Bringing Down the House: How Six Students Took Vegas for Millons

Real page turner. Thought they were gonna get nailed but they beat the system although had a few dust ups. Wonderful description of Vegas and other casino sites. Worth your time.

Read this book after seeing the film adaptation, 21. It would have been a great story if not for the author's reputation of stretching the facts. And the writing style? I guess his blackjack skills are better than his writing.

I started this book not expecting anything at all since my mother recommended it to me and I don't trust her tastes. But fortunately I was wrong and I ended up being really surprised by this book. Just knowing that it is a real story makes you even more thrilled while reading about it and I was sad everytime I had to put this book down. Mostly because I really got attached to the characters (*SPOILERS* even if they don't stick together as a team till the end */SPOILERS*). The writing style was good, the mixed chapters that jumped from one timeline to another was pretty cool too, and the settings in general were fascinating. I never read something about casino, just watched beautiful (but a bit trash) tv series which I still remember dearly from my childhoon! Anyway, exactly because most of the random readers like me don't know anything about casino there's the need of a "world building". Unfortunately it sounded a bit slow and hard to follow since it explained all the blackjack strategies and tricks. I recognize that it was necessary thou. Otherwise I wouldn't have understood a single thing. The other thing that stopped me from rating this higher was the problems I had with the characters. Don't get me wrong I loved all of them! But beside the protagonist, we know almost nothing about them. I wanted to see more characterization, more of the dynamic between the team. More in dept on their relationship with one another, with Mickey (the boss). I really loved him, for example, and we don't see much of him other than from Kevin's pov (and not even that cause we don't see a lot of that "paternal relationship" Kevin describes and feels when talking about Mickey).
So yeah, I recommend reading this book, expecially if you like amazing and slightly creepy open ending! Still sad I cannot read more about team dynamics /3

For once, the review quote on the book is correct – this tale of MIT card counters giving Vegas a run for its literal money is as entertaining as any fictional thriller! That may be because…much of it IS fiction!

You know how most movies that are “based on a true story” or “inspired by true events” have very little to do with said events? Well this book goes one step further – it started making stuff up even before the movie came out! As detailed on the Wikipedia page, most of the more salacious and eye-popping events never happened. In fact, the local newspaper did a deep dive a decade after the book came out and found that so many things were made up that they classified the book as fiction. The author learned nothing though – he later published an even more imaginary prequel to this book based on an earlier MIT card counting team! Further into the future, his book about the founding of Facebook was made into the movie “The Social Network,” though it’s been said that it’s also of questionable veracity.

I didn’t know too much of the above before I read the book because I deliberately wanted to avoid major spoilers. To learn of it fills me with disappointment because the underlying, basic story is genuinely interesting and entertaining. It’s a shame the author felt like he had to dress things up by inventing stories and putting in hearsay rumors, because he honestly didn’t need to. I was thoroughly entertained reading about this guy’s initiation into a team that resembled a secret society exploiting legal loopholes and mathematical probabilities in a choreographed dance to bank gratuitous sums, allowing them to hang with AAA talent and live like royalty.

As for the book itself, the author wisely decided to focus on pacing at the expense of detail. Whereas the main team has around 10 people using two charts of code words, the book keeps its attention on the main character and perhaps 3-4 secondary characters, all of whom are introduced very early in the book. By not getting bogged down in detail or forcing the reader flip back and forth between the narrative and consulting reference tables, the author is able to maintain the frenetic action that recalls the high stakes nature of the game, the lifestyle, and the industry. While I am usually a stickler for details and like it when artists add little callbacks and fourth-wall breaking winks to the audience, I enjoyed the story as it was. There is a time and place to be exhaustive with facts, but the author didn’t set out to write that type of book. In an interesting addition, the book is sprinkled with little interviews with former team members, consultants and industry professionals to add insight and a little perspective on events that otherwise would be difficult to add in the main narrative flow.

Skimming through the reviews here, it seems that most reviewers are angry about either the semi-fictional status of the book (which I’ve addressed above) or what they perceive as subpar writing. For my part, I didn’t see the defects in dialogue that others have pointed out, though it may very well be that I was too entertained to slow down and carefully pick apart the text.

RATING: 4 stars (“I enjoyed reading it, but it might not have made a lasting impression on me.”)
I was honestly entertained by this book. It’s a fast, fun read that exposed a side of gambling that I didn’t know about before, and it makes me wonder why poker got all the attention in the 2000s if blackjack is actually winnable. Perhaps poker makes for better TV with the group dynamics and various personalities. Regardless, I got way more than my money’s worth out of this. Just think of it as fiction and it’ll be a blast.

TL;DR
Entertaining and fast paced novel best enjoyed if thought of as a work of fiction rather than one very loosely based on a true story.

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.

I have long wewondered how the MIT students set up their game and how they got caught. This book answers my questions to my satisfaction. And shock enough to be entertained better and better with each chapter.

Too fast and the writing is not for me. But I like the movie.

2 stars

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.