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

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

3.8 of 5 stars 3.80 · rating details · 12,913 ratings · 1,431 reviews

It's Friday night and you're on a red-eye to the city of sin. Strapped to your chest is half a million dollars; in your overnight bag is another twenty-five thousand in blackjack chips; and your wallet holds ten fake IDs. As soon as you land in Las Vegas, you are positive you are being investigated and followed. To top it all off, the IRS is auditing you, someone has been...more It's Friday night and you're on a red-eye to the city of sin. Strapped to your chest is half a million dollars; in your overnight bag is another twenty-five thousand in blackjack chips; and your wallet holds ten fake IDs. As soon as you land in Las Vegas, you are positive you are being investigated and followed. To top it all off, the IRS is auditing you, someone has been going through your mail -- and you have a multivariable calculus exam on Monday morning. Welcome to the world of an exclusive group of audacious MIT math geniuses who legally took the casinos for over three million dollars -- while still finding time for college keg parties, football games, and final exams.In the midst of the go-go eighties and nineties, a group of overachieving, anarchistic MIT students joined a decades-old underground blackjack club dedicated to counting cards and beating the system at major casinos around the world. While their classmates were working long hours in labs and libraries, the blackjack team traveled weekly to Las Vegas and other glamorous gambling locales, with hundreds of thousands of dollars duct-taped to their bodies. Underwritten by shady investors they would never meet, these kids bet fifty thousand dollars a hand, enjoyed VIP suites and other upscale treats, and partied with showgirls and celebrities.

Handpicked by an eccentric mastermind -- a former MIT professor and an obsessive player who had developed a unique system of verbal cues, body signals, and role-playing -- this one ring of card savants earned more than three million dollars from corporate Vegas, making them the object of the casinos' wrath and eventually targets of revenge. Here is their inside story, revealing their secrets for the first time.

Master storyteller Ben Mezrich takes you from the ivory towers of academia to the Technicolor world of Las Vegas, where anything can happen -- and often does. "Bringing Down the House" launches you into the seedy underworld of corporate Vegas -- deep into the realm of back rooms, ever-present video cameras, private investigators, and the threats and tactics of pit bosses and violent heavies. Equipped with twenty different aliases and disguises, the group of young card counters struggles around these roadblocks to live the high life -- until one fateful day when Vegas violently follows them home to Boston. Suddenly, there can be no more hiding behind false identities; the high life folds like a bad hand of cards.

Filled with tense action and incredibly close calls, "Bringing Down the House" is a real-life mix of "Liar's Poker" and "Ocean's Eleven "-- and it's a story Vegas doesn't want you to read.(less)

Hardcover, 272 pages

Published September 17th 2002 by Free Press (first published January 1st 2002)

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Dec 30, 2011 Petra X rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-true-story

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...more 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 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.(less)

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Apr 11, 2008 Brian rated it 1 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I disliked Bringing Down the House, and can't understand why everyone I know who's read it has raved about it.

I'll grant that it's an interesting story. But you know what? It's a sufficiently interesting story that it doesn't need to be sexed up with outright bullshit. Even accounting for the fact that the characters in the book are composites of several actual people, probably 25% of what's left is just pure fiction. He's got one scene where one of the team is beaten up in a bathroom in a Baham...more I disliked Bringing Down the House, and can't understand why everyone I know who's read it has raved about it.

I'll grant that it's an interesting story. But you know what? It's a sufficiently interesting story that it doesn't need to be sexed up with outright bullshit. Even accounting for the fact that the characters in the book are composites of several actual people, probably 25% of what's left is just pure fiction. He's got one scene where one of the team is beaten up in a bathroom in a Bahamanian casino. It never happened. He's got the principal character taking his final blackjack exam in an underground casino in Chinatown. Never happened. He details one of the team having his apartment broken into, and a safe with $75,000 in it pried out of the wall and stolen. Never. Happened.

This *weakens my interest*. One of the potentially interesting things about this story is how the modern, corporate Vegas would respond to an organized ring of counters. This book doesn't tell you that, because it's so full of bullshit you can't trust anything it has to say on the topic.

And, oh lord, is the dialogue horrible. Hollywood does this a lot: Character A explains something to Character B, but he's really not explaining it to Character B, he's explaining it to the audience. Done properly, this is okay; you don't notice it, it flows, and it tells the audience what's going on without condescending to them. Done improperly, it's annoying as fuck; the worst parts of Casino Royale were the bits with the twit in the casino explaining how poker works to the presumably incredibly competent agent sent by the British government to keep an eye on the money.

