Writing could be improved a bit. Story is decent but unrelatable to most.

Rating this similar to Bringing Down the House. To be fair, the techniques themselves are different between the two books. But I would really recommend just reading one or the other, as the style and the beats remain the same for both.

Having said that, I won't rate a book differently just because I read one before the other. Assuming I read only this, it is still a thrilling tale of a group of MIT wizards who conquered the blackjack tables. The thrills, spills, and romance were still present. And Mezrich's style of mixing the past and present still worked. Nonetheless, I'm not marking two books with the same theme as both five stars - but I would be happy marking both at four stars.

I've always enjoyed my trips to Vegas, but have never won big or lost big. I play just enough to have fun, but I always wondered what it would be like to win big, but I'm not sure I'd have it takes to do what this team did.

One thing I never understood about blackjack is why its illegal for people to count cards, which is not the method used by this team. To me, if someone can count cards then more power to them. They still can't predict how other players are going to play, unless they're in on it to.

In "Busting Vegas" , a group of MIT students come up with three different techniques that give them advantage, an advantage that is not appreciated by the casinos. I enjoyed the the storytelling of how the team was put together, how the techniques were were created, and how they were used to help them win.

Although the team does well in some cases, they definitely run into dangerous and problematic situations. How are they able to get out of them? Well, you will just have to give this one a whirl.

Busting Vega$ by Ben Mezrich – My High Roller Dreams? Dead on Arrival

Sometimes, after a few glasses of wine, I make the brilliant decision to buy a book, because tipsy-me clearly has Pulitzer-level taste in literature. Exactly how I ended up with Busting Vega$. But, to my surprise, it didn’t turn out to be one of those regrettable 2 a.m. purchases. Shocking, I know.

Me at the beginning of this book: “Maybe I could quit my job, become a high roller, and live off the obscene amounts of money I win."

Spoiler: I absolutely cannot.

Ben Mezrich is basically that friend at a party who says, “Wanna hear a crazy story?” after 3 tequila shots. Then you're locked in for a wild ride that sounds exaggerated enough to make you question if it happened. Much like Bringing Down the House (yes, the one that became the movie 21), Mezrich brings us back to Sin City, with a similar “math nerds go rogue” vibe. But this time, they’re not just counting cards—it's some blackjack voodoo (apparently NOT illegal?).

These kids are just out here calculating how to win big, hoping to avoid becoming CSI: Las Vegas victims, and maybe even pay off some student loans (because obviously). There’s drama. There’s tension. There’s the looming threat of getting caught. The storytelling is fast-paced and maybe a little careless. But honestly? I'm not mad about it.

n  Things I Loved:n

• Short chapters with cliffhanger endings – Bless you, Ben Mezrich, for understanding my goldfish attention span. The chapters fly by, and just when you think you’ll put the book down, boom, cliffhanger.
t
• The Trump cameo – Because apparently, you really can’t have a scam without the king of golden hair (and golden toilets) lurking in the background. One of my favorite moments in Trump’s glittering history of failures—the glorious casino flop. Chef's kiss in terms of irony. Plus one star—I don’t make the rules!
t
n  What Didn’t Work For Me:n

• This could’ve been MORE. There’s a solid foundation here, it just wasn’t taken far enough. I needed more juice and more emotion, but instead, I got a pretty surface-level narrative. Is it too much to ask for some nail-biting suspense?
t
• Mezrich, you gave me high-stakes gambling and a Trump cameo, but you forgot one crucial thing: CLOSURE! Like, sure, we know what happens in the big picture, but what about the emotional fallout? The aftermath? Did they stay friends? All things I guess Google will have to answer. Thanks.

If this book were a show, it’d be like a Netflix limited series that you binge in one weekend. I do feel a bit cooler. Like I could go scam the Monte Carlo Casino in a pair of oversized sunglasses and drive off in a Bugatti. But, the reality is: 1) I cannot count cards. 2) I would absolutely crumble under even mild interrogation from a pit boss. 3) My tolerance for high-stakes gambling maxes out in about 22 minutes—much like my patience for math.

