World Famous Comics: Bringing Down the House : The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions
Bringing Down the House : The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions
By: Ben Mezrich Publisher: Free Press Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 272 Publication Date: October 08, 2002 Release Date: September 18, 2002 Studio: Free Press
Product Description: It's Friday night and you're on a red-eye to the city of sin. Strapped to your chest is half a million dollars; in your overnight bag is another twenty-five thousand in blackjack chips; and your wallet holds ten fake IDs. As soon as you land in Las Vegas, you are positive you are being investigated and followed. To top it all off, the IRS is auditing you, someone has been going through your mail -- and you have a multivariable calculus exam on Monday morning. Welcome to the world of an exclusive group of audacious MIT math geniuses who legally took the casinos for over three million dollars -- while still finding time for college keg parties, football games, and final exams.
In the midst of the go-go eighties and nineties, a group of overachieving, anarchistic MIT students joined a decades-old underground blackjack club dedicated to counting cards and beating the system at major casinos around the world. While their classmates were working long hours in labs and libraries, the blackjack team traveled weekly to Las Vegas and other glamorous gambling locales, with hundreds of thousands of dollars duct-taped to their bodies. Underwritten by shady investors they would never meet, these kids bet fifty thousand dollars a hand, enjoyed VIP suites and other upscale treats, and partied with showgirls and celebrities.
Handpicked by an eccentric mastermind -- a former MIT professor and an obsessive player who had developed a unique system of verbal cues, body signals, and role-playing -- this one ring of card savants earned more than three million dollars from corporate Vegas, making them the object of the casinos' wrath and eventually targets of revenge. Here is their inside story, revealing their secrets for the first time.
Master storyteller Ben Mezrich takes you from the ivory towers of academia to the Technicolor world of Las Vegas, where anything can happen -- and often does. Bringing Down the House launches you into the seedy underworld of corporate Vegas -- deep into the realm of back rooms, ever-present video cameras, private investigators, and the threats and tactics of pit bosses and violent heavies. Equipped with twenty different aliases and disguises, the group of young card counters struggles around these roadblocks to live the high life -- until one fateful day when Vegas violently follows them home to Boston. Suddenly, there can be no more hiding behind false identities; the high life folds like a bad hand of cards.
Filled with tense action and incredibly close calls, Bringing Down the House is a real-life mix of Liar's Poker and Ocean's Eleven -- and it's a story Vegas doesn't want you to read.
A Narrative History of 21: fact mixed with fiction ^ I enjoy playing a little blackjack here and there, some poker at times, so I was interested to read 21, especially after I had watched the movie. I was extremely surprised to find that the book was so much more that the boiled down movie. Granted, I know books are always better than the movie it is based off of, but this seem to be in a complete different ball park. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the account of the MIT card counters in Las Vegas.
The book is interesting because you get a progressively more and more complex and threatened lifestyle as you move through time. This injects natural adrenaline and action into each new chapter. There was always the threat of violence in the background, even though counting is legal, so you continually read on as you anticipate the conflict as it brews. I was sad when I was done reading it and there was no more to read, but in the same light it had also come to a natural conclusion that felt right.
On the other side I was a little saddened as well by a simple Google search that showed that Mezrich admitted to slightly fictionalizing some of the story. This goes without saying in most nonfiction, though, as the narrative effect that makes it so readable, that I expected this was the case before I did a little research. Obviously a lot of the sidelines of the other characters, like Fisher and Martinez when they went out of country to gamble, where fiction, building a story around rumor (such as hearing that they had conflict and were banned, and that Fisher had a black eye; the guess is the narrative around this story that Mezrich used).
In the end I really didn't care. I know there was truth to a lot of the basic facts of the MIT team, and that there was fiction around some of the more fascinating aspects, but when it all came down to it it was an enjoyable read. Enough said for me. I would recommend to others despite learning that some of the story was fictionalized.
4 stars.
Disappointed to learn it is mostly fiction ^ I picked this up after seeing the movie '21.' I knew the movie was largely fiction, and wanted to see what really happened.
The book is a good read; the author can definitely write. However, I have learned that the book is at least 50% fiction! Look, anybody can make up a story. Just be up front about it. This book should not be in the non-fiction section. (Maybe it should be on the same shelf as that slimebag Fry's "A Million Little Pieces").
I'm thinking about writing about my gambling escapades. I think I have a pretty good imagination, too.
Mesmerizing - Vegas will never look the same again ^ If you are a geek that dreams to become rich in a Vegas-way and use your math analysis brain then it is a book for you. I loved every bit of this book with great background about Vegas behind the curtain (or behind the nice wall). I am going to Vegas this for a 24-hours getaway with my wife and I am sure to watch around my for the sky-in-the-air, and the pit-bosses, and those security guards that patrolling the area around the black-jack tables. As Kevin Lewis wrote, BJ is the ONLY game in Vegas that the history influence the future and any card out of the shoe is less in the deck. Read it and try to be careful when you implement it. This is a game for the grown-ups.
Book review from grandson's perspective ^ It was a easy read, interesting - I had seen the movie prior to reading this book and so I knew the story. Liked the development of the characters in the book better than the attempt in the movie, fast paced, very understandable.
Good story.
Is it true? Is it false? Does it matter ^ I feel like I need to review this book as a reader and not a gambler. Other reviewers here have posted on the plausibility of this book, and they have many good points. It is likely that a substantial portion of this story was fictionalized either for effect, or by the inevitable inaccuracies that come from reporting someone else's story. I mean, who hasn't told what they intended to be a fully true story to an observer and not exaggerated a bit here and there. Or for that matter, perceived something one way, only to have their perception challenged by someone else. Let's not get too hung up on truth with a story that is clearly meant to be entertainment not a historical record.
So my review will ignore plausibility, in the same way that one should with Hollywood films, and will instead focus on the literary and dramatic value of the book. Overall, I have to give it a mixed review on quality, but a pretty positive note on the entertainment level.
To say that the book can get a little hokey at times is to put it lightly. It feels like, with the abounding heightened prose, the book is being told by college students who have had a few too much complimentary champagne. It doesn't quite stoop to Swifties (look it up) or anything, but every once in a while you are forced to put the book down and just take a breath to cleanse the mental palette. Dan Brown has nothing on Mezrich's ability to overwrite a simple description into an inflated series of similes. But that's the style, right? If we wanted simple, adverb-free writing we'd read Hemmingway.
But this criticism should not ignore the fact that the book is well paced and sticks to an effective dramatic structure that makes it a compelling read. It's light enough for a plane trip or the beach, and if you have a fondness for the popular gambling/casino genre (Ocean's Eleven, Casino Royale, Rounders) it will more than satisfy.
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