The movie 21 is famous for being choc-full of inaccuracies. Many people have commented on this over the years since its release, from movie pundits and casino goers to the actual casinos themselves – 888 recently posted a piece on Gambling Fact or Fiction, looking at where Hollywood completely missed the mark with casino-themed movies. Despite butchering most of the facts, the film was fairly successful, taking almost 4.5 times its budget at the box office alone. The question is, considering the movie was fairly successful, why is the movie 21 so factually inaccurate?
To answer this we need to look at where the story comes from. 21 is based on the ‘true story’ book, Bringing Down the House, which recounts the success of Jeff Ma and his gang of card-counting MIT buddies. While the book is a fictionalised version of what really happened – the author Ben Mezrich admits that he “took literary license to make it readable,” – the film simply didn’t follow the book all that closely. When you loosely base a movie on a book which is a fictionalised version of a true story, you’re naturally going to be left with a story which has more holes in it than Swiss cheese.
With that in mind, what are some of the biggest inaccuracies in 21? If the movie is as bad as it is, surely there are some examples beyond the fact that Hollywood got the character’s backstories and ethnicities completely wrong? As it happens, we have a few examples of where 21 missed the mark by a country mile.
“The object of Blackjack is to get as close to 21 as possible without going over.”
This is incorrect – the object of Blackjack is to beat the dealer. You can do this by getting to 21 and you fail by going over, this is true. However, in most casinos the dealer will stick on 16 which means that if have a hand of 19, hitting again to try to hit a 2 is the worst possible move you can make. This quote is a gross oversimplification of the game of blackjack – it’s like saying the object of the Super Bowl is to get the ball to the end of the pitch.
The idea that card counting is something that only geniuses can do
Again, this is incorrect. Card counting isn’t easy, this much is true, but by no means does it take a degree from MIT to be able to count cards. If card counting was something saved for the upper echelon of MENSA, there wouldn’t be a WikiHow page on how to count cards. 888casino recently created an interactive count carding trainer, aimed at teaching players how to count cards as part of a Europe-wide social experiment. The results show that if you really want to learn how to count cards, it’s surprisingly easy to learn. All you need is the knowhow, a little elbow grease, and basic arithmetic.
The idea that card counters win every single hand
Jason Chang, the real life person behind the character Mickey, has outright criticised 21, saying “It just wasn’t that easy. We didn’t win every time. In fact, we endured months of losing from time to time.”
Card counting is a tool which you can use to predict the statistical probability of the next card in the deck. At the end of the day however, card counting is just a prediction, and it only improves your edge by around 1%. If you toss a coin an infinite number of times, roughly half of the cards will be heads; if you toss a coin 5 times in a row and only get heads, you can predict the next toss will come out tails – but it’s just a prediction. Putting money on a coin toss will always be a 50:50 whether you’re right or wrong. Card counting helps, but it doesn’t make you an instant winner.
The idea that pit bosses are generally incompetent
Believe it or not, pit bosses can count cards. If you want to get a job at a casino, either working a surveillance or managing the floor, you don’t need to be a blackjack expert, but you need to know how to count cards. They literally test your ability to do this as part of the interview to get the position. The idea that an entire industry of managers in one of the most lucrative industries in the world are utterly incompetent and can’t catch someone in the act is laughable at best.
While we’re on the subject, pit bosses and security staff don’t take you out back and beat you. Imagine the litigation that would come out against them for brutally attacking a member of the public and a patron who attended their casino – the lawsuit would go down in history, and the shareholders would abandon the casino like rats from a sinking ship.
The way the characters act
Possibly the biggest faux pas that 21 made was the way spotters act in card counting. Card counting is a team effort when done right, and while card counting isn’t illegal, it is heavily frowned upon and if you get caught you will get asked to leave, potentially getting barred in the process. Entering the casino with your spotter and tipping like crazy when you don’t make money (spotters don’t bet big money) is a sure-fire way to get caught.
