1. Semyon Dukach Blackjack Science Olympiad
2. Semyon Dukach Blackjack Science Fair
3. Semyon Dukach Blackjack Science Fiction

Semyon Dukach is Managing Director of Techstars in Boston.^[1] He is also known as a top angel investor,^[2] the Chairman of SMTP (company) (NASDAQ: SMTP),^[3] and a former professional blackjack player with the MIT Blackjack Team.^[4] He played with Strategic Investments and later was one of the founding members and team leaders on Amphibian Investments whose exploits were chronicled in Ben Mezrich's Busting Vegas and referred to in Mezrich's Bringing Down the House. Dukach was the main character in Busting Vegas and the only member of the MIT blackjack team to be referred to by his real name in either book.

Early life

Born on 25 October 1968 in Moscow, Dukach moved to the US in 1979 at the age of 11. He completed a BS in Computer Science at Columbia University in New York in 1990 and a MS in Computer Science at MIT in Boston in 1993.^[5]

At a young age Semyon developed an interest in video games and specifically Pac-Man. Semyon became proficient at the game by reading Ken Uston's Mastering PAC-MAN. This led him to read Uston's other titles on blackjack, giving him an understanding of the basics of card counting before he was approached to play with the MIT Blackjack Team.^[6]

1. Prior to becoming a full-time angel, Semyon co-founded several technology companies including Vert and Fast Engines. Fast Engines was sold to Adero in 2000. Beyond startups, Semyon is known for leading one of the MIT blackjack teams in the early 90s. Semyon earned his B.S. From Columbia University and M.S. From MIT, both in Computer Science.
2. The Amphibians’ Semyon Dukach has since taken a step back from professional blackjack. He now devotes his time to the Blackjack Science Company, a business he founded which coaches players interested in learning the techniques required to be successful at blackjack. Since the end of Strategic Investments, John Chang has continued to play.

Semyon was an MIT Blackjack team leader.) Dukach, Semyon Blackjack Science: Advanced Techniques (The second, and substantially more expensive DVD from Blackjack Science contains information on advanced techniques: Cut Cards, Ace Sequencing, Shuffle Tracking as they were used by Semyon's Amphibian Investments MIT blackjack team. The second DVD from Blackjack Science contains information on advanced techniques - Cut Cards, Ace Sequencing, Shuffle Tracking - as they were used by Semyon's Amphibian Investments MIT blackjack team.

Blackjack career

While attending MIT, Dukach was trained as a player on the MIT Blackjack team whose exploits were loosely depicted in the Hollywood movie 21.

Starting out with Strategic Investments (SI) in 1992, Dukach was a major player on the team. At the end of 1993 SI dissolved and Semyon was involved in a team effort with the remaining players from SI for the next year. By 1995 Dukach and a few players split off from that team and formed a second, independent team. This new team was referred to as the Amphibians and the team that they left was referred to as the Reptiles.

Since stopping play in the late 1990s, Dukach's involvement in blackjack has been limited.

Angel investor

Xconomy lists Semyon as a top Angel Investor in New England.^[2] According to his website semyon.com, he has invested in over 75 start up companies, and provides marketing and team building advice to companies he invests in. Some of his investments include Amino, Arcbazar, Bellabeat, Bia Sport, Boatbound, Bolt, Buttercoin, Camiolog, Cangrade, Krash, CoachUp, Codeship, CoEverywhere, Crunchbutton, Dashbell, Donde Esta, Double Robotics, Enertiv, Faraday Bikes, Fashion Project, Freightfarms, ImageSurge, Jebbitt, HelmetHub, Mapkin, Meograph, OpenBay, Ovuline, Petcube, Physical Apps, Pintofeed, Plowme, Preply, Quanergy, Rallyware, Regalii, Simpleprints, Socrative, Splashscore, Sproutel, Strongarm, Terrafugia, Tindie, Trefis, Reactor Media, Viral Gains, Wanderu, and Zagster.

Semyon Dukach Blackjack Science Olympiad

As of March 2014, Dukach is the Managing Director of the Techstars startup accelerator in Boston.^[1]

Other ventures

He has also been involved in many other notable ventures outside of his blackjack and angel investing career:

• Authored work on virtual reality at IBM Research in 1988^[7]
• Authored a 1992 e-commerce paper on SNPP: A Simple Network Payment Protocol^[8]
• Founded Fast Engines in 1997, sold to Adero in 2000^[9]
• Co-founded Vert in 1998
• Lead investor and interim CEO of AccuRev in 2001^[10]
• Chairman of SMTP, a Nasdaq listed provider of email delivery services.
• Co-founded PDFfiller
• Was a CEO mentor at the Cambridge Business Development Center^[11]
• board director of Terrafugia^[12]
• Founded the Troublemaker Award, granted to Zack Kopplin in 2012, to Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot in 2013, and to Mustang Wanted in 2014 for creative troublemaking that improves the world.
• Director, Boston TechStars, starting March 2014.^[1]

