Busting Vegas is the most recent authentic Vegas suspense story that reads like fiction but is actually the true story of a card dynamo: Semyon Dukach and a small team of brilliant math geniuses. Dukach is an MIT student that stumbles upon a random posting on his school bulletin board. Dukach is sparked with an interest seeing as he is a math major and also had interest as far back as his preteen days reading a book about card counting ( written by a veteran of the business that was mentioned at the meeting). He almost leaves until a hot blonde known as Allie catches his eye. The team quickly builds as Victor, the mastermind of the team, sees greater promise in Dukach than any other player and tells him as much. The motley crew builds complete with a Harvard math guy, and a sprinkle of hot smart girls to throw the pit bosses off their path to world blackjack domination. The story builds traction as the team gets more and more successful. Soon, Victor is finding creative ways to store the all cash business including a safe in one of the MIT buildings. The craziness ensues and the envelope is pushed as the team that began their quest for success in Vegas 'ups the ante' and takes more embolden journeys to UK and finally into Monte Carlo. The places may be worlds away but the watchful eye of private security is not and the team starts to experience the heat of those watchful eyes. The problem is the amount of wins is so significant and yet, the way the team members win is not following the formulaic card counting techniques. This angers the international security and myths the Vegas guys.Greed takes over (as predicted) and makes the 'gets' increasingly risky. The team is separated and put into challenging positions which continually exacerbate the chance for safety. Victor keeps turning a blind eye and pushing his team to keep defying the odds of walking away with their wins unscathed. He eventually convinces the key players to take their skill to the ultimate showdown in Monte Carlo. The problem is, the fake images are no longer able to cover their huge wins and reputations. I have spent many a weekend swinging into Vegas with friends to get swindled by the system and I am a pretty good player. I felt the excitement of the team plays and felt Mezrich brought me right into the mix with all the excitement of a suspenseful gambling trip. I admire his style of writing which sings around the premise of Vegas, greed, suspense, and larger than life characters that make up Busting Vegas. He was made to write this and similar themed books. I strongly recommend! (4.5 stars)

A give this book a 3.5

This is a good fast read about MIT players who used advanced blackjack techniques to beat the casinos. It is a fast ride through not only the awesome lifestyle with being a high roller but also the down side of getting beat up for being to successful at the game. This book was definitely better than Accidental Billionaires.

Fantastic book , I was glued to it and it was so hard to put it down every night.

Very similar to Bringing Down the House, but this one has more likable characters, especially the main dude Semyon, a little more action, and just overall a better story. Not to mention the system they use is pretty awesome and ingenious. Anyway, an easy, fun read, especially if you like gambling.

Entertaining read but it could do without his injections of his own story of investigation.

NF - sister book to Bringing Down the House

Very good read but they clearly pushed their luck and got greedy but I suppose that’s the nature of being a gambler.

Very suspenseful and shocking situations depicted resulting from casinos' abilities to do with what they wish people whom consistantly win, but the author blatantly uses the book as a sales tool for the guaranteed-to-break-the-casino system used by the characters (this is based on a true story); the latter becomes annoying and takes some of the enjoyment out of reading this book.

You will gain a new respect for MIT students after reading this book. I felt dwarfed by the mental abilities of these students. It will make you consider a career as a card counter (don't do it). The love story aspect of the book is the weakest part of the book. I really didn't care about that part. The story is driven by the "excess, sex, violence, and beating the odds." There are times that you really question whether or not some of these things actually happened or are even possible. Not to be confused with Bringing Down the House which is a similar story. Also don't see the movie 21, it is nothing like the book.

I liked the book quite a bit. It was interesting and kept my attention which many books cant do. It made me want to keep reading, it showed determination and friendships bond between a group of kids. I liked Semyon the most out of the group of kids, he showed the most determination and handled situations great! Busting Vegas forshadowed that they were gonna handle cards and it happend, but they sort of counted cards but with a more intelligent way. The book had wonderful imagery, in many cases it painted a wonderful picture in my mind. When Semyon was in the elevator and the homeless man with the knife was probably the best imagery in the book. The book had a lot of situational irony, they had to handle a lot through out the book. The elevator scene was the best situational irony in my mind.

A bunch of smart MIT guys devise a cunning way to improve their odds in blackjack, creating the illusion that they can live the dream, make a fortune and live happily ever after. Unfortunately, human nature has its own plans and our heroes turn out to be not so smart in dealing with the people end of things and get themselves into some tricky and life threatening situations. One of them finally transmogrifies his greed into a good cause - bringing down casinos that always ensure the odds are stacked in their favor (is there anyone out there that didn't know this already? Again, maybe not so smart after all). Real life yarn, made highly readable through judicious embellishment.

Read as ebook. The problem with this book is that it reads like an advertisement for a blackjack system. The kids (MIT students) didn't get very far; they hit casinos a few times and since they apparently won $100k at a time, casinos noticed. There was one man (Galen) who is/was a security consultant for casinos who took a special interest in them. He seemed instrumental in blowing their cover.

The strange thing about these students is that they continued with their schtick as they were kicked out of every casino they hit. I don't know whether that's arrogance or stupidity (of youth). It sounds like both since they overestimate their own intelligence and underrate everybody else's. What they lacked was an understanding of human nature. It didn't cross their mind that there are extremely smart people who *like* to hack the hackers. It's as much a challenge to disrupt the plans of MIT and CalTech whiz kids as it is for the whiz kids to bring down the house.

One nice thing about Mezrich is that he chose to focus on the drive of the main character. Although it is easy to see how the high roller's life can seduce anyone, it takes a little bit of desperation - in addition to arrogance and greed - to actually commit.