In the annals of blackjack history lies one of the most thrilling stories of wit, skill, and…fake beards.They were a group of very smart college students from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Instead of writing dusty dissertations, they decided to take their skills to the casino. (At least you can never accuse the educational system of not teaching useful information.)

At first, it was a blackjack experiment for class. Then the money started pouring it—proof that their hypothesis worked, but also a pretty good way of earning more money than any other summer job they could’ve held. Much more money. They earned millions of dollars!

This is how they did it. They used a basic blackjack strategy and card counting, and would employ several disguises to escape the close scrutiny of the casino. What they were doing was not illegal, but as Ken Uston’s story proves, casinos aren’t very keen on welcoming people who have found a way to beat their system.

These students worked as a team, and assignment four different roles. First there was the Back-Spotter. His job was to count cards without sitting at a table. To make this feasible, they chose tables and casinos that were crowded, and played the role of the spectators that would often cluster around the people who were gambling. If the table became hot, meaning that the players had an advantage over the house, these Back Spotters would then signal the big bettors to play and bet big.

Another important role was that of the Spotter. He would sit at the blackjack table and just bet the minimum amount. They knew that casinos would catch the card counters by monitoring the patterns of betting. The Spotter would play it safe, but then signal to team mates when the table was hot.

The team had a third type of spotter, the Big Player. Basically he was a recreational gamble, who didn’t care if he lost his bankroll. However, he would do this slowly, joining several small games, and in the process counting the cards and tracking the high cards as they were shuffled through the deck.

The last role that was assigned was that of the Gorilla. He wasn’t supposed to count cards. He would just be the Drunken Millionaire, the tilter who would bet big all the time. Since the casino would just typecast him as someone who was on a gambling frenzy, they wouldn’t notice when the Spotter and the Back Spotter would direct him to the tables that were hot, and he would probably win.

The MIT team used a technique first applied by Ken Uston, but brought it to the next level. They actually got investors, whose funding they used to train in “casinos” they had set up in classrooms, warehouses and apartments.

The training paid off. They won millions, and eluded casinos’ attention for two years. However, their disadvantage was that they were people of color, and at that time, prejudice against the African Americans were high. Some argue that if they had not been of color, the casinos would not have minded if they had won large amounts—their gambling patterns would’ve gone on undetected. Instead, they were identified and then hunted down. Their downfall eventually came from within: a member of the team sold the names and faces of the team members for $25,000 to the Griffin Agency, the equivalent of the casino FBI. Today, the Griffin Agency gets the MIT freshman yearbook every year.