Shelfari: The Site for Books & ReadersShelfari Logo

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

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

by Ben Mezrich

#1 National Bestseller!
The amazing inside story about a gambling ring of M.I.T.students who beat the system in Vegas -- and lived to tell how.
Robin Hood meets the Rat Pack when the best and the brightest of M.I.T.'s math students and engineers take up blackjack under the guidance of an eccentric mastermind. Their small blackjack club develops from an experiment in counting cards on... (read more)

Top tags: gambling,  non-fiction,  nonfiction,  blackjack,  memoir (all tags)

Readers

Groups

Other Reviews

Amazon Reviews (5)
 

Most Helpful Reviews

Liked It

Sue G
  • Rated 5 stars

“This was a great book I just read in 3 days. I hated to put the book down. It was interesting on how the students learned the system of counting cards and all the practice time spent on it. The last third of the book was very exciting and they were getting close to getting caught.This is when I really couldn't put the bbok down. I have been to Vegas so I really was able to visualize the hotels they were hitting. I loved the fact they were beating the casinos and especially the ones in...”

Sue G’s full review »
more reviews »

Didn’t Like It

Trey H
  • Rated 2 stars

“A book club book in anticipation of the movie. The book is better than the movie, which (despite a few truly painful scenes) I enjoyed just as an exercise in comparisons. The book hums right along (it's almost all plot, little to no characterization), but left me with a ton of questions -- not so much the mechanics of how they pulled it off -- but why some of the people behaved as they did. Maybe the author wanted to conceal identities, but I left the book feeling like I had just downed a...”

Trey H’s full review »
more reviews »
Community:
  • Rated 3.994653 stars
Amazon:
  • Rated 0 stars
  

Newest Comments

  • Cha-Ching

    cha-ching said:

    “Check out our shelf, we specialise in this stuff and are adding books by the second.

    We have also created a couple of groups - one called the gambling group that is going to deal with questions just like this one - I suggest you join up.

    Other books you could check out are
    - Busting Vegas by Ben also
    - Moneyball by Michael Lewis
    - Liars Poker - rising through wreckage on wall street by Michael Lewis
    - any books by David Skalansky

    It really depends on whether you are after books toward the theory side of gambling or you enjoy the story side of someones gambling life/attempts as is more depicted in this book.”

    posted Monday, April 23 2007
  • bmiraski

    bmiraski said:

    “I also enjoyed Anthony Holdin's "Big Deal: One Year as a Professional Poker Player". It is much older than Positively Fifth Street, but has a similar premise, which is why I never went out and read PFS, mostly because I liked Big Deal so much. Holdin does a good job of traveling around the world playing poker and giving a little history and background on the game and the world inside.

    Big Deal isn't along the lines of Bringing Down the House, since it isn't blackjack or cheating, but it is a great gambling book.

    http://www.shelfari.com/books/101510/Big-Deal-One-Year-as-a-Professional-Poker-Player”

    posted Tuesday, February 27 2007
  • paradise city

    paradise city said:

    “There's also Andy Bellin's Poker Nation. I didn't enjoy it as much as much as Bringing Down the House, but it had more of a focus on the technicalities of different hands and such. Might be worth a look if you're interested.”

    posted Wednesday, February 21 2007
  • Benjamin

    benjamin said:

    “I agree, this was a great read, and I found myself watching CourtTV for the final outcome of the Binion murder trial described in the book... a fine memoir and a wonderful look at the culture and history of both the World Series of Poker and the game itself.”

    posted Tuesday, February 20 2007
  • MattyA

    mattya said:

    “If you are into poker at all, I'd highly recommend:

    Positively Fifth Street
    http://www.amazon.com/Positively-Fifth-Street-Murderers-Cheetahs/dp/0374236488

    Like Ben, Jim McManus does a great job of focusing on the people and not a hand by hand history of a poker tournament. It's a great study of how a regular guy finds himself at the final table of a WSOP waaaay before it was on every cable channel known to man. Awesome read and they recently announced this will be a movie staring Gary Oldman!
    ”

    posted Wednesday, February 7 2007
© 2008 Tastemakers, Inc. | Portions of Shelfari.com are Copyright © 1996-2008 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy | Copyright Policy