Virtually every piece of dialogue in this book is like that. And there's no excuse for it in a book; characters don't have to pretend to explain something to someone who already understands it just to inform the reader, because the fucking narrator can just explain that thing to the reader directly. It's not just annoying, it's lazy, bad writing.

Mezrich explains why he's a lazy, bad writer:

I'm not looking to use big words," Mezrich admits. "I write for people who if they weren't reading my book, they wouldn't be reading another book. They would be watching TV. I'm not competing with other books. I'm competing with the Red Sox." Mezrich works hard to build the excitement early in his plots, before attention spans wane. He gets right to it in Rigged, explaining in the first few pages the main character's involvement with the shady world of the New York Mercantile Exchange: "If Wall Street was the financial equivalent of Vegas, the Merc was Atlantic City—on crack.

This book is crap - on crack. And it's a shame, because there's an interesting true story under all the dross.

You want a good book to read, on a similar subject? Go buy The Eudaemonic Pie. It's about a bunch of grad students from UC Santa Cruz who, in the 70s, designed and built wearable computers intended to let them beat the house at roulette. And it's good. It's also not tarted up.(less)

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Brian Brian wrote: "It sounds like you may have an insider's view on this book. How do you know the wall safe incident never happened? Thanks for the other...more Brian wrote: "It sounds like you may have an insider's view on this book. How do you know the wall safe incident never happened? Thanks for the other book recommendation."

The Boston Globe had a good article on how the book can't be called nonfiction:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ide...

Yet "Bringing Down the House" is not a work of "nonfiction" in any meaningful sense of the word. Instead of describing events as they happened, Mezrich appears to have worked more as a collage artist, drawing some facts from interviews, inventing certain others, and then recombining these into novel scenes that didn't happen and characters who never lived. The result is a crowd-pleasing story, eagerly marketed by his publishers as true - but which several of the students who participated say is embellished beyond recognition.

"I don't even know if you want to call the things in there exaggerations, because they're so exaggerated they're basically untrue," said John Chang, an MIT graduate and one of the inspirations for the character Micky Rosa, who in the book is the team's founder and leader.

[...:]

Near the end of the book, there is a break-in at the character Dylan Taylor's apartment that closely matches the real-life burglary of the apartment of Kyle Schaffer, the character Taylor was at least partly based on - but differs in a few important ways. In the book, $75,000 is stolen, the hidden safe where it is kept literally pried out of the wall, and the reader is made to suspect that the theft could have been a betrayal by a team member or a message from Vincent Cole. In reality, Schaffer says, $20,000 was stolen from his desk drawer. What's more, Schaffer adds, $100,000 to $120,000 in blackjack chips that had been sitting next to the money in the drawer was left untouched, strongly suggesting that the thieves had no idea of their worth.

I am 99.9 percent sure that it had nothing to do with blackjack and was a lucky find for someone who was in the right place at the right time," said Schaffer, a Boston area investment adviser.

Mezrich's response to these specifics is to say that everything he describes is accurate, only that it didn't necessarily happen to the people, in the places, or at the times it occurs in the book. He had to change things, he says, in part to protect the identities of the people he wrote about. But he also admits that, as he puts it, "I took literary license to make it readable."

"The idea that the story is true," he adds, "is more important than being able to prove that it's true."

Mezrich is a lying whore. (less)
May 10, 2009 09:55am

Brian R. Mcdonald Loved this review until the last paragraph. The Eudaemonic Pie not tarted up? It is perhaps the most utterly implausable and nonsensical piece or work...more
Oct 09, 2010 02:43am

Jack Ingoldsby agree... dialogue sucked. "isn't card counting illegal?" forsooth!
There is nothing illegal about knowing the odds... most halfway bright people would...more
Dec 24, 2012 07:58pm

Apr 13, 2011 Greg rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-about-stuff, viva-las-vegas

Apparently this book is bullshit. Oh well. I was the sucker who shut off my critical tools when reading it and swallowed this hook-line-and-sinker. I should have known something was wrong when the geography of the Strip was fucked up in his mini-history of the rise of the mega-casinos. He placed Excalibur halfway down the Strip from Luxor (or was it MGM Grand), which is all wrong, they are right across the street from one another (which works out for either Luxor or MGM in relation to Excalibur)...more Apparently this book is bullshit. Oh well. I was the sucker who shut off my critical tools when reading it and swallowed this hook-line-and-sinker. I should have known something was wrong when the geography of the Strip was fucked up in his mini-history of the rise of the mega-casinos. He placed Excalibur halfway down the Strip from Luxor (or was it MGM Grand), which is all wrong, they are right across the street from one another (which works out for either Luxor or MGM in relation to Excalibur), half way down the Strip from Luxor would be like the Bellagio or one of those casinos. I just thought he was taking some liberties, which he was, I mean it's not like it's difficult to tell the casinos apart just by looking at them.

