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Summary: Makes Me want to Gamble
Review: This book is awsome. If I was over 21, I would go to vegas and go for it. Just after reading the book, I bought six decks of cards, and started to practice. You know how I am going to spend my 21st Birthday. A great read!
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Summary: Very easy to read
Review: You just cant put the book down until you finish! very interesting and exciting story based on a true story.
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Summary: Beat my time
Review: Took a total of 32 hours from purchase to finish. Actually read the book instead of going gambling in Tunica, Miss-- wanted to see if there were any tips in the book before I hit the floor. Couldn't put the book down.
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Summary: What an amazing book!!
Review: First of all, I would like to stress the fact that I hate to read. The only time I pick up a book, is when it deals with something that I extremely interested in. Blackjack is one of my passions in life, and let me tell you, Bringing Down the House offers one of the best gambling stories you will ever read about. The plot is outstanding. It is based on the real life account of Kevin Lewis, and how he became part of an M.I.T. based Blackjack team that created new and superior methods of card counting. Ben Mezrich's account of the story, takes you through step by step of what really happened. The reason I really enjoyed this book, is because it reads like it is completely fiction. It is that enjoyable.Kevin Lewis' methods are discussed in detail during the course of the story which makes this book impossible to put down. Everything from how to count, to the signals that the team used. As the story progresses, the amount of suspense increases because the team becomes closer and closer to being taken down. The book starts out making you think that Kevin and the rest of the team are invincible. But, as time goes on, you begin to realize that the story is just like any other having to do with gambling. One way or another, the house always wins. The book's best feature perhaps is the essay written by Kevin Lewis himself at the end of the book. You get a first hand account from Kevin on how to count cards and beat the casinos. I usually can't stand to read at all, but this book had me glued to the pages. The plot, card counting techniques, and extremely authentic recreation of the events make Bringing Down the House a must read book.
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Summary: Been done before, but not quite as good as this
Review: Card counting has been a developed technique for winning at Blackjack since the 1960's, and the characters in this book are certainly not the first to succeed at consistently winning Blackjack and taking millions from the casinos. This book is not the first time that such a story has been told. What makes this book different, and in my opinion better, is that the story told here is about the lives of the card counters as they live the Vegas high roller life, not about how to count cards and win. In other words, previous tales of a similar nature have usually been told as sidebars within Blackjack books which are primarily aimed at teaching players how to become card counters. This book actually doesn't teach the reader how to play Blackjack correctly (by counting cards, which is not cheating). By retelling this story in non-anecdotal form, and expanding on the details of the life of a card counter, the author here creates a compelling image of brilliant people who live a double life as weekend gamblers. The most compelling thing here is that most of these players could obtain unimaginable wealth on their own merit as scholars and business leaders, and don't need to pursue this lifestyle in order to have material fulfillment. I don't know of too many poverty-stricken MIT graduates, so why devote so much time to this lifestyle and assume all of its risks? The author comes very close to answering this question, because when the characters experience an adrenaline rush as the story unfolds, I found myself having that same rush right along with them while reading about it. And if I could find a way to experience that rush on a regular basis, I would probably be living this life also. That is what good storytelling does. It transforms readers and creates longing. And this is what will happen to you as you experience the Vegas Bigshot life through this book.
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Summary: Just a retread of Uston's book
Review: I wanted to like this book, but part way through it, I came to the conclusion that it was pure fiction. I think Mezerich took Ken Uston's "Million Dollar Blackjack" and just put another story behind that book. I sense slight plagiarism here. He even uses the same nicknames as Uston did, such as "Big Player" and "Gorilla".
I thought that the writing was very jumbled. There were also many problems with facts. There is not a "Plymouth PI agency", it is the Griffin book that has all the pictures of the big counters and undesirables. More untruths was the ease of grabbing a drink off of the cocktail waitress's tray. That won't happen.
I seriously don't think that any part of this book is true. A group of MIT students can certainly improve on Ken Uston's techniques, but they don't. They don't even use his more advanced counting techniques. Certainly a bunch of brainiacs can adeptly use them. That in itself is suspicious.
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Summary: ¡Vegas atención!
