On Monday night, things were different in Quincy dining hall: Students were counting cards instead of carbs. Harvard Undergraduate Women in Business put down their résumés and picked up poker chips.
The reason? A blackjack tutorial taught by Bill B. Kaplan ’77, the founder of the MIT blackjack team that inspired the book “Bringing Down the House” and the movie “21,” and David A. Irvine, a former member of the team.
“21” has received heavy media attention for using mostly Caucasian actors to portray a team that some say was mostly Asian, but neither instructor was critical of the decision.
“The Asian controversy is an inaccuracy,” Kaplan says. “We got up to 80 players in the ’92 to ’93 era, and only 20 percent of our players were Asian.”
“It was about portraying the part,” Irving adds. “It wasn’t really a race issue.”
The original book, by Ben Mezrich ’91, was recently exposed by The Boston Globe as more creative than its non-fiction label would suggest—according to the article, large portions of the novel are embellished or completely false. But again, neither Irvine nor Kaplan put much stock in the media crtiques.
“[Mezrich] got the essence of what we did very well,” Irvine says, though he admits that “certainly some of the details weren’t quite accurate or truthful.”
Kaplan agrees, noting that the media backlash is actually a positive indication of being in the spotlight. “I think he made the right decision,” Kaplan says. “He wrote a New York Times bestseller that ended up being made into a Hollywood blockbuster. Can’t say he did anything wrong.”
In spite of this controversy, or perhaps because of it, there is a growing interest in blackjack. Irvine has an HBO drama series and a reality show currently in development.
Kaplan, who has been retired from blackjack for decades, has seen more modest gains. “I’m in the background of one scene in the movie as a cameo appearance,” he says. “For about two seconds.”