So, when I was looking to see what other goodreaders thought of the book I found out that big parts of the book were fabricated. And like a good skeptic I googled and found out that apparently yes, Ben Mezrich liked to embellish. The only problem is that his embellishments are usually the exciting and more dramatic moments in the book. Opps.

Some goodreaders pointed out the awful dialogue. I guess that was there too, but honestly it gave the whole thing a very Vegas feel to me, there is something tin-eared, gaudy, and unreal about all of Vegas and I just kind of fit in the bad chatter to being expected from a story that mainly takes place where LA douche-bags mingle around with Cowboys and men wearing very unacceptable amounts of jewelry.

Oh, and to return to the first paragraph, I should have also been a little more skeptical when the author would forget to mention which casino they were in when say security guards kicked in the door and told them to leave. Why would you not give some info like that, especially when most of the book reads like a travel guide dropping names of places.

Oh well. It was a distracting and entertaining read and much much better than the pretty unremarkable movie the book inspired. I think I ended up enjoying this book more than I should have because it got me thinking about Vegas and thinking that I would like to go back there again soon, even if it is for my non-debauch enjoyment of slot machines with animal themes and delicious buffets. (less)

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Aug 22, 2008 Rachel marked it as abandoned

Recommended to Rachel by: 21 movie credits

When he saw that I'd earmarked this book as one I'd like to read, my friend John offered to lend me his copy. It turned out, however, that he only owns a different book by the same author. That book, Busting Vegas, is the inside story of five MIT students who took Vegas for millions (although the long-winded official subtitle for that one bills it as "A True Story of Monumental Excess, Sex, Love, Violence, and Beating the Odds.").

My interest in the subject (blackjack) and author was initially p...more

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May 08, 2008 Brian Hodges rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, better-than-the-movie

Let me say this first: read the book. SCREW THE MOVIE!

I picked up this book because the trailers for the movie "21" (based on the book) intrigued me. I'm no speed reader but i finished this thing in two reading sessions less than 24 hours after getting it from the library. It's the TRUE story (as the title indicates) of a bunch of MIT students, brilliant with numbers, who work out a sophisticated card-counting scheme that they use to win millions of dollars from various casinos over the course o...more Let me say this first: read the book. SCREW THE MOVIE!

I picked up this book because the trailers for the movie "21" (based on the book) intrigued me. I'm no speed reader but i finished this thing in two reading sessions less than 24 hours after getting it from the library. It's the TRUE story (as the title indicates) of a bunch of MIT students, brilliant with numbers, who work out a sophisticated card-counting scheme that they use to win millions of dollars from various casinos over the course of a couple of years. This book was such a fast, easy and satisfying read (how often do all three of those adjectives apply to one book), and if you're a fan of Clooney's OCEAN'S 11, you'll love it.

In addition to giving a really gripping account of how these ballsy little geeks managed to get past the Vegas system (Think the Rain Main blackjack sequence times about 10), the author also gives some really cool backstory into the history of "old" Vegas and "new" Vegas (the security, the mob, the corporations, the back rooms, the strippers, the private investigation firms) in order to show you what these guys were truly up against. As you read, you can't help but be swept up in the tense, nail-biting "what-a-rideness" of the story. You also can't help but keep thinking, "hey, maybe I should try this." Fortunately for you, me and everyone who reads, the author also does a good job of showing you that trying what these guys tried really just isn't worth it. These guys were math GENIUSES and they still couldn't slip past the system forever.

The book isn't perfect. The author frequently inserts HIMSELF into the story via these "side chapters" where he interviews people from the main character's life and they seem rather out of place (the chapters that is). Still, all in all, a fun and fascinating book that reads in no time at all.

