I found the most interesting part of this book to be the policies of the casinos. What the characters in the book have done is outsmart the casinos, in a perfectly legal way basically, yet the casinos ban them, rough them up, threaten them, etc. All strictly just because they WIN.

Great read. Highly recommended.

cc:

He played in casinos around the world with a plan to make himself richer than anyone could possibly imagine -- but it would nearly cost him his life.

Semyon Dukach was known as the Darling of Las Vegas. A legend at age twenty-one, this cocky hotshot was the biggest high roller to appear in Sin City in decades, a mathematical genius with a system the casinos had never seen before and couldn't stop -- a system that has never been revealed until now; that has nothing to do with card counting, wasn't illegal, and was more powerful than anything that had been tried before.

Las Vegas. Atlantic City. Aruba. Barcelona. London. And the jewel of the gambling crown -- Monte Carlo.

Dukach and his fellow MIT students hit them all and made millions. They came in hard, with stacks of cash; big, seemingly insane bets; women hanging on their arms; and fake identities. Although they were taking classes and studying for exams during the week, over the weekends they stormed the blackjack tables only to be harassed, banned from casinos, threatened at gunpoint, and beaten in Vegas's notorious back rooms.

by Ben Mezrich

This is a great follow up for fans who enjoyed Bringing down the house. Again, being a Ben Mezrich book, expect the incredible true story with bits of amplified half-truths to make a good read.

I'm removing this from my to-read list as I've recently learned much of it is fabricated. (http://gawker.com/5005250/shameless-p...)

All these fictionalized memoirs irritate me; I'd rather read a novel about the same subject...

On another note, the Jefferson bio's going well. I never knew much about Patrick Henry but he definitely seems like a revolutionary rock star. Everyone knows his famous quote, "Give me liberty or give me death" but when it is placed into the context of his speech and the more so, the complete political context, it's clear he was a thrilling speaker.

Beating Vegas... we've all dreamed about it but not many of us have. This book covers how a second MIT team takes Vegas and the world for Millions. But this time its not as simple and clean as his previous book which covered the first team. Lets just say in this story the team almost gets killed multiple times in multiple countries.

The writing was pretty mediocre, and I felt a bit insulted by Mezrich's representation of women (especially since Allie et al. are meant to represent the most accomplished women in STEM), but I still felt that the action was varied enough to preserve my interest. On a side note, the addendum by Dukach made me feel as if the novel was simply a means to promote his website for teaching these "powerful techniques". I am torn because some of the descriptive passages were lush and fraught with intrigue, but overall the novel was repetitive and overwrought. 2.5/5

Thoroughly enjoyed this tale. Pretty well written and entertaining.

Busting Vegas by Ben Mezrich and Semyon Dukach is a book about 3 genius graduates of MIT that go around the world gambling at every casino around the world, that almost gets them killed. I enjoyed it very much because what they did wasn't illegal. It wasn't counting cards, and it was completely unstoppable. Their plan was to get themselves filthy rich, richer than any other man in the world, but this almost costs them there lives. They are commonly known as the MIT blackjack team. This new method wasn't known till Ben released this book to the book to tell their story and their mad man ways. I enjoyed this book, because I enjoy risky, thrilling books. Which almost every moment of this book was. I would recommend this book to the more adult audience not kids, but overall it was a good book that could have had a little better writing. During the story the shocking and abrupt ending to his dialogue was very distracting and could have used some work.

This is another story of MIT whiz kids with a prefect formula for beating the house at blackjack. Unlike the kids in the story made into the movie "21" who counted cards and bet heavy when the deck was hot, these kids had a scheme to spot the card on the bottom when asked to cut the deck and then cut the deck to place that card to an exact spot. For instance, if the dealer picked up the shoe and you could see an ace, with practice you could cut the deck and place that ace exactly 60 cards into the deck and, if you're playing the whole table, could count how many cards are dealt and make sure you get that ace by way of hitting and standing appropriately. Aces give the player a 51% advantage over the house, so the players would simply place minimum bets during normal hands when they are at a 2% disadvantage to the house and then ramp up the bets when they were trying to catch the ace that they placed in the deck for maximum profitability. They had other techniques, too. If they spotted a ten, they would try to get the ten to the dealer and bet heavily since tens are likely to bust the dealer and make him/her "pay the table" which, if you're playing with partners at the same table, can be quite lucrative. Mezrich's books have become a bit formulaic. Find some whiz kid who isn't entirely sure about himself but bored with where his life is heading, have him discover some crazy get rich quick scheme with extreme consequences, over time have him grow in confidence and hook up with some hot girl he'd never have a chance with before the scheme, have him make boat loads of money but then push it too far, then have him cooperate for a tell-all best seller. Nonetheless, it was still a riviting story.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! This has surely got to be up there as one of every blokes dream - bleeding Las Vegas dry of its cash, women, and parties! Granted, the excessive threats of violence and beat-downs from the local bad lads is not something that makes an appearance in that dream, but what a ride nevertheless!

In typical Mezrich fashion, he's tweaked the truth a little to make it a little more Hollywood. After all, how excited would you really get about a maths geek showing off his number crunching skills? But who bloody cares! I've grown tired of these reviews I have read about Mezrich's books where people complain that he has bent the truth. He freely admits that at the start of his books, so if you don't like it, don't bloody read his books! It's like complaining that you hate EastEnders, but have a picture of Phil Mitchell as your screensaver (well, sort of!)...

To read the rest of this review, please click here:
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The story of a group of MIT students who win big playing blackjack, not by counting cards, but by using techniques never seen before in Vegas which increase the odds of winning. The only problem for the students is that casinos to not take kindly to gamblers taking huge sums of their money. The author suggests that the techniques used by the students could lead to changes in how casinos manage blackjack. I am interested to know if casinos have had to make changes.

Sixth book I read during my new commute. I love vacationing in Vegas and I enjoy playing blackjack quite a bit, so any book hitting on those subjects will probably entertain me. This one was no exception. I had already read Ben Mezrich's previous book on Vegas, blackjack and beating the casinos: Bringing Down the House, and thought it was a four-star book. This semi-sequel gets only three from me, for two reasons. One, they cover a lot of similar ground, so what was fresh and interesting in the first felt rehashed in the second. Two, the "characters" in Bringing Down the House were more sympathetic than the ones in Busting Vegas. ("Characters" is in quotes because both books are based on true stories, and the players depicted are thus based on real people - Mezrich can only distort things so much.) Still, Busting Vegas was a fun read with some interesting revelations about how the gambling industries work. Lesson learned: do NOT mess with casino syndicates in the U.S., and don't even THINK about messing with them in other parts of the world.