Staff Writer

PLATTSBURGH -- It's not every day that a two-time Oscar winner portrays a character based on the high-roller life of Mount Assumption Institute alum J.P. Massar.

His real story actually bears little resemblance to "Micky Rosa," played by Kevin Spacey in "21," the Columbia Picture release based on Ben Mezrich's New York Times bestseller, "Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions."

"21" stars Spacey as a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, who leads a team of brilliant students on forays to Las Vegas to play blackjack. Massar led the MIT Blackjack Team in the late 1970s.

The movie is a fusion of Mezrich's imagination heavily dosed with Hollywood.

"It's not as bad as it could have been," said Massar, who graduated from MAI in Plattsburgh in 1974 and earned his undergraduate and advanced degrees at MIT.

The one thing the movie got right was the number of the team's practice room, though the college sequences were shot at Boston University since MIT said no to immortalizing the card-counting whizzes, whose "winner winner, chicken dinner" mantra made Las Vegas casino owners sweat.

DOCUMENTARY

For a reality check, watch the History Channel's 2004 documentary "Breaking Vegas" in which Massar, "Mr. M.," appears with many others who played on the infamous MIT Blackjack Team.

"I'm shadowed," he said. "You can't see my face. You can recognize me from my voice. I'm one of the major characters in that."

The "Mr. M." moniker is an inside joke.

"It derives from the way the casino personnel talk to you when they think you are a high roller. They don't use your full name. If a casino host comes up to you while you are playing at the table, they greet you. If your name is Massar, like mine, they say, How are you doing today, Mr. M. or Mr. K. or Mr. H.?' That was where the germ of the idea came to refer to myself as Mr. M. Some people on the blackjack team jokingly refer to each other that way."

RECALLS MAI DAYS

Today, Massar lives in Berkeley, Calif., with his significant other. They relocated when they grew weary of icy-cold Cambridge. He has his own consulting business and has worked the last few years on bioinformatics. He plays semi-professional poker, but that's a whole different beast from blackjack.

He's three decades removed from the MAI student who played clarinet and billiards, participated in the Chess Club and debate team, worked on the yearbook and served as editor-in-chief of the school newspaper.