The movie version really missed the boat here. The story as told in the book is so damn cool and multi-dimensional yet unfolds in "movie time". The filmmakers threw all that out the window and turned every character, scene and even Vegas itself into a one-dimensional snore.(less)

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Jun 28, 2008 Toby rated it 1 of 5 stars

"Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions" by Ben Mezrich is a nonfiction work that takes a look at a group of MIT graduates and dropouts who develop and perfect a card counting system, which they use to great effect. Specifically, the book concerns Kevin Miller, who is apparently Asian despite the inventive pseudonym, and his involvement with the team of MIT card counters.

As I read this book, I kept flipping back to the frontispiece and wonder...more

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Jul 06, 2008 Tracy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, own-it

This bood reads like a suspense novel- an easy read, that I finished in one sitting. I have to admit, I was riveted, although the writing itself leaves something to be desired.
My husband's aunt used to be a dealer in Atlantic City so I've heard a lot of stories from her, but this book really opened my eyes to the gambling industry. The book made me NOT want to gamble and pretty much squelched what miniscule desire I had to visit Vegas anyway.
I could see how easily one could get caught up in th...more

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Jan 13, 2009 Suzanne rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, new-england

I really resent it when an author states that their work is one of nonfiction, when it isn't. Apparently Mezrich wrote this story based on his meetings with some members of the MIT Blackjack teams. "Bringing Down the House" is a fictional work inspired by real life events. The character's names have been changed and many of the individual characters Medrich writes about, are actually composites of several people. There are places described that don't exist (underground casino in Chinatown) and...more

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Mar 08, 2008 Scott Hoverman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ah, Blackjack and the flashy, magnetic draw of America's Playground. Why do we foolishly appease Vegas, allowing it to offer it's tantalizing promises like a carrot dangling in front of a rabbit? A part of us likes to think we can GET the carrot; And it's that part of us that keeps us coming back like lemmings. Well in this story, the rabbit got the carrot. And then some.

An extremely fast & entertaining read, this book sweeps you through the highs and lows of what it feels like to temporaril...more

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Apr 28, 2008 Madeline rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: nobody

Recommended to Madeline by: nobody

i didn't hate it. but it was definitely nothing special.

here's some examples of the ridiculous writing:

"Vegas was a juicy oyster, and Kevin was going to suck the motherfucker dry"

"He leaned back, kicked his feet up onto the table -- right on the goddamn felt -- and waited for them to pay him off. He knew he looked like the most arrogant prick in the world, but he didn't care. Hubris had no place in a card counter's vocabulary. Barry Chow was king of the goddamn paddleboat."

"He closed his eyes,...more

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Aug 12, 2009 K.D. Oliveros rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I like the fact that this is really happened. That the protagonist name is really Jeffrey Ma and he agreed to surface 7 years after the book was originally published. The story is astonishing: imagine an MIT grad raking millions of pesos by card counting in Las Vegas. Talking about using one's brain to circumvent the old, old game of blackjack!

I saw the movie in a cheap DVD copy from St. Francis and I liked it. The book version is tamed which is expected because it is based on actual events whil...more

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Apr 12, 2008 MJ rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who wants to try and beat the casinos at their own game

Recommended to MJ by: Ultimate reading guide

Shelves: liked-it, true-crime, idiots-ultimate-reading

I have wanted to read this book for awhile especially after living in Las Vegas and since the movie based on the book just came out I decided now was the time to read it.

Kevin Lewis was your average MIT student until one day when 2 friends took him to Atlantic City and introduced him to the art of card counting. Counting cards is not illegal but the casinos do not like it when you do it. Especially if you are winning. Taken under the wing of Micky, Kevin learns the ins and outs of card counting...more

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Apr 07, 2008 Clackamas rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs-bio-and-autobio, games

This was a fun, quick read. It's hard to believe it's true. The story felt a lot like the Clooney Ocean's Eleven movies, only without quite so much humor.

The MIT guys had a pretty intricate system worked out for beating the casinos as Blackjack. It was funny to see how the system had to evolve as these young people became old in the world of card counting. They needed to figure out how to be able to keep playing even though casinos were starting to recognize them. Ultimately, their actions forc...more

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Apr 07, 2008 Crysti rated it 4 of 5 stars

Oh my gosh...I am loving this book. I can't wait to get home and read it every night. I will probally finish it tonight or this weekend.
I so want to beat Vegas...but I am not smart like these guys!
So I just finished reading this last night...and was very happy to see that at the end of the book they update you to present day in 2007 about the people in the book.
It was really good, very fast reading and I loved all the ways the author brought you in and made you feel like you were actually at th...more

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Feb 27, 2008 Emily G added it

The writing can be kind of clunky at times and prone to "Explain blackjack for me, a rank gambling novice much like the average reader of this book," asked Kevin. "Well," Martinez smiled, "It works like this..." type exposition, which always gets on my nerves.

