By ROBIN CAUDELL
May 11, 2008 04:00 am
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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.
Massar hasn't been in Plattsburgh since he was 22. Born in Batavia, he and his parents, George and Frances, came to the North Country in 1960.
"I lived in Dannemora. My father was the X-ray technician for the prison hospital. I went to St. Joseph's Elementary School."
He doesn't remember the name of his math teacher at MAI but does remember he was very good.
GAMBLING COURSE
At MIT, he majored in math and computer science. He was working on his master's degree when he and his penny-ante poker-playing friends saw a guide to winter-break courses. "How to Gamble If You Must" caught their attention.
Massar wasn't able to attend the course because he was working at Lincoln Labs. His enthused friends told him about the cool how-to-beat-blackjack stuff they learned. They decided to put their knowledge in action over spring break. Their sights were on a million.
"We went to Atlantic City and lost our shirts "¦ We kept at it. Then, six months later, we decided to give our own little course."
Their guidebook listing was noticed by "Dave," who played blackjack with famous card counter Ken Uston. "Dave" was recruiting a team.
"We said sure. That's how MIT (blackjack team) started."
"Dave" knew someone who was willing to front between $5,000 and $7,000.
"I was just fresh out of school. I had just gotten a job, and I had no money. I called up my parents."
He asked them for a loan of a couple of thousand to put in the bank "for emergencies." Massar said he would repay them in six months.
"I took that money and invested in the Blackjack Team."
With $10,000 in their pockets, they revisited Atlantic City over Christmas 1979 and New Year's.
"We did very well. We doubled and redoubled the money. That was the start of the teams. It stayed in existence from that point through the 1990s."
HIGH-POWERED TEAM
In May 1980, Massar approached Bill Kaplan, a 1980 Harvard MBA grad, who had a winning Las Vegas-based blackjack team. In "21," Spacey's character is an amalgamation of Massar, Kaplan and John Chang, a 1985 MIT grad who managed the team for 15 years.
In 1992, Massar, Chang and Kaplan formed a limited partnership, Strategic Investments, LP. Seed money was $1 million. Foxwoods was on their minds.
Asked about the rush of winning, Massar said: "It was pretty cool. It was great. It was like, Wow. This really works.' The coolest thing about it is you can beat the system. It was beating the casinos at their own game, which was almost as cool as winning the money."
Hundred of players from many colleges passed through the teams. Massar made hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the 1980s, they frequented Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.
"We reported the money we made. There's a line for gambling on the income-tax return."
His high-roller facet has given "Mr. M." cool stories and a rep. As scientists, it taught the teams how to confront a problem and solve it using analysis, computer simulation and mathematical equations.
"You use that information, but you don't fool yourself in believing that you are better than you are. We set up very stringent tests and checks to ensure people were doing what they were doing. You don't believe someone when they say they can count or play blackjack.
"You can take those things away from that for the rest of your life."
E-mail Robin Caudell at:
rcaudell@pressrepublican.com
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Photos
J.P. Massar