Final rating? 3.5 stars, rounded up! It’s a little light on substance but It wasn’t a total waste of time. I did learn some stuff along the way… like how hilariously useless I would be in any high-stakes situation that requires math skills (or guts). Did it give me all the answers I wanted? Nope. Did I want more depth? Absolutely. But I’ll still recommend it to anyone looking for a quick, entertaining escape. In conclusion, it’s a great book for when you want to feel like you’re living on the edge without actually risking your entire life savings.

This is an easy read full of excitement, the story of a group of MIT students winning millions of dollars from casinos around the world, based on the aggrandized recollections of one of the participants. Building on the successful movie adaptation of a previous book, the author writes creative nonfiction in the style of a flashy novel, and inserts a series of first-person narratives about his research to add more veracity to the outrageous claims, many of which have since proven to be composite fictions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busting_.... The secret systems developed to “bust the bank” are dangled like a carrot before the reader, but fully explained in the end. Presumably casino corporations have taken steps to close these vulnerabilities by now, but the story taps into the popular Robin Hood mystique with showy finesse.

Brilliant

Pro: The story is great. A group of MIT students successfully implement a series of techniques for winning at blackjack and then must deal with the angry underbelly of the casino universe.

Con: The writing is bad and (worse) misleading. This book masquerades as nonfiction, but the narrative is comprised of recreated scenes and (especially) conversations that the writer cannot have any way of accurately reproducing.

Bottom line: Your time would be more efficiently spent if you read the Wikipedia article titled "MIT Blackjack Team" instead.

This is the story of Semyon Dukach. He was a student at MIT who got hooked up with another guy who had a system for beating casinos at blackjack. They recruited a group of MIT students to go to casinos and gamble and ended up winning millions. Needless to say, the casinos did not appreciate their winnings. They found themselves locked up in small rooms, beaten, interrogated, robbed, tracked by private investigators and generally mistreated. The system they devised was not cheating. It relied on identifying a single card and following it through the shuffling of the deck.

It started as just an after school club, where students who were mathematically inclined, got together and counted cards. Semyon never thought much of it, until his coach, began bringing the team to Vegas.

The story begins with Semyon doing work on computers for other students to make money. He found a flyer asking, "Do You Want To Make Money?" Semyon took advantage of this, and signed up right away.

In Vegas, Semyon and the other card counters, take Vegas for thousands upon thousands of dollars. The threats came later when security guards began to take the card counters to the back rooms and beat the living snot out of them. However, this never detered Semyon or the other card counters from doing what they do best.

In order to not raise suspicion, the group would dress up in different characters that would act in order to make a scene. This helped in many occasions, but at other times, they were still beat.

However, Semyon has been banned from the Vegas strip, and has helped Ben Mezrich, a reporter, to write this story, about how they took Vegas for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The format I chose: http://blogcritics.org/books/article/...

Entertaining and forgettable read. Pretty interesting to see how they manipulated the mathematics of BlackJack to their favor. Couldn't help, however, but picture the protagonist as this trenchcoated computer jock embellishing stories about himself to the third degree to sound cool (i.e. I don't buy that these stories are true beyond the winning at long blackjack games).

Gripping and sexy. The true story of a bunch of MIT geniuses who take on Vegas. They are too smart for their own damn good, and it is fun to see them go from dorky kids to ass-kickin' Vegas high rollers. Romance, action, greed...it has got all the fun stuff you are embarrassed to love to read. I dug it.

Having only been in a casino twice in my life, I never had a dream of "bringing down the house." For me, it was two nights of cheap entertainment. Two nights that I won money, but certainly didn't break the house.

But there are those who believe that they have a definite way of beating vegas and making millions, only to lose their money.

This book is the true tale of what happens when a small group of MIT students practice and perfect a method to actually beat the biggest casinos in the world.

It begins with their formation and constant practicing of their skills. As they begin to go to the casinos to try test what they've learned, they find that not only are they winning, they are easily winning.

The book reads like a true crime story. These kids travel the world, posing as different characters, and each time beating the casinos. But it's not all "get rich quick". Along the way, they learn that some people and some casinos don't like to lose their money. Death threats, beatings, a crashed plane, and in one case, being completely banned from an entire country, these young adults face every obstacle that faces them.