Review: Bringing Down the House is an entertaining and quick read. Guided by the experience of a rebel professor and a former "dinosaur" card-counter, a small group of MIT students put an old counting theory to play at major casinos across the country. The underlying principle behind card counting is that a deck rich is tens, face cards and aces is favorable for the player, whereas a deck rich in small cards is good for the dealer. To gauge the richness of the deck in good cards, the player will keep track of the cards that have already been played by assigning a point value to each of them. Thus, the MIT team assigns a value of +1 to 3, 4, 5, and 6, and -1 to tens, face cards and aces. Everything else is 0, or neutral. At the beginning of a deck or shoe the count is 0; then the counter constantly adds and subtracts from the count according to the cards played. Under the scrutiny of the "Eye in the Sky" - the dealers, pit bosses and casino managers - keeping track of a deck position and then taking advantage of a highly positive count seems quite challenging. Mezrich makes it unequivocal that the average person cannot accomplish what the MIT team did - and in the process reveals in detail comic team gimmicks to avoid being caught by the house. A truly high-adrenaline read if you have the slightest interest in Blackjack!
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Summary: Urban Legend
Review: Ahhh... it's good to see the MIT urban legend lives on. This story has been floating around for years, in various forms. Looks like someone finally decided to see if P.T. Barnum was lying. Nope, he wasn't. Just look at all the 5-Star suckers.
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Summary: Pro Player Says This Book Busts
Review: Author Ben Mezrich is on the streak of a lifetime, with his top-selling, wildly flawed, heavily fictionalized "history" of a well-known blackjack team getting made into a movie by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Pretty impressive. MGM, after all, as Mezrich notes in a recent interview, is "the same company that owns most of the large casinos in Vegas." (See the February, 2004 Kuro5hin interview at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/5/5855/53465.) The only problem with this observation, like many of the major and minor details in Mezrich's book, is that it isn't true. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the movie company, and MGM Mirage, the casino company, are totally separate corporations, just as Mezrich's Las Vegas and the real Nevada town are totally different. Mezrich may be the only gambling writer in America who doesn't know these elementary facts. For four years I've supported myself and my family by counting cards in American casinos and winning at blackjack. It is a tense, weird, exhilirating life, and I would love for more of my friends to understand it. This book doesn't help. Not only is the grade-school prose tedious. Not only are the technical blackjack details, on those few occasions when Mezrich summons the pluck to try tackling them, incorrect or misleading. The dramatic structure gropes and falls flat. The journalism is scandalously lazy and erroneous. Above all, the spirit, the eclat that card counters muster to wage our little war against casinoland is missing. Mezrich doesn't get it and can't report it. He hasn't been there and he doesn't know, his scanty experimental plays with MIT alums notwithstanding. If you want to know what gamblers are like and how we live, skip this drivel. Look instead at legendary hustler Amarillo Slim's new memoir, Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People. Look at Jesse May's insuperable poker novel, Shut Up and Deal, which more than any other book depicts the dark heart of the professional player. If it's blackjack history and the activities of the major teams you're into, read Ken Uston. If you want to understand the technical aspects of the game, get Don Schlesinger, Arnold Snyder, Peter Griffin, and, for old time's sake, Ed Thorpe. If you want to learn how a notorious high-stakes counter makes his way in the world, read Ian Andersen's Burning the Tables in Las Vegas. There's so much good gambling writing out there, with so much real-life experience underlying it, that wasting time and money on Mezrich is a sucker's bet.
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Summary: Great story, so-so reporting
Review: Ben Mezrich's story about a group of geniuses from MIT who decide to use their skills to turn casino odds in their favor is one of those amazing-but-true stories that is absolutely captivating, in spite of the average reporting abilties of the author. The students' plan is simple: use their exceptional math skills to count cards and put the casinos at a massive disadvantage through the use of a team strategy. The plan works magnificently for quite some time, and the nerdy kids find themselves hobnobbing with celebrities and sports stars. After a while, however, things begin to go bad: personalities clash, and the casinos start closing in on the team, making for some very interesting and dangerous situations. The story really is fascinating, from the sheer brain power of these twentysomething students to the amounts of cash they are pushing through the casinos to the double life each one is leading. The reporting, however, leaves something to be desired. The author leaves a lot of questions unanswered (for instance, did Kevin Lewis ever tell his father about his other life?), and the whole book has a 'names have been changed to protect the innocent' feel to it. As stated before, the story is incredibly entertaining, but ends with a bit of a whimper. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone, but would warn them not to expect a fantastic finish.
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