Product Description

#1 National Bestseller!

The amazing inside story about a gambling ring of M.I.T.students who beat the system in Vegas -- and lived to tell how.

Robin Hood meets the Rat Pack when the best and the brightest of M.I.T.'s math students and engineers take up blackjack under the guidance of an eccentric mastermind. Their small blackjack club develops from an experiment in counting cards on M.I.T.'s campus into a ring of card savants with a system for playing large and winning big. In less than two years they take some of the world's most sophisticated casinos for more than three million dollars. But their success also brings with it the formidable ire of casino owners and launches them into the seedy underworld of corporate Vegas with its private investigators and other violent heavies.

Filled with tense action, high stakes, and incredibly close calls, Bringing Down the House is a nail-biting read that chronicles a real-life Ocean's Eleven. It's one story that Vegas does not want you to read.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5028 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
"Shy, geeky, amiable" MIT grad Kevin Lewis, was, Mezrich learns at a party, living a double life winning huge sums of cash in Las Vegas casinos. In 1993 when Lewis was 20 years old and feeling aimless, he was invited to join the MIT Blackjack Team, organized by a former math instructor, who said, "Blackjack is beatable." Expanding on the "hi-lo" card-counting techniques popularized by Edward Thorp in his 1962 book, Beat the Dealer, the MIT group's more advanced team strategies were legal, yet frowned upon by casinos. Backed by anonymous investors, team members checked into Vegas hotels under assumed names and, pretending not to know each other, communicated in the casinos with gestures and card-count code words. Taking advantage of the statistical nature of blackjack, the team raked in millions before casinos caught on and pursued them. In his first nonfiction foray, novelist Mezrich (Reaper, etc.), telling the tale primarily from Kevin's point of view, manages to milk that threat for a degree of suspense. But the tension is undercut by the first-draft feel of his pedestrian prose, alternating between irrelevant details and heightened melodrama. In a closing essay, Lewis details the intricacies of card counting.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
For the first third of his nonfiction debut, novelist Mezrich craps out. Ground lights viewed from an airplane aren't just pinpricks, or even little pinpricks, but "tiny little pinpricks." Las Vegas tourism facts are crammed onto the pages like seven decks in a six-deck shoe. But Mezrich finally hits the jackpot on page 79, when M.I.T. student Kevin Lewis steps onto the floor of the Mirage. The book stays on a roll as it describes how the young gambler and his card-counting cohorts employ simple math and complex disguises to win nearly $4 million at the blackjack tables. Bouncing from huge scores to frightening banishments, the M.I.T. team fights a winning battle against the law of averages--until they're forced to flee south like Butch and Sundance from the gaming industry's Joe LeFors. Although Mezrich's prose never rises above serviceable (and he pointlessly injects himself into the narrative at every turn), the story he tells will grip anyone who has ever hoped to break the bank at Monte Carlo. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Rocky Mountain News (Denver) A lively tale that could pass for thriller fiction....Mezrich's skilled yet easy writing draws sweat to the reader's brow. -- Review

Customer Reviews

Quick and Entertaining Read
I was pleasantly surprised at how well this book was written. Ben did a fine job of capturing, in words, what the MIT counting team experienced. In doing so, he brought the reader into the lives of the players and into the rush of the game/scam. This book will keep you turning the pages until you're done. Make sure that you set aside a few hours of uninterrupted time to read this book in its entirety. I read this book long before the movie came out and I want to say that the movie does this book an injustice. You're better off owning this book than owning the movie. This is a must read for thrill seekers and for the modest of gamblers. For ten bucks...you can't go wrong.

Blackjack Story
I liked the story behind what these kids did. It was exciting and scandolous. I didn't like the actual people in the story. Most of them seem like overpriveleged brats who were looking for a free lunch. I was also a tad disappointed with how simple their methods really were. It had less to do with brainy algorithims and more to do with teamwork and deception. All in all though, an interesting book.

Great Behind-the-Scenes Look at Card Counting
This book came to my attention after hearing a radio interview with one of the MIT Card Counters. I immediately searched out this book, and it didn't disappoint. Ben Mezrich does a great job of boiling down a sophisticated card-counting system, following the rise and fall of one of the team's key members. And for those interested in the details, an essay on card counting mechanics by the main subject, "Kevin Lewis," is presented at the end of the book.

This was Mezrich's first forray into non-fiction and it shows at times with some cheesy and tedious metaphors and heavy-handed attemps at injecting prose into the action. Nonetheless, the book is short enough and the action quick enough that I wouldn't describe this as a major distraction.

If you liked "Rounders" or the casino scene in "Rain Man," then this book is probably for you.