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Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions (平装)
by Ben Mezrich
| Category:
Games, Gambling, Thriller, Non-fiction |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
MSL price:
¥ 158.00
[ Shop incentives ]
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A good Las Vegas story and a real page turner, this book is a lesson in greed. Recommended for a long-haul plane ride. |
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 14 items |
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Bill Simmons (ESPN The Magazine), USA
<2006-12-23 00:00>
This book made me want to gamble. Vegas! Vegas! |
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Rocky Mountain News (Denver), USA
<2006-12-23 00:00>
A lively tale that could pass for thriller fiction…Mezrich’s skilled yet easy writing draws sweat to the reader’s brow. |
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Publisher Weekly, USA
<2006-12-23 00:00>
"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. |
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Eberz, USA
<2006-12-23 00:00>
It seems that every one holds out for the one possibility to make their millions. And perhaps it is just a matter of how far we will go to get them. Bringing Down the House is the story of men and women who are smart enough to earn their millions, and in a way they do. They refine a method of card counting that is the key to open the vault of the casinos around the world.
What is interesting about Bringing Down the House is once they have a taste of what is possible the greed takes over. It becomes more than a weekend excursion. The money takes over. The risks they are willing to take for the money become greater. Even when their lives are clearly in danger many in the group choose to press on.
Brining Down the House traces the path of greed in their lives. It is helpful and enlightening in ones own life. How much will you sacrifice for money? Your family, reputation, character, loves and safety. And in the end what will you have to show for it. A fast and interesting read. A definite suggested book. |
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Matt Curtin, USA
<2006-12-23 00:00>
MIT and games go way back, with folklore that includes famous "hacks" to the research into how to make computers play games well. That the story of a team who beat blackjack and walked away with millions of dollars of the casinos' money - all perfectly legally - originates from MIT seems somehow apropos.
Bringing Down the House is not a tutorial on how to beat the house playing blackjack, but the story of how smart people worked together to play the casinos' game, on their own turf, and win. The narrative benefits greatly from author Ben Mezrich's experience as a novelist, showing how an MIT student went from working part-time in a chemistry lab between classes to playing blackjack with tens of thousands of dollars at stake in a single hand.
Even though the book is not a tutorial, it does discuss in surprising detail the strategy behind counting cards. Much of the work on outsmarting blackjack can be traced back to a 1962 book, Beat the Dealer, where MIT professor Ed Thorp showed that blackjack is a game that can be beaten. The fundamental issue in card counting is that blackjack is a game of continuous probability, which is to say that the result of one hand will have an impact on the probability of the next. In blackjack, if an ace of spades is played, it cannot be played again in the same shoe. (Even in multi-deck shoes, the same is true; a six-deck shoe will simply have six of each card instead of one.) This varies dramatically from a game like craps, where one roll of the dice has no impact on the next roll of the dice.
Card counting is not illegal but casinos don't like it because a card counter is not gambling: he knows that in the long run he will win. This is actually the same position that the house is in with all other games, and even in blackjack where the players are not counting cards. Casinos can't call the police, but they can eject card counters, and tell them that they're not allowed to come back-just like any other private establishment that is otherwise open to the public.
Working in teams, card counters can disguise the fact that they are counting cards. Someone simply watches the table-perhaps even by playing with minimum bets-and makes a gesture to call in a teammate when the odds are good. Through some previously-devised code, smalltalk that goes around the table will pass the count-a number that indicates the probability of favorable cards coming up. Telling the dealer or a random player, "I hope my sister remembers to feed my cat," for example, would tell a teammate who just joined the table that the score is +9 (cats have nine lives). The teammates never regard each other or interact more than two random strangers would. The end result is that the people with the real money only play when the odds are in their favor, then they play big, and win big.
As a solution to a game, card counting interests me. No way could I make a living from playing blackjack, though. My real problem is that even though you can win more money than you lose, as well as cover expenses for such things as travel, you're not really making money. A lot of people have the crazy notion that making money is the same thing as getting paid. I don't share this view: my objective in work is not just to get paid, but to create value. A good exchange of goods or services and money should ultimately create wealth; both buyer and seller are better off at the end of the exchange. This is how economies grow, and how an economy that functions well benefits everyone.
Blackjack is a zero-sum game: for a player to take a dollar, the house must lose a dollar. No value is created in the transaction. (Casinos, of course, will tell you that the reverse is not true: although players as a group lose more than they win, the difference is a premium for provision of a service: entertainment.) If one is going to engage in commerce, it seems more agreeable to my sensibilities to create some real, sustainable value in the process.
All of that said, Bringing Down the House is a thrilling story, presented well, on an interesting theme. |
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J. Rubino, USA
<2006-12-23 00:00>
I have told so many people about this book and it just doesn't get old to tell it again. I have been a gambler for a lot of years and blackjack was really my first experience in casino gambling. Back then I bought several blackjack books and read and studied with the idea that I could make an income playing. Like most players, I never really understood the finer points or the relatively small edge a single player/counter had against the house. This is an enjoyable, fast read that sometimes reads like fiction but enough documentation has been provided to lean toward at least most of the story being true. Anyone who has played and been around blackjack for a long time can remember Ken Huston's "Million Dollar Blackjack" book and the big player stories which are so similar to the ones described here. To assemble a team like in this book is many blackjack players' dream of a lifetime. I couldn't put it down. Whether it is 100% true or not it is still one of the most fun and most enjoyable reads in contemporary gambling literature. |
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Felix McAllister, Switzerland
<2006-12-23 00:00>
Over the past ten years, "creative" nonfiction has become quite popular, spurred in no small part by the success of John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," among others. This book ought to serve as a paradigm for the genre: it reads like a novel, yet is based - and I use that term loosely - on fact.
