You probably don’t know what Jeff Ma looks like, even if you’ve seen the new movie “21” about a group of MIT students who take Vegas for hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, you’ve probably never heard of Ma, even though he was a real-life MIT student who, with a group of other math prodigies, took Vegas for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The film, based on Ma’s team’s experiences, documents the tale of young MIT hot-shot Ben (played by Jim Sturges) who, in order to earn his Harvard Graduate School tuition money, joins the MIT blackjack card counting team. In the film, Ben meets the most fabled of creatures-an attractive female math whiz-and has rip-roaring Vegas adventures, coming out on the other end slightly scuffed but wiser, richer and much more popular. Of course, everyone knows Hollywood likes to take liberties.
Jeff Ma didn’t start out as a high-rolling, confident card counter; I sat down over the phone with the previous mechanical engineering major and asked him about his meager beginnings.
“I have very conservative Chinese immigrant parents who are very much about education,” Ma said.
When he was asked to join the team, initially, he says, “I was definitely reluctant to get involved-it just didn’t seem like something that was on the up and up, going to a casino and betting professionally as your career.”
He was approached by the team “because of [his] demeanor.”
Ma was a friendly and lively student, both useful traits in the vigorous and demanding world of for-profit card counting at casino blackjack, but not enough by themselves to make an expert player.
“I needed to evolve into a very outgoing, energetic and boisterous guy” to become “a good blackjack player,” Ma said.
The place itself was overwhelming for Ma as a newcomer. “The first time I walked into a Vegas casino, it was sensory overload-the cash, the chips, the sound-there’s no clocks anywhere; you’re not prepared to deal with it until you are actually there.”
Eventually, as he began to get good at the game, “the immoral feeling went away,” Ma said, careful to iterate (as is the film) that “card counting is not illegal.” Indeed it isn’t-it involves no actual breaking of rules but simply the ability to keep track of the cards which have and haven’t yet been played. To do this, it helps to have a knack for numbers, so it is unsurprising that the members of the group were MIT students.
“MIT is full of very inventive, smart kids,” Ma said, who are “willing to think outside the box and so brilliant they can’t get out of their own way.” When a few students called film producers to pitch the idea, the moviemakers, upon learning the locale of the callers, thought they were being pranked. “They just didn’t believe it was real,” Ma said. Fortunately, the students were able to convince the filmmakers, and Ma’s story has become widespread.
The casinos, however, were aware of Ma and his team long before the movies were.
“The casinos got clued in because they started recognizing the same people always gambling together at the same tables, working together as a team. They watched us like hawks everywhere we went and everywhere we did. It’s not illegal, but casinos have the right to refuse service to anyone they want,” he said. “It’s like high priced buffets don’t serve people who eat a whole lot.”
That said, Ma was able to earn thousands of dollars in a single weekend at card counting: “I won so much money.One time, the casino took all the dollars we earned and gave us store credit, so I bought tons of electronics, flat screen TVs for my friends, all sorts of things. We were comped so many things and ended up earning money and getting all this free stuff. Having that much money is liberating, I didn’t have to worry about the money I made, I was able to pursue all the things I wanted to pursue.”
But being back at school was like inhabiting a different world: “I would go to Vegas and earn $100,000, but in Boston I would contemplate spending $20 on a cab or $1 for the subway.”
The casinos eventually caught on and Ma weathered some cinematic adventures of his own-at one point he was even “chased off a riverboat and followed home” by casino flunkies.
Ma no longer plays blackjack because he just doesn’t “want to deal with the hassle” of being booted from the tables and being “yelled at” by casino big-wigs. He is, however, successful and not just because of his MIT degree. “I was applying for a job as a Wall Street stock trader, and I had a little bullet point at the bottom of my resume that said ‘card counting skills.’ The interviewer asked me to expand and loved it. He thought it was the most interesting thing on the page.”
Even if the film does give its lead character a three-act story and a girlfriend, Ben and Ma’s were “very similar experiences,” Ma said. “The story line and plot line are very different, but the things that happened to him are very similar to the things that happened to me.” Mostly, these include the outrageous amounts of money amassed and the amount of taxes paid on it.
You may not remember Jeff Ma in “21” (he plays a dealer whom main character Ben calls his “brother from another mother”), but Vegas won’t forget him anytime soon.