Excellent book, read whilst chilling by the pool on holiday and was a really enjoyable read.

Suspenseful and great fun. My son has a good friend who has been a professional gambler for years. He doesn't do this, though, because it's true, you do become unwelcome once you have won too many times, or if you come in as a team.(It seems credible, too, that it might be illegal to signal someone to come join a card game at the very moment you know the shoe is loaded with face cards and aces).

It's an exciting book to read--and I've read it twice--simply because it is so daring, and Vegas seems like such a powerful entity to challenge. I am glad the writer did not include all the casino names and the minutiae that others seemed to crave. For one thing, the urban topography of Vegas changes constantly. The MGM burns to the ground, is rebuilt further up the street. A couple of casinos don't do well and go under, but then Steve Winn throws up some brand new ones...I think if the writer had become too specific with each and every casino, color scheme, manager's name, etc., it would have become irrelevant within a year, as employees change, walls are repainted, casinos are razed to put up mega-casinos.

Obviously, the book was not published because of the writer's skill with prose, but with such an interesting story to tell, I am glad it was published. I greatly enjoyed it, and passed my copy on to a couple of friends before I sent it to a charity used-book sale. This is light reading, but also a page-turner. If it sounds like something you might enjoy, read it.

This bood reads like a suspense novel- an easy read, that I finished in one sitting. I have to admit, I was riveted, although the writing itself leaves something to be desired.
My husband's aunt used to be a dealer in Atlantic City so I've heard a lot of stories from her, but this book really opened my eyes to the gambling industry. The book made me NOT want to gamble and pretty much squelched what miniscule desire I had to visit Vegas anyway.
I could see how easily one could get caught up in that lifestyle. Even though what they were doing wasn't illegal, there were a lot of moral questions involved here, and if I was their parent I certainly would not have been "proud". And then to make more money from the writing (and I use this word loosely) of a book. They could have used their intelligence in more productive ways? Though I have to admit I did find myself rooting for them and I have absolutely no sympathy for the gaming industry.

i didn't hate it. but it was definitely nothing special.

here's some examples of the ridiculous writing:

"Vegas was a juicy oyster, and Kevin was going to suck the motherfucker dry"

"He leaned back, kicked his feet up onto the table -- right on the goddamn felt -- and waited for them to pay him off. He knew he looked like the most arrogant prick in the world, but he didn't care. Hubris had no place in a card counter's vocabulary. Barry Chow was king of the goddamn paddleboat."

"He closed his eyes, his head swirling, as he bathed in a cool green rain of Benjamins."

and there was some line that i can't find about someone walking like their "cock ran half way down their leg"


COME ON

it's an interesting story for gosh sakes, get a good writer to write the thing.

instead i was bored and who knows whats true, but the story become unbelievable to me when the costumes came out.


it read like it would make a good movie, but apparently the movie sucks too.

The book is great. It’s not a book that you’ll be emotionally attached to or have some type of twist psychological ending. It’s a book about counting cards and working as a team to gain profits from a casino. You feel the highs they feel and you feel the lows as well, it’s a good book that really gives a feeling of living the high life like the subjects in such. But I’ve also got some problems with it.
The dialogue. I wish the author chose to use more of a narrator, instead he uses the dialogue to explain something to the audience but it’s actually just the characters talking? But they already know the info? So it’s a little confusing at times. Other than that. Good read.

Nicely and fast paced written as this book may be it often feels like the story is far stretched from reality to add drama and make it more interesting.
Still it has a great balance of educating the reader, keeping him interested and making it a hard to put down book.

I disliked Bringing Down the House, and can't understand why everyone I know who's read it has raved about it.

I'll grant that it's an interesting story. But you know what? It's a sufficiently interesting story that it doesn't need to be sexed up with outright bullshit. Even accounting for the fact that the characters in the book are composites of several actual people, probably 25% of what's left is just pure fiction. He's got one scene where one of the team is beaten up in a bathroom in a Bahamanian casino. It never happened. He's got the principal character taking his final blackjack exam in an underground casino in Chinatown. Never happened. He details one of the team having his apartment broken into, and a safe with $75,000 in it pried out of the wall and stolen. Never. Happened.

This *weakens my interest*. One of the potentially interesting things about this story is how the modern, corporate Vegas would respond to an organized ring of counters. This book doesn't tell you that, because it's so full of bullshit you can't trust anything it has to say on the topic.


And, oh lord, is the dialogue horrible. Hollywood does this a lot: Character A explains something to Character B, but he's really not explaining it to Character B, he's explaining it to the audience. Done properly, this is okay; you don't notice it, it flows, and it tells the audience what's going on without condescending to them. Done improperly, it's annoying as fuck; the worst parts of Casino Royale were the bits with the twit in the casino explaining how poker works to the presumably incredibly competent agent sent by the British government to keep an eye on the money.

