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“Our own blackjack achievements will pale in comparison to the combined creative force of thousands of independent thinkers, all motivated to give the casinos a run for their money.”
Semyon Dukach, Busting Vegas
I knocked on the door, unsure if it was really happening. It was in my nature to be early for appointments but I feared that this time my nervous excitement would shine through in front of the man I’d read about just weeks earlier. Though I’d never met Semyon Dukach until that moment, I knew that the famed former member of the MIT blackjack team, fondly known as the “Darling of Las Vegas,” had experienced more excitement during his few years as a blackjack player than I probably had in my whole life.
I grew up on the coast of Maine in a small town known for summer tourism and cold winters. Long summer days were spent at the beach before I would head to the basketball playground in the early evenings. It was hardly a unique childhood experience, but one I enjoyed nonetheless. I had majored in sports management at the University of New Hampshire and ended up on the business side of the sports industry in Ohio and Wisconsin before venturing back east and settling in Boston.
Like most people, I yearned for more out of life. I wanted to experience something special, something out of the ordinary. They say that everyone’s good at something, but I couldn’t have told you what that something was for me. So when I read Ben Mezrich’s Bringing Down the House in 2003, I was in awe of the idea that a group of students from MIT in the 1990s were able to take Vegas for millions, by perfecting a system for beating the game of blackjack. They were brilliant young minds, able to exploit goliath by processing the same information that was available to everyone at a blackjack table—except they did it differently. They did it better. My attention to the story was absolute. I couldn’t get enough.
Steve, my roommate from college, turned me on to the story. “Hey, you should check this book out. I think you’d like it. I know you only have a state school education,” he’d chuckled, “but you shouldn’t be afraid to pick up a book now and then.”
I’d shot him a glance back and then reminded him, “You went there too, and I do read … sometimes.”
Weeks later, over some beers and a playoff football game at my home, Steve recalled that conversation. “Shit, man. I almost forgot.” He went to his jacket in the front foyer and retrieved the green and yellow book. On the cover was a picture of some loose casino chips, a half-glass of hard liquor, and a subtitle that read, “The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions.”
After Steve left, I finished what remained of my beer before heading to bed. I figured I’d give the book a shot. After all, how bad could it be? Gambling, booze, a secret system? As I reclined in my bed, pulling the comforter to my chest, I turned to page one and began to read until I couldn’t stay awake anymore.
I awoke the next morning as the sun peered through the slats of my window blinds. I’d stayed up as long as my eyelids would allow but dozed off somewhere around 1998 in the story that began in 1994. Just a few chapters remained and the only thing that had kept me from finishing the book in one sitting was the fatigue I felt after splitting a twelve-pack with my friend the night before.
I lifted the book off my chest and rolled out of bed in search of a tall glass of water. Living single came with many advantages that most of my friends no longer had. I had previously been married for a few short years but it didn’t work for me. Looking back, I’d reasoned that it was unsuccessful either because I hadn’t yet matured or that I was searching for more from life. Probably both.
I returned to bed to finish the rest of the story. It had most certainly captivated me, but despite the entertainment I got, I returned the book to Steve and my life went on as normal.
Two years later, I caught wind that Ben Mezrich had published a sequel of sorts, titled Busting Vegas, about a splinter group from the MIT blackjack team led by Semyon Dukach. While the premise was comparable to the first story, Dukach took card counting to a new place, perfecting advanced techniques such as shuffle tracking and ace sequencing. It wasn’t long before I got my hands on a copy of the book. Dukach, a Russian-born mathematical phenomenon had enrolled in graduate school at MIT in the mid-90s, and then proceeded to take Vegas by storm.
It wasn’t until later that I’d heard some controversy as to whether his techniques were truly successful or if they were simply the result of a well-crafted story with very little empirical evidence. Nevertheless, much like Bringing Down the House, I devoured Busting Vegas in one weekend. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted more so I flipped to the Afterword, where Dukach himself contributed a few pages from his own perspective on his seemingly supernatural card-counting powers and advanced blackjack strategies. It concluded with, “This approach and others are explained in detail on my DVDs that you can order from blackjackscience.com.”
I dropped the book and reached for my laptop, which sat on my living room ottoman, next to a pile of Sports Illustrated magazines, yellowing Wall Street Journal newspapers, and empty frozen-dinner wrappers. I scoured the site and saw a link to “Blackjack Seminars”!
The words screamed out at me from the screen. I clicked on the link and it took me to a schedule of events in different cities, including New York City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Boston.