Family

Semyon Dukach Blackjack Science Fair

Dukach is the brother of Inna Dukach the opera singer married to Sean Altman, former front man of Rockapella.^[13]

References

1. ↑ ^1.01.11.2'Xconomy: Semyon Dukach Goes From VC Outsider to Techstars Boston Head'. Retrieved 28 March 2014.<templatestyles src='Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css'></templatestyles>
2. ↑ ^2.02.1'Xconomy: Top Angel Investors of New England'. Retrieved 2 May 2013.<templatestyles src='Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css'></templatestyles>
3. ↑'Xconomy: Semyon Dukach Takes SMTP Public'. Retrieved 4 May 2011.<templatestyles src='Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css'></templatestyles>
4. ↑Kahn, Joseph P. (10 May 2006). 'Boston Globe Semyon Dukach Profile'. The Boston Globe. Retrieved 17 April 2011.<templatestyles src='Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css'></templatestyles>
5. ↑Blackjack Science
6. ↑'ThePOGG Interviews - Semyon Dukach - MIT Card Counting Team Captain'. Retrieved 10 November 2012.<templatestyles src='Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css'></templatestyles>
7. ↑Design for Interactive Performance in A Virtual Laboratory – Wang, Koved, Dukach (ResearchIndex)
8. ↑SNPP: A Simple Network Payment Protocol – Dukach
9. ↑Network World
10. ↑'AccuRev, Inc. Releases Version 2.5 of AccuRev/CM With an Integrated Issue Tracking System June 18, 2001'. Business Wire. 2001.<templatestyles src='Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css'></templatestyles>
11. ↑Blackjack Experts Article
12. ↑Regan, Keith (28 January 2011). 'Future poised for takeoff for maker of flying cars'. Boston Business Journal.<templatestyles src='Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css'></templatestyles>
13. ↑semyon.com

IT Arena is a place to get astonished: CEO of the most promising data analytics company, who spoke at the conference stage in 2017 is currently in custody for the notorious privacy breach, involving millions of Facebook users. This year’s second-day keynote speaker is a blockbuster prototype, who created a bizarre Blackjack team of MIT students. Dukach’s successful MIT Blackjack Team won over $4 million and was pictured in “Breaking Vegas” documentary. Their exploits inspired the famous “21” movie.

The plot of the “21” movie, released in 2008, is based on the true story of the MIT student group, which became a Las Vegas nightmare due to their card-counting techniques. Although “21” action revolves around a smaller team of Blackjack players, the offshoot of Semyon Dukach’s Amphibian Investments, the real action has been happening with the Dukach’s team. The movie highlighted their Vegas nomad raids, which caused tangible losses for famous gambling houses. “21” became a box office success, having grossed over $ 150 million.

Semyon Dukach Blackjack Science Fiction

Being the team’s major player for a couple of years, Dukach finished his gambling career shortly. Amphibian Investments naturally dissolved and Dukach created Blackjack Science to share his techniques with the world. He revealed his approach to card counting and sequences in his speeches at numerous events. Several popular TV documentaries and books depicted Dukach’s team exploits, namely “Busting Vegas”, “Bringing Down the House” by Ben Mezrich, and “Breaking Vegas”, etc.

After quitting the gambling career, Semyon Dukach has been involved in rather fortunate ventures: angel investments, researching virtual reality at IBM in the late ’80s, developing an early internet payment protocol in ’91 at MIT, founding and managing tech companies later. Dukach has also been CEO and mentor at the Cambridge Business Development Centre, and Managing Director at Techstars Boston. His advice to startups is rather humanistic: have a customer in mind, don’t follow the money, but try to make something good for other people. “Empathy is what really drives entrepreneurship,” Semyon Dukach states.

As a mentor and investor, Semyon Dukach focuses on people passionate and driven by the idea, as he envisions in them a high potential to succeed. He invested in Preply, Petcube, Milewise (a travel app that sold to Yahoo), CoachUp, Amino (formerly Narvii) and a few less successful ventures. His GottaFlirt.com endeavor (a flirtation game for adults) failed due to a poor understanding of demographics. Dukach also invested into energy pricing software firm Plurimi which failed in the dotcom crash.

He launched the Troublemaker Award in 2012, awarding $10 000 cheque yearly to a young individual, willing to take risks for a good cause. Semyon Dukach also founded One Way Ventures - an early stage venture fund focused on backing exceptional immigrant entrepreneurs.

Semyon’s talk will revolve around his personal story of moving to the US, running the MIT blackjack team, starting a software company, then being a full-time angel investor for 15 years, then running the TechStars program and now creating a VC fund. Semyon Dukach will take the stage at 10:00 on September, 29. Tickets can be pre-booked here: https://itarena.ua/#ticket