Virtually every piece of dialogue in this book is like that. And there's no excuse for it in a book; characters don't have to pretend to explain something to someone who already understands it just to inform the reader, because the fucking narrator can just explain that thing to the reader directly. It's not just annoying, it's lazy, bad writing.

Mezrich explains why he's a lazy, bad writer:

I'm not looking to use big words," Mezrich admits. "I write for people who if they weren't reading my book, they wouldn't be reading another book. They would be watching TV. I'm not competing with other books. I'm competing with the Red Sox." Mezrich works hard to build the excitement early in his plots, before attention spans wane. He gets right to it in Rigged, explaining in the first few pages the main character's involvement with the shady world of the New York Mercantile Exchange: "If Wall Street was the financial equivalent of Vegas, the Merc was Atlantic City—on crack.



This book is crap - on crack. And it's a shame, because there's an interesting true story under all the dross.

You want a good book to read, on a similar subject? Go buy The Eudaemonic Pie. It's about a bunch of grad students from UC Santa Cruz who, in the 70s, designed and built wearable computers intended to let them beat the house at roulette. And it's good. It's also not tarted up.

The novel, “Bringing Down the House”, by Ben Mezrich, is a very well written piece of work that was based on a true story. The fact that it’s based on a true story, seems to make the novel that much more compelling in the wondering of what’s going to happen next. I know that many people have given this book poor reviews because the novel tried to make us feel bad for Kevin after the bad things that happen. They try to say that even after his downfall he still gets to go back to Harvard and live a guaranteed successful life. To me, it doesn’t matter that Kevin was already at MIT and living a great life before he started his double life. The novel was well written and gave a great story, and that what this book should be judged by. Not the MIT students in real life and how you don’t like them.
I feel that the novel is written at pace that gives the reader time to cool off after a thrilling scene. Mezrich does a great job creating high points and ensuring to balance out those high points with several low points throughout. After the current day events in the novel with the main character, Kevin, Mezrich masterfully transitions to previous events in Kevin’s past. This is a great way to get a thorough background on Kevin, as well as taking us away from his action packed, current day, casino life. Mezrich gives us insight on not just Kevin through the showing of his thoughts, but other characters as well. This gives them all a much deeper importance in the novel as I felt a personal connection to just about every character. Other things that the author does well, is create several noticeable themes throughout the novel. The biggest being greed. Mezrich does a great job displaying these different themes through the character’s actions, as well as some of the events that play out.
tOverall, the book is extremely well written with a variety of different twists and turns that sometimes ends up causing something to happen that was very unexpected. Having the suspense and thrill by having the character’s feelings shown to us really gave me a great sense of peril during some points in the novel. I could practically feel that I was in the casinos with Kevin at certain moments. With the showing of every one of Kevin's thoughts running through his head at every rough moment. That shows what great writing Mezrich accomplished in this book.

I really liked Reading Bringing Down the House. The book is a great thriller and has very interesting concepts and stories about old casinos. Towards the beginning the main character, Kevin, is a brilliant student from MIT. After showing off his math skills, his teacher asked him secretly to join his blackjack team or what he likes to say, “business.” Kevin wants to make enough money to go to med school and promises to stop playing once he gets three hundred thousand dollars. Kevin makes the money overtime, but goes overboard, and that’s where his troubles begin. The end of the story is a true thriller as Kevin tries to get everything he lost back. This book really taught me that taking risks in life are important, and you shouldn’t be afraid of the opportunities. Taking risks in life, just like playing blackjack, will have its ups and downs, but those ups and downs can teach you so many things. For example, Kevin was making thousands of dollars every weekend. He was way passed what he wanted for his money, but he kept going. He was doing great, but casino security caught on to him and he got busted. This negative part to his life taught him to walk away when your winning and not to go overboard. You need to know when to quit and this part of the story taught him just that. This book was a page-turner due to the fact that you never knew what would happen to Kevin and because there is a huge twist at the end that alters the story line. Kevin is a smart kid so it was fun to see what the author would make him due. While reading you can really feel the nervousness in the characters due to the authors descriptions. On that note, I thought that the author, Ben Mezrich, did an excellent job of describing events and scenes in Vegas, along with really telling the reader and making them feel the same emotions as the character. He would sometimes use sound effects to really show fear and excitement in the story. He made me feel like I was actually there playing blackjack. The writing style and language really increased my positive feelings for the book. It really made the book interesting. I would recommend this book to everyone because it can have a huge affect on people. You will learn how to live life when things get bad and how to know when enough is enough. In the end, this was a great read and anyone who is looking for some excitement should get started.

Imagine that at any moment you could be beaten, thrown in jail, or worse. Imagine that your money was coming from an almost illegal source. This is exactly the case for Kevin Lewis and his friends go through in Bringing Down the House. It’s a gripping story about a team of card counters with cliffhangers at every turn.

