Blackjack is often regarded as one of the simplest games to learn, yet also one of the hardest to master. On the surface, it seems pretty easy – just ask the dealer to hit you until you’re close to 21! A monkey can learn to play this game! Well, a single look in a guide… Or hell, even just the Wikipedia page for blackjack, is enough to demonstrate just how deep the rabbit hole can go. This isn’t just a complicated game – it’s a complex math exercise that requires you to be a mathematical genius in order to have a decent chance of doing well without relying on luck. Interestingly enough, the game can actually be beaten – using various methods, you can actually guarantee big winnings almost 100% of the time, but it requires a truly brilliant mind in order to pull something like that off. Maybe that’s why we enjoy seeing blackjack in our movies so much – we love seeing smart people who succeed at their mind games against overwhelming odds. Even when it’s not the focus of the movie, the inclusion of blackjack as a plot device is always welcome. Let’s take a look at some of the movies that feature it:

Rain Man(1988)

I’m pretty sure you’ve already heard of this movie. I mean, not only did it win a bajillion Oscars (including Best Picture and Best Lead Actor), but it also brought autism into the public consciousness and forever solidified the image of the savant autistic person into pop culture. The story follows a car salesman named Charlie (Tom Cruise) who, upon learning that his estranged father left his $3 million estate to a mental institution, decides to visit it to learns that he has an autistic brother named Raymond (Dustin Hoffman). Determined to get his hands on the money (mostly because he needs them to cover his debts), Charlie takes Raymond out of the hospital and goes with him on a cross-country tour to get back home. On the road, he realizes that Raymond has near-total recall and the ability to instantly count hundreds of objects at once. Armed with this knowledge, Charlie decides to use him to hit Vegas and win enough money at blackjack so he can pay his debts. While it may be considered unethical or even downright exploitative to use an autistic person in that manner, the plan works and Charlie is successful in accumulating enough money to pay everything off before being banned from the casino.

21 (2008)

There is no way to talk about blackjack films without mentioning “21”, which has become the quintessential card-counting movie. Based on a true (if heavily dramatized) story, the film stars Jim Sturgess as MIT math major Ben Campbell, who is unable to afford the hefty taxes for studying in Harvard Medical School despite being accepted into it. In order to collect the money, Ben joins up with a group of brilliant MIT students under the guidance of a professor and begin hitting the casinos, counting cards and passing signals to each other when the odds are in their favor. Of course, while at first things go great and the group makes a whole lot of money, greed and paranoia begins taking them over, and let’s just say that soon enough things stop being so simple. While this movie isn’t really an accurate representation of card counting (there are plenty of YouTube videos that point out its mistakes, if you’re curious), it’s still a very entertaining flick that presents the subject in a very relatable way, without painting the card counters as thieves or criminals. I highly recommend it!

The Hangover (2009)

“The Hangover” (unlike its sequels and imitators) is an amazing comedy. While humor is subjective, this movie was specifically designed to tickle the funny bone of as many people as possible, which is probably why it grossed over £330 million (adjusted for inflation). The premise is that a group of friends (including the always brilliant Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis) go to Vegas to have a bachelor party for the first among them to get married. After toasting to an unforgettable night, the group wakes up the next morning with no memory of what they’d done in the last 12 hours. All they know is that there’s a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the kitchen and the bachelor is nowhere to be found. Scrambling for answers, the group decides to trace their steps from the night before in an attempt to discover their missing friend before the wedding. And, well… Let’s just say, they make some pretty shocking (and hilarious) discoveries. In one of the best scenes from the film, the group find themselves pressed to return some cash they’d stolen from a mobster the night before. In order to make the money, they decide to hit the blackjack tables armed with nothing but a book titled “The World’s Greatest Blackjack Guide”. Naturally, that’s all you need to suddenly be able to do complex card counting algorithms in your head on the spot, and after many shenanigans the group manages to leave the casino with the money they needed.