"In Ben Mezrich's 2002 book, “Bringing Down the House” the Mohegan Sun was the scene of one of the more profitable plunders pulled off by a team of scheming MIT students who were raiding casinos by counting cards at the blackjack tables. The MIT students, working the Sun on its opening weekend and the week after, won more than a half million dollars, according to the book, and were even comped with lots of free stuff, like a widescreen TV, a Sony stereo and camcorders, for being good customers. When the book came out, the chief executive of the casino at the time called the story “10 percent fact and 90 percent fiction.” But he also ventured, “it would make a good movie.” Well, the movie's out. “21” opened on a lot of screens around here Friday, to big audiences. Maybe Mohegan Sun wasn't glamorous enough to be included in the movie. But I suspect the Sun scenes from the book just got dropped in the routine condensing of book to screenplay. I guess we have to take the casino's word that the book was mostly wrong in suggesting that it lost so much money to counters at the blackjack tables those opening weekends that it had to change procedures and retrain staff. The last night of the second raid by the MIT students, when they claim to have taken home more than $300,000 from Connecticut's newest casino, they had a scare when a pit boss finally approached them, the book says. They began to panic. Card counting is legal, but they were worried about laws on an American Indian reservation." Get the Story:
David Collins: '21' Makes A Curious Omission (The New London Day 3/30)
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