There was a fascinating programme on BBC2 on Thursday about the history of black-jack - how casinos and a specific section of the general public had each been upping the ante (so to speak) in cheating and the war against it. A guy called Edward Thorp is credited for developing a wonderful yet simple system of card-counting, aiming to and succeeding in beating the odds.
At one point in time in the early 90s, around 125 students (geeks) from MIT (they have a great website, btw) were all travelling to Vegas at the weekends to beat the casinos. In the end, the security firm hired by the casinos to crack down on it used the MIT yearbook as the basis for its facial recognition database. I'm not an aficionado of US universities, but I've always maintained that if I was to be associated with any, I'd love it to be MIT, and this story only serves to increase this desire.
In the end, the casinos won the battle, but only by prevention means (you can't play in here because we think you're too intelligent). I like the fact that if allowed to play, they'd clean up.