Many people say that the book is ‘short-lived’ or ‘unrealistic’, but I disagree with this. I understand that the book is supposed to be based on a true story, but Ben Mezrich wrote the book the way he wanted. So what if he embellished a bit? It ultimately doesn’t ruin the flow or feel of the story. If anything, it helped keep the book interesting because otherwise we would just have kids playing blackjack, winning money, and trying not to get caught. I do agree though, that the story isn’t nonfiction, it’s a fictional story based on real events. On top of that, there is nonstop suspense and action regarding the fate of the characters, so it’s definitely not short-lived. Others say that Mezrich’s style was poor, but I believe that it helped keep the reader in the moment and the events that were unfolding.

There are many parts of the book that were well-done. I feel like Kevin, Fisher, and Martinez really developed throughout the story. Their relationships drastically changed from beginning to end. Even each character developed a lot. Kevin went from being skeptical of card counting, to being addicted to the gambling lifestyle, back to being skeptical, and ending loving both Vegas and his normal life with his family. The plot was also really gripping and kept on the edge of my seat wondering what, if anything, would happen to the crew and how they would handle the situation. However, the book is not perfect. I felt like it contained an unnecessary amount detail at times, and even diverted from the main story. I found that the diversion sometimes lead to the story being difficult to follow, but an easy to get over by reading the passage over once more.

Now, this book is definitely not for everyone. Everything is very fast-paced on at times difficult to follow. However, I think that anyone who enjoys true stories, blackjack, or just a quick read that will keep you interested will like the book.

Let me say this first: read the book. SCREW THE MOVIE!

I picked up this book because the trailers for the movie "21" (based on the book) intrigued me. I'm no speed reader but i finished this thing in two reading sessions less than 24 hours after getting it from the library. It's the TRUE story (as the title indicates) of a bunch of MIT students, brilliant with numbers, who work out a sophisticated card-counting scheme that they use to win millions of dollars from various casinos over the course of a couple of years. This book was such a fast, easy and satisfying read (how often do all three of those adjectives apply to one book), and if you're a fan of Clooney's OCEAN'S 11, you'll love it.

In addition to giving a really gripping account of how these ballsy little geeks managed to get past the Vegas system (Think the Rain Main blackjack sequence times about 10), the author also gives some really cool backstory into the history of "old" Vegas and "new" Vegas (the security, the mob, the corporations, the back rooms, the strippers, the private investigation firms) in order to show you what these guys were truly up against. As you read, you can't help but be swept up in the tense, nail-biting "what-a-rideness" of the story. You also can't help but keep thinking, "hey, maybe I should try this." Fortunately for you, me and everyone who reads, the author also does a good job of showing you that trying what these guys tried really just isn't worth it. These guys were math GENIUSES and they still couldn't slip past the system forever.

The book isn't perfect. The author frequently inserts HIMSELF into the story via these "side chapters" where he interviews people from the main character's life and they seem rather out of place (the chapters that is). Still, all in all, a fun and fascinating book that reads in no time at all.

The movie version really missed the boat here. The story as told in the book is so damn cool and multi-dimensional yet unfolds in "movie time". The filmmakers threw all that out the window and turned every character, scene and even Vegas itself into a one-dimensional snore.

Bringing Down the house is a good read. I enjoyed the book. It really made me want to keep reading. Every chapter ended with a “cliffhanger”. I just had to keep reading. The characters and well described places really brought me into the book, and into the world of Kevin Lewis.
I see people saying how they do not enjoy the fact that Ben Mezrich added some extra events that didn’t happen to the real team. I do agree with this, since more than half of the book is completely fiction. I understand that these were added to the book to give it more of a story, but I felt as though Ben really stretched it. Even some of the characters are just mixtures of the real people.
Other people are saying that they don’t style of writing used in the book. This one I disagree with, to a certain extent. Some of the writing felt a little ‘over-the-top’. A few sections I didn’t think were needed in the book and were just there to add more pages to the book. Such as the relationship with Felicia. I felt as though that relationship didn’t add to the book at all.
tA reader that would enjoy this book the most would be someone that enjoys fiction with a little bit of non-fiction. Readers would enjoy this book if they like a lot of suspense. Each chapter end with you wanting more. Wanting to find out what happens to Kevin Lewis and his team of MIT students. The characters in Bringing Down the House were very well developed! Each character, except Felicia, added something new to the adventures our team goes on, and really helped moved the story along. A strength in the book was its gripping plot. It very made you feel as though you were inside the book. It helped you follow along as it switched from Ben learning about Kevin Lewis’ adventures in the present, to following the team through their own adventures.
This book really made me question how I feel about the whole idea of gambling. It made me wonder if what they were doing was the right thing to do. Which I do agree after finishing the book. At first I thought they can’t be doing this, they are rigging the game in their favour. But after finishing I learned that they are just increasing their chances, evening their odds, and using math to do it.