BUT the story is true and that's exciting enough to carry the writing, which is certainly not all bad. And you get to see what nerds in college would do given hundreds of thousands of dollars (hint: the answer is dump their MIT girlfriend f...more

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May 01, 2013 Gorski rated it 3 of 5 stars

The book Bringing Down The House by Ben Mezrich was a pretty decent read and there were very few negatives that I could think of about the book. Saying there wasn’t any wrong with the book would be an understatement. For instance the transitions between Kevin and the author seem abrupt and happen at weird places in the story. However I did enjoy reading the book and three things that I did like about the book was the characters, the story, and the fact that the book is nonfiction.

The characters...more The book Bringing Down The House by Ben Mezrich was a pretty decent read and there were very few negatives that I could think of about the book. Saying there wasn’t any wrong with the book would be an understatement. For instance the transitions between Kevin and the author seem abrupt and happen at weird places in the story. However I did enjoy reading the book and three things that I did like about the book was the characters, the story, and the fact that the book is nonfiction.

The characters in the book were great, each of the characters had a very unique personality. Not only was each characters personality great but the way they all interacted with each other and communicated with each other you can tell what most of the characters personalities are like without having to have the book state it for you. Also each character is pretty consistent with the way they act throughout the story.

The story is pretty amazing and I have to say that the story is what kept me reading this book. During the few slow parts I continued to read just to find out what was going to happen next. It’s a very unique story and I haven’t read anything with a similar story to this book. There are parts of the story that are so crazy that they couldn’t have been made up.

The book is nonfiction which means that’s it’s based on true events. This means things in the book really happened and that people is flippen sweet. The fact that this book is nonfiction will open up your eyes to the inside world that is Las Vegas. Some of the chooses that the characters made in my opinion weren’t the best but I have to give them props for what they did.

Bringing Down The House was a fairly good read with not a whole lot to complain about. I did like the way the author has all the characters have unique personalities and how good the story is. I also really enjoyed how the book was nonfiction. However I did not like the way the author switches between two different narrators at weird times in the story. I am giving this book three stars because it is just an average book. It’s not a great book like The Book Thief, but it did make me want to play poker again.
(less)

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May 01, 2013 No knees rated it 3 of 5 stars

The book Bringing Down The House by Ben Mezrich is what I read this time around. This book for me was just ok. It was a nice short read. I think the reason I didnt like it as much as the other books because it was nonfiction. The only nonfiction books I like are ones about sports. I did enjoy some parts of the book such as it was actually a cool story, I enjoy Blackjack so it was fun to read about,and it wasnt super long.

This book for me was a cool story. These were college kids do this and I a...more

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Apr 30, 2013 Luke Cobbs rated it 5 of 5 stars

For this unit I read the book bringing down the house. This isn’t my new favorite book but I did like it a lot. I liked that the book was short, the imagery that the book gave and that it was about black jack, because I like playing cards.

If a book is long then I have absolutely no motivation to read it. I don’t even want to get started because I know ill never finish. But since this book was short, I was able to read it and enjoy reading it. Also I had enough spare time to read it. I’m busy a l...more

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Mar 23, 2013 Savannah S rated it 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book, and I found it really interesting. Having seen the movie based on it twice before reading the book, I enjoyed reading moments that I knew were then exactly recreated in the movie. I think I'll have to now see the movie a third time.

I thought the plot - or rather, the story - was incredibly interesting. I also thought that the writing was good. I thought that the descriptions Mezrich made of Vegas were great and I was able to create vivid images of it in my mind (that were l...more I enjoyed this book, and I found it really interesting. Having seen the movie based on it twice before reading the book, I enjoyed reading moments that I knew were then exactly recreated in the movie. I think I'll have to now see the movie a third time.

I thought the plot - or rather, the story - was incredibly interesting. I also thought that the writing was good. I thought that the descriptions Mezrich made of Vegas were great and I was able to create vivid images of it in my mind (that were later confirmed using google images) while I read. I also thought he did a nice job of showing the differences between each of Kevin's lives - the writing for Kevin's life in Vegas somehow seemed different that the writing for his life in Boston.

The only thing complaint about this book I have is that it sort of felt that the it dragged on a bit. By halfway through, I started to feel like I wanted it to be over already, and therefore I enjoyed the second half far less than the first. It just felt like the book was less exciting than the first half, and that definitely some of the second half could have been down, I think.

