Mike Aponte Blackjack

by admin

As a college senior in the early 1990's, Mike Aponte was invited to join the MIT Blackjack Team. Over its long and storied history, the team had developed sophisticated strategies for gaining an. Mike Aponte Blackjack Strategy is the simple answer. A quick overview of the kinds of games you can typically expect from a casino includes slots, poker, blackjack, roulette, scratch cards, bingo, keno, craps and baccarat, to name but a few. Keep in mind that even these examples can themselves be split into many variations. Learn how to count cards & win at 21 from World Series of Blackjack Champion, Mike Aponte, one of the leaders of the infamous MIT Card Counting Team.

a.k.a. MIT Mike; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; MIT Blackjack Team, Strategic Investments

Mike Aponte is a former member of the MIT Blackjack Team, and the co-founder of the Blackjack Institute, which provides instructional information for blackjack players. After first hitting the casinos in 1992, he soon became one of the MIT Team’s most successful Big Players. He also began training and recruiting new players, coordinating trips, and taking on further managerial tasks. Before the decade was over Aponte had already risen to the top of the casino blacklists and could no longer bet meaningful stakes anywhere, so he was effectively forced to retire from professional card counting as a BP. However, he is still as involved with blackjack as ever. Through the Blackjack Institute he speaks professionally about blackjack and provides coaching to blackjack players and up and coming teams. He has competed in various televised blackjack tournaments and won the very first World Series of Blackjack in 2004. He also spends his time organizing a non-profit educational program, tutoring and mentoring underrepresented youth to help them gain access to higher education.

Joining the MIT Team

Mike Aponte came to MIT to study economics and played on the football team. His career took an unexpected turn when he was introduced, in his senior year, to the MIT Blackjack Team. After the first team meeting he was hooked, and in 1992 he was recruited to play for the team as a Big Player after passing the team’s “BP checkout”, the big player test. This was during the time of the Strategic Investments incarnation of the MIT Team, which was set up as a million dollar company. However, the team had to keep recruiting a great many new players to replace those that were being identified as card counters. After the disbandment of SI in 1993, one former manager decided to set up a hand-picked team, and invited Aponte.

After SI

This team decided to improve on certain shortcomings of SI. The selection procedures were made more rigorous, higher quality control was enforced, recruitment tests were no longer cookie-cutter models, and the focus was kept close to card counting rather than more advanced but riskier techniques such as shuffle tracking and card steering. Subsequently, accoring to Aponte, the team never had a bad year. The biggest win the team ever made was close to half a million during the weekend of Superbowl XXIX in 1995. Because the event attracted many celebrities and other high rollers, the team’s BPs did not stand out so much among the other players and could afford to bet more crudely without attracting too much attention. However, as Griffin Investigations closed in on MIT players and MIT Mike came to top the blacklist (you can view Aponte’s first entry into the Griffin Investigations black book here), he retired from counting cards in casinos in the year 2000.

The Blackjack Institute

After Bringing Down the House came out, the popularity of Blackjack received a great boost. One day, Aponte was on the phone, talking to Dave Irvine about an idea he had discussed with a former team mate, about bringing out an instructional video to cover the skills that are most difficult to learn from books alone. Irvine was enthusiastic about the idea, and they founded a company for which they wanted to patent the name MITBlackjack. The MIT, however, was not in favour of this idea. Averse to the idea of beginning a legal battle against the MIT, they changed the name to Blackjack Institute. The Blackjack Institute first brought out a home training course, which includes the video 60 Minutes to Winning Blackjack. Since then they have extended their offer to include more merchandise, books, instructional seminars and private mentoring.

After 2000, Mike Aponte competed in various televised blackjack tournaments, including the World Series of Blackjack and the Ultimate Blackjack Tour. He does volunteer work, and maintains a blog at MikeAponte.com where he posts articles about about blackjack as well as entertaining related topics such as comparisons between Bringing Down the House and what really happened.

Mike Aponte Blackjack Player

Mike Aponte - One of The Best World Gamblers

Mike Aponte was born in a family of U.S. Army officer. Due to his father's job the boy was quite accommodated to moving from state to state, and by the time he graduated from Ewing High School, he has changed 11 schools already.

Mike

First Blackjack encounter

After graduating high school, Mike went to Boston with an intention to become a member of MIT. There he first got acquainted to blackjack - and he as completely astonished by the game. As he later told in his interview, he never liked card games. And when he first saw blackjack strategy charts and main tips of the game which were based on pure mathematical laws and formulas, he felt the eager and sincere interest of gamblers around and saw an opportunity of making money on this game - he understood that it was that he lacked that moment.

The trainings

Mike confessed that card counting strategies were difficult for him. Not that he was not smart or had lack of interest - just it was a kind of activity he had never experienced before. But the matter was that he was motivated in a right way and continued to train vigorously and restlessly, until the results appeared.

Mike Aponte Blackjack Tournament

Results

The trainings were hard and exhausting, but the results of those trainings were more than impressive. In a short time Mike Aponte became one of the best players of the MIT team. As the roles in the team were distributed in the right way, they had card counters, big players etc. (for those who don't know the meanings of abovementioned terms, it's advisable to read Ken Uston section).

Blackjack

As a matter of fact Mike was one of the most favored and successful big players along with Johnny Chang and Bill Kaplan He had an incredible memory and that's why he was often accessed upon that role.

Master Mike

Mike Aponte Blackjack

Aponte

Mike Aponte Blackjack Free

Through the beginning of the new millennium Mike became a manager of his own team, which was administrated by himself. The team took millions of dollars from the casinos in different countries. Every team member ever had been to Mike Aponte's team provided himself with a life-long supply of money. They travelled constantly, improving their skills and were a real nightmare for any casino they entered.

All in all, Mike Aponte didn't retire from blackjack. He became a successful businessman and a co-founder of the company Blackjack Institute.