People, we're trying to make a movie here-

One sad lonely evening I was home by myself with Tahoe and decided to watch '21'. Amazing. The main character is not a well known actor but he was brilliant. It's a great movie about revenge. I kept wondering if it was based on a true story and whether counting cards was legal...so I did some research.

Here's a synopsis of what I found:

The movie was based on a true story about 5 students from MIT who became experts in card counting and took Vegas for millions of dollars.

Card counting is completely legal (without a device). Although its legal, Vegas tries to prevent card counters from playing...just like in the movie, they can have staff come and harass the person, or they'll come and talk to the person so they lose their concentration, as well as other various methods of prevention. A pitboss will either ban the player from the shoe or something (casino) or 'invite' him to play a game other than Blackjack. They keep track of the individual(s) and some may even send their information to other casinos.

Al Francesco, Ken Uston, Tommy Hyland, various groups from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and, most recently, a team called "The Greeks" have reported to have won millions of dollars throughout the years.

The publication of Ken Uston's books both stimulated the growth of blackjack teams (Hyland's team and the first MIT team were formed in Atlantic City shortly after the publication of Million Dollar Blackjack) and increased casino awareness of the methods of blackjack teams, making it more difficult for such teams to operate. Hyland and Francesco soon switched to a form of shuffle tracking called "ace sequencing." Also referred to as "cutting to the ace," this technique involves various methods designed to spot the bottom card during a shuffle (ideally an ace) and expertly cut the deck and play future hands to force the player to receive the ace. This made it more difficult for casinos to detect when team members were playing with an advantage. In 1994, members of the Hyland team were arrested for ace sequencing and blackjack team play at Casino Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. It was documented in court that Nevada casinos with ownership stakes in the Windsor casino were instrumental in the decision to prosecute team members on cheating charges. However, the judge ruled that the players' conduct was not cheating, but merely the use of intelligent strategy.

I'm just in shock that people understand how to do this junk. In the movie they kept saying 'it's simple math'...well doesn't seem very simple to me! haha I was and still am so confused as to how they do it! But then again, I was never good at math in the first place! ha