Ex-gambler turns software ace - BBC News

None of these alien footing associate to Unica, the software system house based in Waltham, Massachusetts, that he founded in 1992.

Mr Spike Lee is reminiscing about gaming tactics and his clip with the Amphibians, a pack of top-grade pupils and alumni from the Bay State Institute of Technology.

The Amphibians took on gaming casinos and other gambling lairs using a under control mathematical theoretical account of card-counting to take down the likelihood in their favour.

Today, their deeds word form the background for 21, the Film Industry film starring Kevin Spacey and based on the book Bringing Down The House by Ben Mezrich.

The card-counting technique plant only in blackjack, where the participant stakes against the casino, hoping to be dealt card game that add up to 21.

Covert activity

Mathematically-savvy Massachusetts Institute of Technology students, working to strict-allocated rules and acting in rehearsed roles, racked up impressive net income during Mister Lee's era. Hand signalings indicated to the team's designated high-roller when to wager heavily on a table.

These tactics were not illegal, but gambling casinos made every attempt to black book the squad members. The bang of outwitting gambling casino security appealed to Mister Lee.

"It was like being a spy," he recalls.

The hereafter engineering industry executive director got an early taste sensation of difficult hard cash when travelling with up to $250,000 of profits strapped to his body. Mister Lee's card-counting run ran from 1995 to 2000, before post-9/11 metallic element sensors could pick up the metallic element strip in a $100 bill.

The Saint David volt Goliath feeling is the same, plus the gusto, the squad spirit we felt when we beat out the casinos

Yuchun Spike Lee on his software system firm

"There were maybe three modern times a twelvemonth we got caught with hard cash at an airport, but we were very organised, we had a lawyer ready to take our call," he says.

He was caught once, and relied on the pre-arranged lawyer to convert the government he was not transporting drug-dealing profits.

The sums of money of money involved were astonishing, even by the criteria of the computing machine industry, where Mister Lee's company uses 500 staff with yearly grosses of $100m.

At the gap weekend of a gambling casino in Connecticut, Mister Spike Lee and his squad made a killing. Drive back to Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, they gathered in a meeting room to stack up gaming bits worth $500,000, all made in just 48 hours.

Mr Spike Lee foams with narratives of his blackjack oak adventures. In fact, he is perfectly equipped to play his allocated function among spotters and card-counters wearing camouflages to debar observant gambling casino security staff. Mister Spike Lee played the Crazy Asiatic Gambler, whose occupation statute title within the Amphibians was the Big Player.

The Crazy Asiatic Gambler was an enactment that Mister Spike Lee embraced with gusto, convincing the gambling casino staff that here was a adult male who would abandon all logic in his chase of a winning hand.

Rogues' gallery

Team members who were identified were photographed and barred from the casino, which would then share their human faces via its security house with other operators. Mister Lee's five-year streak ended when he was barred from the giant Bellagio gambling casino in Las Vegas.

By this time, he was already running Unica and came place to open up his e-mail, where a purchase order for selling software system was awaiting him. The client was the Bellagio casino.

Unica now have business offices in eight countries

How makes it compare with running a selling software system company? "There are some parallels. The Saint David volt Goliath feeling is the same, plus the gusto, the squad spirit we felt when we beat out the casinos."

Four of Unica's staff are ex-counters who have got been blacklisted by the casinos. What sort of head makes it take to follow all of this fast card action?

Mr Spike Lee bring forths a laminated card from his wallet. There are bantam Numbers covering the credit-card sized item. These stand for 10,000 hours of fake blackjack oak rules. He keeps that by memorising this card it is possible to take down the likelihood in a player's favour.

"Anyone can make it."

Mr Spike Lee still transports the card about with him, a tangible reminder of a clip when, as a Big Player precious by casinos, he was showered with extraordinary inducements to maintain on gambling. "You would never have got experiences such as as these anywhere else. I was given a chopper drive through the Thousand Canyon at sunset."

Changing roles

In the movie 21, Laurence Fishburne plays a gambling casino security head combat for his job, as face-recognition software system endangers to render his coevals of tough research workers extinct.

Now Mister Spike Lee revelries in the possible of sophisticated software. The programme he sells assists his clients topographic point a possible hereafter customer. But just as his card-counting change ego, the Crazy Asiatic Gambler, relied on cold mathematical odds, this merchandise plant on precision.

He promotes his clients to utilize information generated by the programme with care. "We don't desire to spook people by appearing to cognize too much about them."

And like Laurence Fishburne's security man, Cole, Mister Spike Lee have seen the human race change.

Airport security is a serious hindrance to shifting the sums of money needed to raise the bet on a tabular array and the profits that tin consequence from diligent squad work. And the quicker the money is carried away from one city, the sooner it can be used to wager against a gambling casino in another location.

If 100s of one thousands of dollars cannot be moved through airdrome scanners, then surely a Rota of drivers could be organised to transport the hard cash to selected points? Mister Spike Lee nods in understanding at this suggestion. He still looks like a adult male who is very familiar with the surroundings of the Big Players.