Breaking Vegas

This weekend I watched a special on The History Channel called Breaking Vegas. The show walked through, in great detail, the MIT Blackjack Team’s very lucrative run at Las Vegas casinos in the early nineties.

BREAKING VEGAS goes inside the riveting story and shows us how the MIT group was founded and stayed in action for decades, eventually evolving into a full-fledged business–one with only one product, money, which it made by legally beating the casinos at their own game. Interviews with casino heads and former members of the team shed light on the opposite sides of this strange cat-and-mouse game, and we’ll see how their remarkable run finally came to an end.

Some of you might remember Wired’sHacking Las Vegas, which recounts the same story, and save Bill Joy’s Why the future doesn’t need us, is probably my favorite Wired article ever. I encourage you to both read the article and watch the show — it’s a great (and inspiring) story.