In the next part of my book reviews of casino gambling, I am going to be taking a look at one of the most talked about books in recent years and a book that launched a Hollywood movie.
5. Bringing Down the House
Author………………………Ben Mezrich
Published…………………2003
Publisher………………….Free Press
This book tells the story of the famous MIT blackjack team that reportedly took the Vegas casinos for millions. While being a factual book, it has been derided as being fictional in many parts. Personally I don’t find anything wrong with expanding the truth, Hollywood do it all the time with movies about real life events and people.
In fact some of the films that come out of Hollywood about real life events are factually wrong on a huge scale but they do make entertaining movies. I can relate to this book because it discusses a blackjack team.
It is very difficult to succeed in a city like Las Vegas and win substantial amounts of money. The gaming industry are just far too knowledgeable about advanced blackjack techniques. I ran my team in the UK which was a far easier proposition. Although I didn’t make much money out of my venture and merely did it for wages.
I thoroughly recommend Mezrich’s book on so many levels and one of those is in how it can motivate someone to beat the gaming industry. Although this is also something that is getting far more tougher to do these days but opportunities still exist.
I have read Mezrich’s book but full marks cannot be awarded even though I don’t really know why because it is a fantastic read. It is based around Jeff Ma and Mike Aponte who were both MIT students at the time.
The book does highlight though the problem with having too many people who know the set up. It is always better to keep things small and under control because the more people that know, the more people have the capacity to talk. So how many marks do I award Mezrich’s book?
It is worth a read even though it has the possibility to be factually exaggerated,
RATING 8/10
See you soon
Carl
