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Bringing Down the House | 
| Author: Ben Mezrich
Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: $20.30
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $20.29 (100%)
New (4) Used (21) from $0.01
Rating:  432 reviews
Sales Rank: 1498265
Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 043401124X
Dewey Decimal Number: 364
EAN: 9780434011247
ASIN: 043401124X
Publication Date: June 5, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Real-life all too rarely offers stories that are quite as satisfying as fiction. Bringing Down the House is one of the exceptions. Cheating in casinos is illegal; card-counting - making a record of what cards have so far been dealt to enable the player to make some prediction of what cards remain in the deck - is not. But casinos understandably dislike the practice and make every effort to keep card-counters out of their premises, banning them and using private detectives to share information on suspected and known counters. Bringing Down the House tells the true story of the most successful scam ever,. In which teams of brilliant young mathematicians and physicists won millions of dollars from the casinos of Las Vegas, being drawn in the process into the high-life of drugs, high-spending and sex. Bringing Down the House is as readable and as fascinating as Liar's Poker or Barbarians At the Gate, an insight into a closed, excessive and utterly corrupt world.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 427 more reviews...
 Go up against the Vegas machine at your peril June 17, 2009
K. Maxwell (Perth, Australia)
If you go into a casino thinking you'll win on a consistent basis you are only fooling yourself unless you are playing blackjack and are a trained card counter - in other words you're a casino's nightmare in action. A well trained team of blackjack card sharks can drain a casino as this book shows, but it's not simply card counting skill that is needed to do this, you also need an awareness of your legal rights in the particular casino you are working in (laws differ in states and countries and on Indian reservations as to what is "cheating") and an ability to play a part and not "look" like a card shark (eg old or young white guy).
This was an interesting, if somewhat superficial book. It's obvious a lot has been left out of the story as the details aren't particularly fantastic in a lot of areas, and you couldn't learn to card count at Vegas reading this book, but it might give you some ideas if you already know how. For people who have a passion for cards and know Vegas well I suspect this book will be a bit old hat and it might give some future MIT students some bright ideas - but no matter how bright you are the casinos will find ways to tighten security so they can catch you and bar you with their equally bright security services so I found this an entertaining read, but it's not something I'd bother reading twice.
 Could not put it down! May 29, 2009
R. Farnsworth (Seattle, WA United States)
Loved this book! Way better than the movie '21'. Anybody would enjoy this plot regardless of age, sex, interests etc. Fast paced and easy to read. Great addition to any vacation!
Bringing Down the House May 20, 2009
D. Adam (Seattle, WA USA)
I really liked this book, although it made the students' activities seem a little too innocent. The MIT teams claim that the card counting strategies they employed were legal, and they were, and casinos aren't owed anything, but greed is still greed. It's a fun account though about how some smart, goofy youngsters were able to pull the wool over jaded Las Vegas's eyes, for a while. I learned something too about card counting in blackjack ("blackjack is beatable").
Fascinating Read! May 13, 2009
HEB3 (Virginia)
I read this book last year on summer vacation. I brought it to casually read on the beach through out the week, but instead read it all in one day. It was so riveting that I could not put it down.
Once I read the book, I bought the movie - major disappointment. The movie was terrible and did not follow the book. They took certain liberties in the movie to make it more "Hollywood" but they just didn't have too (in the movie for instance, the main character's dad passed away, but in the book, he's alive and well and provides an interesting backdrop to the plot).
Buy the book, skip the movie.
In It Till the End March 12, 2009
Dustin Cavalier
There is not much to say about this book except that once I got to the second page, I never put the book down again!!!! This was an exceptional read and deserves all the hype you heard about this book. Great buy and a perfect addition to any library public or private!!!
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