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Title: Busting Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees
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Manufacturer: William Morrow
List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $5.99
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| Busting Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees by William Morrow Smart and rich | | A great tale compellingly told. Would have been nice to have had some of the math exposed in an appendix for those who care, but a grand story | | Busting Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees by William Morrow Not that great | Technically, this is not a sequel to Bringing Down the House. The characters are different, and they are not card counters. Yet this story of MIT kids who used a new system to gain an advantage (and millions) playing blackjack feels very much like Bringing Down the House II. There's the genius leader, the beautiful girl, and the brilliant kid who's the main character in the story and writes the afterword. There's blackjack, Vegas, Atlantic City, and even a trip to the Caribbean gone awry.
Obviously, Mezrich found a winner with his previous bestselling book and here he simply tried to duplicate his successful formula. Unfortunately, the result feels a little like painting by the numbers -- unoriginal and uninspired.
| | Busting Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees by William Morrow A good tale | If you like cards and are looking for a book that will keep you turning the pages, look no further. Don't even worry about how much is fact or fiction, just enjoy the ride.
Centered around a group of MIT math whizzes who decide to take Vegas, Atlantic City, Monte Carlo and other casino hotspots for a ride, this is a great look at the allure of of beating casinos at their own game. Some of it seems a bit unbelievable, but that doesn't mean it's not true. First and foremost in this writer's mind, however, is to keep the reader engaged, and he does that with a tale that reads like a movie.
Everyone knows gambling favors the house, and anyone who gambles loves to hear tales of the house taking a hit. Here are some of the greatest hits those casinos have ever taken. And yes, the techniques are revealed. Do they work? Only if you have the guts to try them. | | Busting Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees by William Morrow A fun book | This was my first experience with Ben Mezrich and won't be my last. This book was fast-paced and the "based on a true story" part of it definitely helped.
The only problem I had with it was when Mezrich attempted to make himself a character and wrote about his exploits meeting the books main character. These chapters are unnecessary and I'm unsure whether he did it to add lenght or to make himself appear cool.
Other than these few incidents, this book is well-structured, fun, and definitely worth the $5 for the hardcover. I also enjoy playing cards, so that aspect obviously attracted me to the book.
Overall, a great read. | | Busting Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees by William Morrow Bust is right | Ben Mezrich has made a career of glamorizing geeks as they go from nerdy ivy-league academic overachievers to boyz with toyz (girls, guns, and cash). Along the way as he crafted his page-turners, folks suspect that his earlier career as a novelist is informing or overshadowing his latter career as a Tom Wolfe-journalist of hidden subcultures.
In "Breaking Vegas" (BV) he continues with his well-honed formula, but as transparent as Mezrich's style and agenda may be, he writes a great book. BV follows the arc of the career of Russian émigré and MIT student Semyon Dukach as he and his team mates deploy three probability enhancing strategies over "basic strategy" (Blackjack's -2% probability equivalent optimal strategy). Along the way they meet thugs, casino "hosts," Police, prostitutes, and druggies, making the whole thing as atmospheric as any memory of Vegas you may have.
There are many irritating elements in the work: Mezrich's breast-fetishism for one (not a single female appears in the book without her breasts being described!). But the single most irritating is how much of a "math genius" Semyon is. It is an old literary trope...keep referring to your character as a genius, even if they do ordinary things...surround the character with folks who laud his/her genius...and eventually the reader believes you even if you haven't shown him to be genius. The techniques described in this work are no more genius beyond Statistics 102, and the skills employed are fully confessed to have been honed by sheer repetition, so where's the beef? A competent close-up magician of average intelligence could do this...genius it does not take.
But make no mistake, the book is a fun read. Those parts that are true are interesting and those parts that are embellished, compressed, or narrative devices are all forgivable. | | Busting Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees by William Morrow Amazon.com | | Semyon Dukach couldn't believe how easy the money was. In one weekend, the MIT math genius and his team of geeks had made $200,000 playing the blackjack tables in Las Vegas. They hadn't cheated. Instead, they had discovered one of humanity's greatest holy grails: a system to beat the casino. They had rendered obsolete the old saying that the house always wins. Dukach and his friends made millions during the 1990s playing blackjack in the world's top casinos, right under the noses of pit bosses and security consultants who thought they had seen it all. Dukach's story is told in author Ben Mezrich's vividly narrated book Busting Vegas. Mezrich, the author of previous bestsellers about MIT gamblers and a colorful Ivy League trader in Japan, tells how Dukach's crew used a system that Vegas had never seen before. Dukach, the son of Russian immigrants who grew up in the poorest neighborhoods of New Jersey and Houston, was determined to climb out of poverty and help his family. His system didn't involve the commonly used techniques of card counting. Posing as an arms dealer or dentist, Dukach deliberately sought out blackjack dealers with small hands or thin fingers who frequently didn't conceal the bottom card when they shuffled the cards. Dukach would often manage to get a glimpse at the bottom card. This was highly significant because it was the card the dealer would hand the player to cut the deck. Dukach had practiced a technique to insert the card in a precise spot in the deck and then make big bets when the card was dealt. Dukach and his team ended up barred from casinos, threatened at gunpoint, and beaten in Vegas's notorious back rooms. This is a riveting yarn. —Alex Roslin |
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