Mezrich pads the book a bit, stretching out the third-person narrative by splicing in first-person accounts of the background research he did. This is why I deducted a half star from the rating...this isn't a perfect book, but it's damned good anyway.
Another flaw, and possibly an unavoidable one in this genre, is the amount of cinematic detail provided in the account. Nobody can accurately remember the vast amount of descriptive detail and dialogue put forth in the narrative; you know there's a good bit of authorial embellishment occurring when even the gestures of the characters are described with more detail than anyone can recall about what they had for lunch yesterday. But that's the nature of the beast: the book wouldn't be nearly as entertaining if Mezrich had followed the rules of Reporting 101 and stuck to the facts. Truth be told, I don't care if he spins the details out of thin air, as long as the gist is right.
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Tom Roelofs, USA
<2006-12-23 00:00>
This book is an account of the the MIT kids who used brains and wits to become highly successful card counters. They used the basic hi-lo method, which can identify those intervals in a game when the deck is such that the odds are with the player. This allows a counter to adjust his bets in accordance with the favorabiliy of the deck, and grind out a modest profit over a long period of time. A counter could not adjust his bets too much or he would be spotted as a counter and asked to leave the casino.
The MIT kids worked in teams and improved upon this method to make it more lucrative. The key to their success was placing a consistently low betting card counter at various tables and using signals to insert a heavy betting player into a game when the deck was favorable. Thus, they only made the huge bets when they had the odds, and the person who actually did the counting was not noticeable. Their story is a fascinating one, but it would have been a lot better if someone else had written it.
The author's annoying snobbery runs all through the book. He comes across as a self-annointed high priest of multiculturalism, showing his contempt for lesser mortals, such as businessmen, hicks, white men in bowling shirts, and people from the Midwest - which is a pejorative term in this book. Of course, he throws in a gratuitous (and unbelievabley trite) anecdote about a successful black card counter.
He also tries way too hard to show off his writing skills, and ends up adding about 50 pages of worthless detail. Here is how he describes someone picking up the phone: "He wiped his hands on his jeans and chased down the incessant sound. He found the portable jammed beneath one of the couch cushions and kicked off his shoes as he pressed the rumbling hunk of plastic against his his ear."
Its a great story if you can tolerate an idiot author. |
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Lauren, USA
<2006-12-23 00:00>
I chose this book because my boyfriend's mom recommended it to me. Also, my brother had told me about the event that the book is about, and I wanted to know more about it. Thirdly, I play poker with my brothers and their friends all the time, and Bringing Down the House is about blackjack and casinos.
The book is narrated by the author, who retells the events of an MIT Blackjack team. This true story is centered around a member named Kevin, and it starts at the point that he is first recruited to join the team by his dropout roommates. He spends ten hours every day training with the team to learn how to count cards. After two months of training, the team tests him to see if he is ready to play in the real world. He passes this test, and the team sets out for Las Vegas.
The team, organized and led by the card-counting legend Micky, travels to Casinos in and out of Vegas every weekend under fake aliases. The players play the roles of rich kids spending their parents' money recklessly, prosperous Japanese businessmen, and everything in between. Their high-roller budgets and frequent visits earn them presidential-suite treatment and friendly invitations to complimentary shows and boxing matches by the casino managers.
However, certain members of the team that are also investors get greedy, and they decide to cut Kevin, who has also become an investor, and other members of the team out. Their reason for doing so is that unlike them, Kevin and the other dropped members do not consider the team play in casinos every weekend their main job. Kevin also works in a research lab, and two others are lawyers. So Kevin makes his own team, which travels much less and more leisurely.
Unfortunately, by this point, casinos begin to realize that they have lost millions of dollars to their "honored high-rollers," and hired private investigators from the casinos begin to recognize the team play. Playing blackjack in Vegas gets more and more dangerous, which leads to suspenseful moments, dangerous adventures, and crucial decisions.
I am really glad I chose this book. Not only was it suspenseful and exciting, but it also showed me the bad side of Las Vegas that many people do not think exists any more. When the city was run by the mob in the 1940s and 1950s, card-counters and cheaters frequently disappeared and were beaten. However, the MIT team operated from 1994 to 1999, and it received the same threats and harsh treatment. |
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Amy, USA
<2006-12-23 00:00>
This story tells about the rise and fall of super-smart-MIT boys and their forays into card counting. From nerdy campus watering holes to plush Vegas VIP rooms, Bringing Down the House is a modern-day morality tale.
The main character, Kevin, is a smart college kid who is seduced into an expert and tightly run card-counting operation comprised mainly of his fellow MIT students. Using a relatively simple scheme of tracking low and high cards, a counter who is placing minimal bets can signal a high-stakes player over to a table just as it's heating up. Over the course of a few years, these kids made millions up and down the Vegas Strip. Using costumes, fake ids, elaborate accents and well-developed characters, Kevin and his friends not only made mega bucks, but they also had access to the high-roller lifestyle, with the free suites, drinks, dinners and gorgeous women.
Eventually, however, the casinos figured out their game, and a cat-and-mouse game followed. Mean casino managers, tough security thugs would chase them from their rooms, out of casinos and eventually, at least for Kevin, back to the straight and narrow.
The book is fast-paced and straightforward, but at times Ben Mezrich's writing feels a bit stilted, and some of the dialog doesn't ring true. And the ending, while it ties up a lot of loose ends, is strangely unsatisfying. Apparently, there are few repercussions even after all the drama.
In spite of any criticisms, however, the book is a fun read, particularly if you like blackjack or perhaps are on your way to Vegas. It certainly will make you wonder who's watching you.
(A negative review. MSL remarks.) |
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