Bringing Down the House | 
 enlarge | Author: Ben Mezrich
Publisher: The Free Press
Category: EBooks
List Price: $11.99
Buy New: $7.99
You Save: $4.00 (33%)
Rating:  425 reviews
Sales Rank: 2275
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
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
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.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 420 more reviews...
 Interesting and Amazing November 12, 2008
Mark D. Thill (Arlington Heights, IL)
In Bringing Down The House, Ben Mezrich tells the true story of a group of MIT students who count cards in blackjack. The story focuses on Kevin Lewis, and how he came to be an expert card counter. At no time is this story dull or boring. It will keep you into it until the very end. The story itself is unbelievable, which makes the book even more amazing. Mezrich does a great job of describing the thoughts and actions that each student took during the book. He also does a good job on showing each character's growth and development during the book. Kevin starts off the story as a shy Asian kid who is not happy with his job at the lab. Once his friends Martinez and Fisher show him the amazing world of counting cards, Kevins life turns completely different. The Las Vegas highlife and huge amounts of money turn Kevin into a completely different person. His change during the book is smooth and very believable. This is the kind of book that you will pick up and wont be able to put down. It's an easy and a very fun read. It will show you a different side of Vegas and a different side of Blackjack. Mezrich shows how difficult card counting really is and how much hard work it is to master it. Kevin and his team went out nearly every weekend to Vegas to count cards. Their lives in Las Vegas completely overshadowed their lives at home. Not only did the team spend almost every weekend in Las Vegas, but they had to keep their double lives secret from all their family and close friends. The team counted for over a year. Spending that much time together, there must be some problems they encounter. If you read this book I can guarantee you that you will not be disappointed.
 Tired of being lied to November 11, 2008
Lou (OH)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Looks like Ben Mezrich can join the ranks of James Frey, Dave Pelzer and Kathy O'Beirne, who write fiction but call it non-fiction. After reading this book I decided to do some online research. Didn't take long to find this comment in Wikipedia "In 2008, Boston magazine and The Boston Globe investigated the accuracy of Mezrich's non-fiction, identifying occasions in his blackjack books where scenes were invented out of whole cloth." Very disappointing to discover another best seller that is so fabricated yet purports to be telling the truth.
I enjoyed reading it until I did some background research November 9, 2008
Neurofox
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Not sure what to say. There might be a kernel of truth to what happened, but it certainly didn't happen as described in this tripe. Anyone who falls for this sure is naive.
Liked the book, but not the crude language. October 31, 2008
Mallori (Utah)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I didn't understand why the book said the F word so many times. I know that it is based in Vegas, but I just don't think that it was necessary and got very annoying towards the end. It also makes me hesitate to recommend this book because I don't want to offend anyone and them thinking that I didn't mind the crude language.
After I read the book I looked up the story on the Internet about what happened with these MIT guys and I was annoyed to find that most of the stuff that was in the novel was untrue or exageratted. I just wish he wouldn't of made up some of the stuff in the book. I am sure it would of still been interesting if he told the truth of what the students did.
Quick and Entertaining Read September 26, 2008
GFY (Somwhere In the World)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was pleasantly surprised at how well this book was written. Ben did a fine job of capturing, in words, what the MIT counting team experienced. In doing so, he brought the reader into the lives of the players and into the rush of the game/scam. This book will keep you turning the pages until you're done. Make sure that you set aside a few hours of uninterrupted time to read this book in its entirety. I read this book long before the movie came out and I want to say that the movie does this book an injustice. You're better off owning this book than owning the movie. This is a must read for thrill seekers and for the modest of gamblers. For ten bucks...you can't go wrong.
|
|
|