Bringing Down the House | 
 enlarge | Author: Ben Mezrich
Publisher: The Free Press
Category: EBooks
List Price: $7.99
Buy New: $6.39
You Save: $1.60 (20%)
Rating:  432 reviews
Sales Rank: 6958
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.1720922
Publication Date: January 7, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
It's Friday night and you're on a red-eye to the city of sin. Strapped to your chest is half a million dollars; in your overnight bag is another twenty-five thousand in blackjack chips; and your wallet holds ten fake IDs. As soon as you land in Las Vegas, you are positive you are being investigated and followed. To top it all off, the IRS is auditing you, someone has been going through your mail -- and you have a multivariable calculus exam on Monday morning. Welcome to the world of an exclusive group of audacious MIT math geniuses who legally took the casinos for over three million dollars -- while still finding time for college keg parties, football games, and final exams. In the midst of the go-go eighties and nineties, a group of overachieving, anarchistic MIT students joined a decades-old underground blackjack club dedicated to counting cards and beating the system at major casinos around the world. While their classmates were working long hours in labs and libraries, the blackjack team traveled weekly to Las Vegas and other glamorous gambling locales, with hundreds of thousands of dollars duct-taped to their bodies. Underwritten by shady investors they would never meet, these kids bet fifty thousand dollars a hand, enjoyed VIP suites and other upscale treats, and partied with showgirls and celebrities. Handpicked by an eccentric mastermind -- a former MIT professor and an obsessive player who had developed a unique system of verbal cues, body signals, and role-playing -- this one ring of card savants earned more than three million dollars from corporate Vegas, making them the object of the casinos' wrath and eventually targets of revenge. Here is their inside story, revealing their secrets for the first time. Master storyteller Ben Mezrich takes you from the ivory towers of academia to the Technicolor world of Las Vegas, where anything can happen -- and often does. Bringing Down the House launches you into the seedy underworld of corporate Vegas -- deep into the realm of back rooms, ever-present video cameras, private investigators, and the threats and tactics of pit bosses and violent heavies. Equipped with twenty different aliases and disguises, the group of young card counters struggles around these roadblocks to live the high life -- until one fateful day when Vegas violently follows them home to Boston. Suddenly, there can be no more hiding behind false identities; the high life folds like a bad hand of cards. Filled with tense action and incredibly close calls, Bringing Down the House is a real-life mix of Liar's Poker and Ocean's Eleven -- and it's a story Vegas doesn't want you to read.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 427 more reviews...
 Go up against the Vegas machine at your peril June 17, 2009
K. Maxwell (Perth, Australia)
If you go into a casino thinking you'll win on a consistent basis you are only fooling yourself unless you are playing blackjack and are a trained card counter - in other words you're a casino's nightmare in action. A well trained team of blackjack card sharks can drain a casino as this book shows, but it's not simply card counting skill that is needed to do this, you also need an awareness of your legal rights in the particular casino you are working in (laws differ in states and countries and on Indian reservations as to what is "cheating") and an ability to play a part and not "look" like a card shark (eg old or young white guy).
This was an interesting, if somewhat superficial book. It's obvious a lot has been left out of the story as the details aren't particularly fantastic in a lot of areas, and you couldn't learn to card count at Vegas reading this book, but it might give you some ideas if you already know how. For people who have a passion for cards and know Vegas well I suspect this book will be a bit old hat and it might give some future MIT students some bright ideas - but no matter how bright you are the casinos will find ways to tighten security so they can catch you and bar you with their equally bright security services so I found this an entertaining read, but it's not something I'd bother reading twice.
 Could not put it down! May 29, 2009
R. Farnsworth (Seattle, WA United States)
Loved this book! Way better than the movie '21'. Anybody would enjoy this plot regardless of age, sex, interests etc. Fast paced and easy to read. Great addition to any vacation!
Bringing Down the House May 20, 2009
D. Adam (Seattle, WA USA)
I really liked this book, although it made the students' activities seem a little too innocent. The MIT teams claim that the card counting strategies they employed were legal, and they were, and casinos aren't owed anything, but greed is still greed. It's a fun account though about how some smart, goofy youngsters were able to pull the wool over jaded Las Vegas's eyes, for a while. I learned something too about card counting in blackjack ("blackjack is beatable").
Fascinating Read! May 13, 2009
HEB3 (Virginia)
I read this book last year on summer vacation. I brought it to casually read on the beach through out the week, but instead read it all in one day. It was so riveting that I could not put it down.
Once I read the book, I bought the movie - major disappointment. The movie was terrible and did not follow the book. They took certain liberties in the movie to make it more "Hollywood" but they just didn't have too (in the movie for instance, the main character's dad passed away, but in the book, he's alive and well and provides an interesting backdrop to the plot).
Buy the book, skip the movie.
In It Till the End March 12, 2009
Dustin Cavalier
There is not much to say about this book except that once I got to the second page, I never put the book down again!!!! This was an exceptional read and deserves all the hype you heard about this book. Great buy and a perfect addition to any library public or private!!!
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