchy.

The team visited Las Vegas regularly, peaking in the 1990s with trips nearly every weekend.

When they hit a casino, they would first deploy a counter to sit in on a table and track

The investigation was conducted this summer by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

A source familiar with the investigation says GAO investigators went undercover at about half a dozen airports nationwide and tried to pass through passenger security with box cutters and other potential weapons among their personal items.

They tried once at each airport. And no one ever stopped them.

"Unfortunately, this also confirms our worst suspicion: that sometimes a big government agency doesn't necessarily do a better job than maybe what we had in place before," said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., who commissioned the GAO study.

Mica told ABCNEWS that human failure may have contributed, but he said outdated technology may be even more to blame.

Sources did not tell ABCNEWS which airports were targeted by investigators or precisely how they were able to pass through security. Several sources were concerned that revealing that information could tell terrorists how to evade the system.

The Aim: Multiple Levels of Security

TSA spokesman Brian Turmail wouldn't comment on the classified GAO investigation, which is still being completed. But Turmail said the TSA is constantly reviewing and testing its security screeners and there is always room for improvement.

"We cannot afford in the U.S. to rest on our laurels," Turmail said. "That is exactly why the TSA so rigorously tests every element of the security system. Because what might be good enough today for security is never going to be good enough tomorrow or the day after. So if we don't probe our system, al Qaeda will."

"The best way to provide the highest guarantee for the traveling public is to put in place multiple levels of security that overlap and work together to protect passengers, to protect flight crews," Turmail said.

"What we do have that gives reassurance to the public is the reinforced cockpit doors, armed marshals and some armed pilots," Mica said. "I think those are far greater deterrents than a system that is only as good as its equipment."

Not all banned items are passing through security at U.S. airports. Since the TSA took over security at airports in February 2002, more than 8 million prohibited items have been intercepted or voluntarily surrendered. That number includes 51,408 box cutters, 2,453,039 knives and 1,498 firearms.