Mike Aponte – The MIT Graduate Who Beat the Casinos
Background
Mike Aponte had belonged to an army family and had travelled a lot before finally settling down in Boston as a student of MIT. He had been approached first to play blackjack as a part of the MIT Blackjack Team before it actually gained its fame. Formerly the team was known as Strategic Investments which was a legal entity which had been formed in the year 1991 and had failed. However, the idea had remained much the same, forming a blackjack team with money from investors and with the goal of making millions.
The new team took shape in the year 1994 when it was named the MIT Blackjack Team and along with Mike Aponte, the team gained much success and became famous through their wins in the casinos. Also, the book Bringing Down the House along with TV shows like Anything for Money and Breaking Vegas made the team famous.
The Peak
For the six years that the team was at its peak, the team won millions of dollars for the investors. The players were backed by different investors who were then paid their expenses and a percentage of their initial investment once their money had been returned. The remaining profits were divided between the players. Mike Aponte had been one of the 25 players which formed the MIT Blackjack Team and had been hugely responsible for the team’s success.
The team was eager not to make the same mistakes as they had in Strategic Investments and so they streamlined their tactics and the team and only allowed the best blackjack players to play for them. the methods which were used by the team had been shuffle tracking, card steering and of course, card counting. Mike Aponte himself had been an important player and his personal largest win during his career had been $200,000.
After 6 years with the team, in the year 2000 Mike Aponte retired. He removed his funds from the bank of the tea and had been grateful for the opportunity which had been provided to him for traveling across the world and playing internet blackjack. However, by 2000 most players of the team were very well known and it was almost impossible for them to play at any blackjack table in any casino. For this reason, he decided to quit.
However, Mike Aponte only left the team and not blackjack in general. In the year 2004 he won his first WSOP event and won $100,000 in prize money beating players like Stanford Wong, Anthony Curtis and Ken Smith though it had been his first ever blackjack tournament. Mike along with Dave Irvine, his partner, runs a Blackjack Institute which is a website teaching advantage strategies to players through visual aids. Some of the techniques taught by the institute are money management and card counting. The Institute organizes and conducts various seminars all over the US in order to make these strategies available and accessible to all players.