After doing some research while reading the book, I found out that much of the book has been fabricated or exaggerated. While, like everyone, I sort of wish it were all true like the book claims when its being categorized as nonfiction, I understand where Mezrich was coming from. I suppose that Mezrich felt that he had to do this in order to make the book more interesting, or compelling. I often feel that nobody's life is as interesting or as exciting as the lives of fictional characters, and I suppose that to some degree Mezrich agrees?

Overall, after really wanting to read this book for a little while, I am glad that I did and I found it interesting! I now would almost want to try card counting for myself, except that I would definitely be one of those people who looses terribly and then is made fun of by the people who can actually count cards, haha. (less)

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Jan 30, 2013 David Macpherson rated it 1 of 5 stars

I got to tell you, this was the most readable piece of crap I have experienced in a while. It is compelling but poorly constructed and it felt false while reading it, like this is too good to be true, and according to the Boston Magazine, a lot of it was fabricated. I finished it wondering if any of it was true. A good few pages were wrapped up on how to tape money to your body to transport, which made no sense to me, and according to the Boston Magazine article, no one involved in the actual ev...more

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Dec 20, 2012 Matt Brockway rated it 4 of 5 stars

1. Plot Overview (Don’t give the ending away!) What did you like about the plot? Did it move quickly or slowly? What didn’t you like? Was it interesting or not? Why? Give details!

The plot was pretty good. The story was about students at MIT college who count cards in blackjack and convince an extremely smart student to join their group. They go to Las Vegas every weekend to count cards and come back to attend school durring the week days.

2. Character Overview: Who were you favorite characters? D...more

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Dec 03, 2012 Shem rated it 5 of 5 stars

I chose the book in this unit because of how interesting it sounded. I had heard of card counting before but never really knew how it worked. The part that really made me choose this book was the fact that it actually happened in real life. I liked this book because of the fact that it was a true story, the interesting story, and complex real characters.

Most true stories are normally boring to me because they just don’t have that wow factor im always looking for. This book on the other hand had...more

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Nov 30, 2012 Jsavett1 rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this in the hospital while recovering from surgery, so I must say from the start that my concentration wasn't at at its height.

This book was totally FINE. If someone approached me urging me to read the story of how a bunch of socially awkward M.I.T. students outsmarted casinos for years, and in the process, earned millions of dollars and experiences with women they would have never met, this book would be EXACTLY what I'd expect.

It's funny in parts, a little nerve wracking as you feel the...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Michael Osterwisch rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Imagine sitting at a blackjack table with ten thousand dollars riding on one hand and thousands more strapped to your chest with velcro. Kevin Lewis, Martinez, Fisher, and others did just that 25 times a year for five consecutive years. Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich tells the story of six MIT students who learn to count cards and win millions in Vegas.

Led by a slightly crazy former MIT professor named Mickey, the MIT team revolutionized the way casinos thought about card counters. Kevin...more Imagine sitting at a blackjack table with ten thousand dollars riding on one hand and thousands more strapped to your chest with velcro. Kevin Lewis, Martinez, Fisher, and others did just that 25 times a year for five consecutive years. Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich tells the story of six MIT students who learn to count cards and win millions in Vegas.

Led by a slightly crazy former MIT professor named Mickey, the MIT team revolutionized the way casinos thought about card counters. Kevin Lewis, at the time, was Mickey's newest recruit. After passing numerous tests given to him by the team, Kevin gets his chance to play in Vegas with the team. His first attempt was a success and he was instantly hooked.

Kevin Lewis was an exceptional student, from his high school prep school days through his admittance to MIT. Kevin was a student who never wandered from focusing on his studies. Nothing exciting ever happened to Kevin, so when he was asked to join the card counting team he saw it as a way out of his very mundane life. Up until that moment, Kevin's biggest worry was missing a day helping his professor in the science lab. This particular character attempts to take one giant leap from geeky scholar to high roller. These two traits being so different took him on journey with no set boundaries where he had no control. In the end Kevin realized that taking risks must be tempered with cautiousness.

This book is much more intriguing than most non-fiction books i've read so far. Mezrich figured out just how to weave this story. First he discusses the introduction, then the nerve-racking orientation. He delves into the mathematics, the strategy, and how the teammates fit into what roles. He shows how intricate the team aspect of blackjack works, and how they capitilized on it. Both seedy and genious, it sheds a whole new life on blackjack and casino gambling.

