Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions

Casinos deserve whatever anyone can get from them. Card-counting is using your noodle, it is by no means a criminal activity, yet the casinos which say that gambling is a good sport we should all enjoy, don't act like good sports when others are enjoying winning (regularly). Nope, they then act like very bad sports indeed by getting these winners banned from each and every casino in the world.

Gambling in general and casinos in particular were very much in the grip of the Mafia until times not so long gone by. They might as well still be with their ways of ensuring that only they can win the big pot. They employ teams of people to spot the winners. No matter how many different casinos in any country in the world these winners are playing show more in, they will be identified, their descriptions circulated and eventually they will be stopped. Maybe they will merely be banned, first by one casino and then the next (sometimes before they can cash in their last-won chips), or maybe they will be taken into the 'back room' and various intimidating tactics used. This is legal. This is not the Mafia, this is not organised crime, it's organised gambling defending its right to make sure that only people who lose or at least don't win big bucks too often are allowed to play.

The M.I.T. students were all members of a professional gambling ring set up as a business. It was financed by investors, used computer programs to identify the most propitious card sequences and professors who coached the students who did the actually 'grunt work' (flying to exotic locations, staying in luxurious suites and gambling with the investors money) and who were paid a salary and commission. All they did was count the cards that had been dealt in Blackjack and then when it seemed the sequences were on their side, place a big bet. This is completely legal, there is not even a whiff of card-sharping or cheating, and what's more it isn't an infallible science, they might have won in the millions, but they lost more than a million too.

What the hell is wrong with that?

It seems to me that the casinos are bad sports. They only want losers and people who come on the occasional big weekend to see a Star Performer and win big so they can tell all their friends that they must come to Vegas and have a Good Time and Win Big. If you are a real winner, they will hunt you down and ban you. It's only for fun you see, you must only play for fun, just the luck of the draw and not win too much too often, it can't be a business, nor a career, nor a way to make money, nope, only the casinos are allowed to take gambling that seriously.

What is the difference between this slick and sleazy modus operandi and the Mafia? No concrete overcoats (I hope) is one? I can't really think of another.

Recommended for those who think that playing fair ought to be multi-lateral, not enforced uni-laterally by those who think it is only a slogan. show less

This book focuses on Kevin Lewis, one of six students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who form a team to count cards in casinos, playing the mathematical odds to win at blackjack. Though it is not illegal, the casinos are not keen on any activity that gives an advantage to the player, and they can ban them from their establishments.

I live in Nevada and have been to Las Vegas many times, so I was easily able to picture the scenes. As with many people who live here, I am not a gambler. But this book is more about calculating occasions when the odds will favor the player, so it is not exactly the same as true gambling, which always favors the house. The events of this book took place in the 1990s and many casinos have since show more taken measures to prevent card counting.

The story is filled with the ostentation and spectacle of the Las Vegas strip. It occasionally ventures into sexist territory, especially in descriptions of women. The writing is passable, but one does not read this type of book for its literary merit. It is marketed as non-fiction, but the copyright page states that “the names of many of the characters and locations in this book have been changed, as have certain physical characteristics and other descriptive details. Some of the events and characters are also composites of several individual events or persons.” Overall, I found it a fast-paced entertaining read. show less

Casinos have always fed on the greed of people who don't understand statistics, but black jack is the one game that can be beaten. Basic card counting a la Rain Man won't cut it. Most people lose money, and the distinctive changes in bets draws attention from the pit bosses. But a group of MIT students figured out how to combine statistical wizardry with team work, signalling a Big Player to sweep in on a hot table and bet the bank. Kevin Lewis and his friends had a good run, raking in close to $100,000 in a weekend. But nothing lasts forever, and the most important lesson for any card counter is knowing when to walk away. Enjoyable light non-fiction of the true thriller variety, Bringing Down the House is exactly what it says on the cover.

This book focuses on Kevin Lewis, one of six students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who form a team to count cards in casinos, playing the mathematical odds to win at blackjack. Though it is not illegal, the casinos are not keen on any activity that gives an advantage to the player, and they can ban them from their establishments.

