Trinity Digest
by Nicole Collins
Card counter Jeff Ma of the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) blackjack team dropped his pseudonym and anonymity this year in the epilogue of Ben Mezrich’s Bringing Down the House, an inside scoop on six MIT students who won millions in Las Vegas in the late 90s
Now a major motion picture that debuted worldwide Friday, Ma’s story scored number one in the box office and earned 24.1 million under the title “21” in it’s first weekend.
Ma’s secret lasted a decade after his MIT escapade and six years after Mezrich’s novel had first been published. Ma’s name was not only published, but he appeared on the big screen in a handful of shots as Planet Hollywood Dealer Jeff.
“The climate around gambling back then—it wasn’t the same as it is today,” said Ma in an interview with Mezrich in Vegas last year. “This was before the poker craze, and the resurgence of Vegas. Gambling was still kind of dirty—it wasn’t socially acceptable.”
Ma came from a conservative upbringing in upper-middle-class New England suburbia where he was shipped to Exeter Academy at twelve and transitioned to MIT from there.
Because Ma feared how he would be perceived, especially by his father, for playing blackjack, he kept weekend card-counting expeditions a secret and separate from his life in Boston where he graduated from MIT and first worked as an investment banker at a firm in Chicago.
His double life was preserved on-screen, as Ma was Ben Cambell (Jim Sturgess, Across the Universe), an MIT whizkid accepted early to Harvard Medical School—an elite educational opportunity he could not afford.
Although the real story is quite compelling, Hollywood naturally found a way to kick it up a notch with fictitious conflict and crafted struggles (tuition for Harvard Med, a fatherless protagonist, teammate love interest, estranged friendship from leading a double life, illegal interrogation by U.S. casino security…) —and a wholly produced, yet encompassing and stretched ending to match.
“The movie didn’t do the book justice,” is a cliché that can be thrown away here. Yes: there were enough card-counting flaws and strays from the real story to annoy the informed viewer. But the movie wasn’t about teaching moviegoers how to count cards or train team play.
It was about retelling the MIT blackjack experience, a real tale fit for the big screen.
“I am turned on by stories that involve young kids making huge fortunes, and living large,” wrote Mezrich in the Epilogue of his book renamed 21, “But it’s not the greed that gets me going, it’s the vicarious thrill of watching these guys beat systems that aren’t supposed to be beat.”
And they beat the system because they aren’t gambling. Instead, they use large bankrolls to invest in their 2% edge over the casino.
“It’s a combination of math and acting. If you do it right, you make money; if the casinos catch you doing it, they kick you out,” wrote Mezrich, “That’s the purest evidence that its not gambling—casinos love gamblers. They hate card counters.”
Is gambling (card counting) a sin?
Exploring the arguments for and against the Christian morality of counting cards or playing blackjack at Casinos.
by Jeremy Pryor
How to count cards
5 comments:
I appreciate Jeremy's points on counting cards. I think that he did a good job evaluating the issue. For me, the bottom line is that God has given us a gift of a certain amount of time here on earth to glorify Him. I know that I waste time and sometimes spend my time on foolish endeavors by not planning well enough. But, it would be very difficult for me to do a job that doesn't help others. Think about it, there are a lot of jobs that are not to appealing in life, but I am so thankful that there are people doing them. I am thankful for the garbage man, for the person that holds the construction sign and for the person that cleans toilets. These are jobs that I wouldn't want to do, but they all can be done to the glory of God - with a Christ like attitude and a thankful heart to God for His provision. Income is quite often too important in my life, but I hope that whatever I do to make income would first of all bring glory to God and second of all that it would be a service to mankind - not just to make money. After all, can't the Bible be summed up in "Loving God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and my neighbor as myself?"
I think you simplified the issue to much but here is what I hear you saying:
1. A job that doesn't directly help mankind (like a pastor, a garbage man or constructions sign holder) is not a job worth wasting time doing or an acceptable job for a Christian to have.
2. Counting Cards cannot be done to the glory of God.
3. We shouldn't be distracted by making money as to forget the Great Commandment.
As far as the first point: You are right to notice how removed card counting is from any sort of service towards mankind. It is as if it is kind of a leach of a job that feeds off a liability that casinos have. You are also right in your observation that time is short and we shouldn't waste in on things that are not loving people.
But maybe you can make money in a job that is far removed from being a service to mankind and still live a life to the glory of God loving mankind.
I know two pastors and an elder of a church who count cards professionally to support themselves to do ministry full-time. They found that putting 10 hours a week counting cards makes them enough money to free up all the remaining time of their week so they can love people.
I think card counters can be likened to people who dig through trash in landfills to find things of value. If these people didn't mine the landfill the garbage would stay there and the landfill would be that much larger. If card counters are not taking money from casino by beating their game then the money will stay in the casinos and the casinos will be that much wealthier.
Mining a landfill does not benefit mankind directly. But mining a landfill does benefit mankind indirectly.
1. You have money to spend and put back into the economy.
2. You can pay your bills and support your family who in return can love other people.
3. You can give money you have earned to others in need.
4. You have taken away resources from a life-sucking, earth-corroding pile of trash.
As for the second point: it would be good to ask at what point something can't glorify God?
1. Perhaps when it hurts other people more than it helps them (I always felt a little squeamish about making venti caramel frappicino's for customers who cannot afford them and were turning diabetic fast).
2. Perhaps when the results of the action communicate something untrue about who God is.
3. Perhaps when it does too much to distract or derail us God's purpose in the world.
Otherwise, like Piper says, he drinks orange juice to the glory of God. Drinking orange juice does not directly serve mankind. But it can indirectly serve mankind if you use the energy your body creates from the sugars in the juice and use that energy to love people.
As for the third point: Amen! Let us never allow any good thing become an idol or any bad thing become a vice. Let us use everything to the glory of God.
nicely written article
Very well said, but not exactly what I meant. I'll call ya.
Danice, I'm with you...
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