Boston. How fitting for Dukach to host a seminar in the city where it all began for him, home to baked beans, the Red Sox, and, of course, MIT. November 20th. That would be in three weeks. I pressed the order button on the site, failing to consider the $500 fee that the session would require. Price didn’t matter at that point. I’d finished the book a few minutes before and virtually any price would’ve been a satisfactory cover charge to sit in front of the man himself, picking his brain, hearing his stories, and seeing if his mannerisms matched those planted in my mind from reading the story.
I didn’t have much desire to learn the game of blackjack—not to that extent. Annual trips to Vegas, in addition to my weekly football wager, were enough to satisfy my gambling itch. I wanted the experience of meeting someone with greatness.
Everyone is good at something, but Semyon Dukach wasn’t just good, he was legendary. I had to meet him. The site asked for my credit card and I reached to my wallet to dig it out, while thinking of any loopholes I might be missing. I considered the risk: Perhaps this was a scam; maybe he wouldn’t show up. It was a risk I was willing to take. In a basic way, I could comprehend the concept of risk, but I had no idea that the game of blackjack would someday teach me about risk in a way that I’d never quite understood before.
It had been a while since I’d felt such excitement. When the confirmation arrived in my email inbox minutes later, I appreciated the ambiguity of the message that followed:
The exact location will be divulged in the days prior to the seminar.
I wasn’t sure if the mysterious approach was intentional or logistical or both, but I was swept up by the idea of embracing my bachelorhood and doing what I assumed few of my friends had the freedom to do. For the previous year my life had been in disarray. My divorce was finalized not long after my father had died unexpectedly of a heart attack. The conflicting emotions I felt left me reaching that rock-bottom moment that many people consider a necessary step in the process of change. My life was beginning to transform. I was changing. In many ways, it was time to leave the old me behind and take the scary, but necessary, leap of faith.
Weeks later, the excitement I had was as considerable as it had been from the start. My nerves were on overdrive as I approached the front of the building. I paused, took a deep breath, and then breathed into my cupped hands before rapping my chilled knuckles against the door. I heard the squeaky knob turn and then there stood Dukach himself.
He extended his hand. “Hi, I’m Semyon.”
“I’m Nathaniel. Nice to meet you,” I said as calmly as I could.
“Come in. You’re the first one to arrive.”
I stepped through the door to the musty apartment, berating myself internally for arriving first and appearing overanxious. Seconds later, another attendee arrived. He was tall, big, and he was wearing a Red Sox hat.
“D.A.,” he said with an extended hand and a half-forced smile.
Two other men arrived, both appearing to be in their 50s. A minute later, a couple of other guys showed up. Aside from Semyon and D.A., I got an odd feeling from everyone else in the room. It was like waiting at the DMV on a Friday afternoon—for many reasons, I wanted to get the hell out.
But there I was, standing in a room with one of the most famous blackjack players in the world and introducing myself to fellow fanatics, all because of a book that I’d finished a few weeks before. I hoped it was worth sticking around.
In actuality, I doubted that the apartment was where Semyon lived. It was a small basement apartment in a seedy section of Boston. It wasn’t exactly Chinatown, which the Mezrich stories had often referenced—a sort of stereotypical underbelly of any city. This was different, less movie-like. The streets were empty, except for a few smashed liquor bottles that lined the sidewalks. Abandoned dirt parking lots could be found every few blocks. I’d parked my own car in a lot a block or two away, not knowing if I was allowed to or not. No signs were posted and, although less than a couple of miles from my own place in Charlestown, it felt like a world away. It wasn’t an area I normally would’ve felt safe in alone but the fact that it was a quiet Saturday morning helped ease my concerns.
“Okay guys, everyone’s here. Let’s get started,” Semyon said with unwavering confidence, pointing at the blackjack table that stood ominously in the corner of the room. At that moment, the sound of a fist pounding at the door shook everyone’s attention. The rap felt like it had purpose. I wasn’t doing anything illegal, but I still had visions of a team of police knocking down the door. Or maybe it was a group of con men that had lured us into a trap to rob us. My thoughts were irrational, but there was something about the topic, the location, and the other attendees that made me uneasy. I felt the pulse of the veins in my neck. My heart pounded like I’d tipped back in my chair a little too far before catching myself. But it wasn’t a raid or a hold up. It was a media group from a local television affiliate, there to do a feature story on Semyon.
I looked at the other participants and could see it in their eyes: they felt the rush that I felt, too. It confirmed what we had all secretly hoped—that the story of Semyon Dukach was real and we were about to hear from the legend himself.