He then starts showing how Casinos work, especially how they treat you when you're a big player versus when you're a card counter. Without giving too much away, this story not only deals with the winning, but also with the repercussions. Mezrich brings into the lifestyle, not only with the glamor, but also the suspense and terror that accompanies it.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. It does a good job of bringing you into the story and painting a good picture of everything happening. To me it was both very enjoyable and also educational about the whole subject in general.(less)

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Nov 20, 2012 Rachel Morgan rated it 3 of 5 stars

"Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T Students Who Took Vegas for Millions" by Ben Mezrich is a true story of adventure and growth. It was an exciting read. The characters made you sometimes feel sorry for them and sometimes want to slap them for their stupidity. They were students at M.I.T. and should have shown more sense than they did.

Six M.I.T. students were part of a card counting club, which they called a team. They took trips to Las Vegas and won a great deal of money pl...more "Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T Students Who Took Vegas for Millions" by Ben Mezrich is a true story of adventure and growth. It was an exciting read. The characters made you sometimes feel sorry for them and sometimes want to slap them for their stupidity. They were students at M.I.T. and should have shown more sense than they did.

Six M.I.T. students were part of a card counting club, which they called a team. They took trips to Las Vegas and won a great deal of money playing Black Jack. The students should have realized that after they won a lot of money they could expect trouble from the casinos. Their only real backup plan in case of trouble was for a spotter to give a signal to get out of the casino NOW. The majority of the time they were cocky and seemed to feel that there was always another casino around the corner and didn't know when to give up. Eventually one of the team members got too greedy and gave the team up to the casino authorities. They were then banned from the casinos.

This book was written by a journalist who interviewed one of the people involved, Kevin Lewis. Kevin was curious as to how some of his friends were making so much money, so he became part of this card counting group. Greed was what brought these people together and greed was what made them fall apart. As a dancer from Vegas says in the book, "No one ever wins in Las Vegas."

The main characters are M.I.T. students. They were smart enough to pull off this scam successfully, but didn't have enough sense to know when to quit. The character development was realistic because this story is nonfiction. Also, you can connect with the characters and understand why they did what they did, but you can also wonder why people from M.I.T. didn't have more common sense.

The primary setting is casinos. People in casinos think they're going to win, so their adrenalin level is high, but because these students had a thought-out plan that they knew would win, their adrenalin level was even higher. From what I can tell from the novel, card counting is like drugs in that its addicting. The thrill of it is what keeps bringing you back. And like drugs, there are always consequences. Kevin was audited twice and still feels like he's being watched, and another couple from the team divorced.

Overall, I liked this story. However, I would have liked a better balance between the interviews and related facts such as casino security. I felt that some of the interactions the author included concerning himself were unnesacary. The writing style of this novel was very easy to follow. Also, the characters got on my nerves because I felt they were being stupid. This is why I gave this book three stars. I would recommend this book to people who like Louis Sacher's "The Cardturner" and people who like nonfiction.(less)

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Oct 21, 2012 Brendan rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was the second book I've read by Ben Mezrich, after The Accidental Billionaires. Both books tell similar stories - smart, nerdy college kids at elite Boston universities use their intelligence and drive to get rich and enjoy the trappings of wealth, but at what price?

In this book, the path to riches is the MIT card-counting team, which uses a team card-counting approach to bet big on blackjack hands when the deck is favorable to make millions of dollars, before casinos get wise to the schem...more This was the second book I've read by Ben Mezrich, after The Accidental Billionaires. Both books tell similar stories - smart, nerdy college kids at elite Boston universities use their intelligence and drive to get rich and enjoy the trappings of wealth, but at what price?

In this book, the path to riches is the MIT card-counting team, which uses a team card-counting approach to bet big on blackjack hands when the deck is favorable to make millions of dollars, before casinos get wise to the scheme and take steps to stop them.

Like The Accidental Billionaires, Bringing Down the House is a quick, entertaining read, but rather poorly written. The story structure is weak: much of the story is a third-person account of the protagonist, "Kevin Lewis," describing how he joined and eventually became a leader of the card-counting team in the mid 1990s. Interspersed throughout are "present-day" first-person accounts of how/why Mezrich came to write the book, and his interviews with several random Las Vegas people with some connection to blackjack. These accounts have no real connection to the story, and it's unclear what the point of the time-shifting approach is - perhaps he thinks it is a great literary device, or perhaps he is just trying to fill out a book that is pretty short even with these present-day accounts.

