Bringing Down The House: The Inside Story Of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas For Millions (2002) - Plot & Excerpts
"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 wondering, sometimes aloud, why Mezrich has six other titles to his credit. Two of them are pseudonymous, to be fair, so maybe it actually got to the point where editors were asking themselves the same question. Or maybe this guy just won the literary lottery and no one else wanted to write this book.This literary abortion breaks every rule I’ve established for how to write. He uses adverbs, puts exposition in dialogue, uses cliched similes, and every attempt he makes to “pretty up" his bland writing just makes you want to fly to wherever this jackass lives and punch him in the kidneys.Some examples of this guy’s exemplary writing style:"[his sisters were] helping his mother with the dessert — something to do with apples, cinnamon, and sugary pie crust."Could it be an apple pie, asshole? Just say it! It’s okay to use the words “apple pie.” We’re not going to laugh at you (for that)."[She] found the thrill of [blackjack] almost as addictive as the field of consulting."I don’t get it. Does that mean she thought card counting was really boring, or is she just so ridiculous that she actually thinks “consulting” is an “addictive” proposition? I shudder to think. Is that what business school actually does to people?"The team was operating like a well-oiled machine."Did you really just say that? You’ve got to be kidding me. Who edited this trash?"He said, “We’ve got costumes — some of the best money can buy — from some place in LA.”"Okay, that’s technically proper use of a dash, ignoring the fact that it occurs in a completely unremarkable sentence (what's more important, that the costumes are expensive or that you can't remember where you bought them?). This stilted dialogue is just exposition with pointless quote marks wrapped around it. Maybe Mezrich reads a lot of Clive Cussler. There's a lot of this in the book, and to say that Mezrich has a tin ear for dialogue would be to play the game on his level. It's entirely possible that Mezrich has never, in fact, heard people speak.Not only is this book poorly written, it’s boring. Avoid it and everything else Ben Mezrich has his hack name on. Remember, though, just because it doesn’t say “Ben Mezrich,” that doesn’t mean he hasn't been blacklisted and is now using another pseudonym.One last snippet of this dude's literary brilliance:"The two were best friends, cut from a similar mold."Really. What a waste of time.Oh, I guess I should tell you how it ends: the team gets banned from all the casinos and they have to fall back on their incredibly lucrative MIT engineering degrees. Poor little babies.
Strange but true, apparently. For those who are unfamiliar with this story:Teams of MIT students with mathematical aptitude were recruited by a professor to play blackjack at casinos. Now blackjack is the only casino game that has a memory of previous play, because it uses a number of decks shuffled together straight through. Therefore, the percentage of cards favorable to the player can be estimated based on tracking the type of cards that have been in play since the last shuffle. A simple form of card counting can give a player a 2% advantage over the house. By employing spotters making small bets to surreptitiously signal to another player--who will make the really large bets--when the deck is highly favorable this advantage can be significantly higher. The syndicate had an approximately 40% ROI. Yes, they had significant amounts of cash to work with, so that they could wait out temporary bad luck and fall back on the long term results of probability. But hell, that's not what really interests you, does it?--since the story naturally has plenty of sleeze, high living, conflict, sex, greed, money, and a wee bit of violence, making this natural best seller material. And indeed this is a bestseller. And yes, there is hubris. If you are making money at an astounding rate, when do you get out? Clearly the large gambling operations do not want you to count cards, even though it is legal, and will go to great lengths to prevent it.You may have seen the movie with Kevin Spacey playing the Mephistophelian math prof, which had some very interesting moments, and some extensive liberties with the events in the book, but with a flabby and erratic script that was uncertain of how to end things.
What do You think about Bringing Down The House: The Inside Story Of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas For Millions (2002)?
The story of Kevin Lewis and some other MIT kids of Asian descent, who were hand-picked by a former MIT prof to count cards in Vegas. Backed by “shady investors” that they supposedly never met, the team used a decades-old method of card counting (a modified version of “hi-lo,” based on the number of high cards left in the deck) and some interesting hand signals to collectively rake in the millions.This is Mezrich’s first non-fiction book, and it shows; oh does it ever show. There is a small “details have been changed” notice under the copyright info, but this does not justify Mezrich’s copious use of detail and conversation that could not possibly be known to him, let alone accurately reported. It’s no great sin to use created conversation to capture the feel of a true event, but it’s disingenuous of the author not to at least acknowledge what he’s done. And while I don’t want to call him or Lewis a liar, the tacked-on drama (beatings in the bathroom of an off-shore casino; a break-in; a solitary poker chip left ominously on Lewis’ table) seem a bit too much ripped from just the style of thriller that Mezrich is apparently accustomed to writing. In sum, there might be an interesting story here, but this book, while admittedly fun to read, with its flat drama and unsympathetic characters (aw, poor Kevin, making a great living at a trading firm, trying to “get out” of the humdrum existence of the MIT grad with the house and two cars... boo hoo, guy) isn’t great.
—Ensiform
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
—Brian
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 piqued by viewing the movie 21 a couple weeks ago. 21 is a supposedly true story based on Bringing Down the House, and I enjoyed the film. It had its weaknesses, such as Jill's underdeveloped character (who for unexplained reasons seemed motivated to join the blackjack team in pursuit of something other than wealth and looked down on those who claimed they planned to stick around just long enough to reach a specific financial goal), but was vicariously thrilling and entertaining overall.I will stick with Busting Vegas to the end, because I am a stubborn reader who can appreciate a good story even when it's rendered poorly, but I've lost interest in reading anything else by Ben Mezrich. I'm unimpressed by his style, which relies on short, blunt sentences and fragments, overblown generalizations, and too much time spent inside the main character's head for me to believe this is a true story rather than a fictional account loosely based on actual events. I consider Mezrich an arrogant, lucky, semi-literate hack who likes rubbing shoulders with brilliant (i.e., bright enough to bolster his own self-labeled "geek chic" image by association) societal misfits and has stretched one book's worth of research into two forgettable, indistinguishable books.
—Rachel