I live in Nevada and have been to Las Vegas many times, so I was easily able to picture the scenes. As with many people who live here, I am not a gambler. But this book is more about calculating occasions when the odds will favor the player, so it is not exactly the same as true gambling, which always favors the house. The events of this book took place in the 1990s and many casinos have since show more taken measures to prevent card counting.

The story is filled with the ostentation and spectacle of the Las Vegas strip. It occasionally ventures into sexist territory, especially in descriptions of women. The writing is passable, but one does not read this type of book for its literary merit. It is marketed as non-fiction, but the copyright page states that “the names of many of the characters and locations in this book have been changed, as have certain physical characteristics and other descriptive details. Some of the events and characters are also composites of several individual events or persons.” Overall, I found it a fast-paced entertaining read. show less

I enjoyed this based-on-the-true story read of the MIT students who card-counted their way through casinos in the early 1990s, winning millions of dollars at games of chance that usually favor the house. It couldn't be done successfully the same way today with the change in technology over the last 2 decades, but a few brilliant minds beating the rigged system of Vegas is pretty impressive. These guys should teach acting classes just based on the personalities they created for themselves. Toward the end of the book the story just seemed to die a little bit, but when you stop and really think about how much time they devoted to this craft / charade / scam / business of theirs - well, it boggles the mind.

I also liked the way the show more biographer delivered the story, actually strapping money to his body to sneak it through airport, sitting down at a high stakes blackjack table in Vegas to play a few hands. He was able to tell you what that really felt like from a new player's perspective instead of just through second-hand stories. Wriitng someone else's true story isn't always done well, but Ben Mezrich pulls it off. show less

I bought this book in the Reno airport and finished it by the time the plane touched down in Seattle. (I had a long time to spend in Reno!) It's a suspenseful tale written in the easy-to-consume style of a modern detective story. I suspect that facts were liberally rearranged for maximum drama, so don't go reading this as a piece of history. Instead, read it as a fun Ocean's-11 style story that happens to be strongly based in reality.

So here's a classic story: team of underdogs find their way into a crack in the system and use it to attack the empire. Right? That's what we have here, in a sense. It's hard to argue that casinos don't represent a big power base - after all, they win at just about anything they allow you to play, in the long run. Except maybe for blackjack, and that's where this story begins.

Blackjack is exploitable, you see, if you can keep track of the cards and you know the strategy, and Mezrich tells the story of a team of players from MIT who got together and, making use of the strategy of knowing when the odds come to favor the player in blackjack, as a team took the casinos for huge amounts of money before getting burned out. It's an show more intrinsically intriguing story, as Mezrich notes at the outset, watching the lead character, Kevin Lewis, get trained, take on a bigger and bigger role on the team, and enjoy the fruits of his labors. When the end comes, though, it comes almost too quickly.

Here's the thing about this book for me: as enjoyable as the story is, there's not really much in the way of nuance to the telling of it; Kevin is shown having some doubts about the life he's leading as he's going along, but really, not too much. And maybe that's really how it was, but beyond the chapters showing other people being like "dude, you can't beat Vegas forever" to Mezrich, it's really a charge straight ahead kind of book. That makes it fun enough, and a fast read, but it's almost too slick; it feels unreal.

And maybe that's really my main issue with the book: it really does feel unreal. This is really more of a movie-style "based on a true story" book, rather than non-fiction proper; it feels that way when you're reading it, and some of the principle people involved (including Mezrich) have owned up to it not all being true. Some of the events were made up for dramatic effect, but beyond that, as a reader of more wholly truthful non-fiction, it's hard to accept this style of extended dialogue and quotes, and such. No one was taping these conversations, and so it feels like this misrepresentation of the story when you're reading through it.

I have a feeling I might have enjoyed this more if it had been billed as not being entirely real; it's still a good story, and it's slick, glossy and fast, much like Vegas, I guess. I enjoyed it, but I'm not giving it much more than a tepid recommendation. You could do worse for a plane ride, though. show less