Mezrich's approach is also not very thorough. This book is intended to be non-fiction. But Mezrich appears to rely entirely on interviews with one player on the team. As a result, there is a lot of unexplored territory and a lot of unanswered questions because there is only one perspective. We learn little about the other players on the team, their personalities and motivations. A mysterious figure pursues the team - we do not learn definitively who he is. The team is seemingly betrayed by a mole, but no attempt is made to identify him/her. Other mysterious events happen that Mezrich makes no attempt to explain definitively. If Lewis doesn't know what happened or why, Mezrich doesn't look into it further.

I also feel like more background information would have been helpful and could have been easily added without making this 250 page book too long. An appendix by Kevin Lewis discusses some of the mechanics of card-counting, but there is very little discussion of the mathematics or basic strategy involved otherwise, and significant knowledge of blackjack is basically assumed. The rise of Las Vegas as the world's leading gambling destination and the casinos' efforts to catch card counters are other such subjects that are referenced but barely discussed.

The main purpose of the book appears to be to allow prospective card-counters to indulge in their fantasies. All of the card-counters are tall, attractive and fit (and remember, these beautiful people come from MIT; a school not exactly known for its attractive student body). Meanwhile, all of the "House" employees are balding and paunchy. You want to be one of these card-counters, living this exciting life. It's an effective approach to draw in the reader, but I doubt it is very realistic or accurate, and it's just one of many examples of Mezrich preferring simplistic personalities and characters to a more in depth and nuanced treatment of them and their stories.

Bringing Down the House is not a bad book, and it's not intended to be literature. Mezrich has found very interesting subject matter, and anyone who is interested in blackjack, card-counting or Las Vegas glamour would definitely enjoy it.

It's also an easy and enjoyable read. But it left me wanting more, and I think a better, more thorough and more inquisitive writer could have done a better job with it. Like "The Social Network," "21" was better than the Mezrich book on which it was based. I think that fact is reflective of the shallowness of Mezrich's approach to the material, which makes the books well-suited for 2-hour movies, but lacking in literary quality.

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Oct 02, 2012 Donna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Suspenseful and great fun. My son has a good friend who has been a professional gambler for years. He doesn't do this, though, because it's true, you do become unwelcome once you have won too many times, or if you come in as a team.(It seems credible, too, that it might be illegal to signal someone to come join a card game at the very moment you know the shoe is loaded with face cards and aces).

It's an exciting book to read--and I've read it twice--simply because it is so daring, and Vegas seems...more

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Aug 07, 2012 Jim Berkin rated it 4 of 5 stars

A true story that reads like a great caper movie (and much better than the actual caper movie based on it). Mezrich keeps things moving in this mix of interview & Vegas behind-the-scenes describing the group of MIT math aces who devised a very successful card counting scheme. There are a lot of interesting angles here - how beating the system became more addictive than the money itself, how the casinos reacted to this both legally (by altering how blackjack is played somewhat)and not-so-lega...more

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Jul 09, 2012 Emily rated it 2 of 5 stars

A great, compelling story that deserved a better writer behind it. Rather than finding ways to weave in the background and information he learned in his interviews, Mezrich instead writes chapters in which he talks about his experience interviewing people and transcribes what they told him. Those chapters serve only to interrupt the narrative. I couldn't tell if the author was lazy or if he wanted to point out, "Dudes, I also got to gamble with a lot of money and hang out with a hot stripper!"

I...more

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May 15, 2012 Ally Atherton rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 52-books-in-52-weeks

This is loosely based on the true story of one man who joins a band of card counters who take Vegas for Millions.

To be quite frank the first 175 pages of this were about as much fun as having a frontal tooth extraction. We follow the main character as he visits various casino's around the USA placing bets and then more bets and then more bets. I found myself in dire need of a plot or a point or anything would have done. I got that gnawing feeling in my stomach that usually tells me that I need t...more

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About Ben Mezrich

Ben Mezrich is an American author from Boston, Massachusetts, who started out writing fiction but now has made his foray into non-fiction. He graduated magna-cum-laude from Harvard in 1991. He has since published eight books which have together sold over a million copies in nine different languages. Some of his books have been written under the pseudonym Holden Scott.

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Books by Ben Mezrich

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal

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Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions

Busting Vegas: A True Story of Monumental Excess, Sex, Love, Violence, and Beating the Odds

Rigged: The True Story of an Ivy League Kid Who Changed the World of Oil, from Wall Street to Dubai

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