Bringing Down the House
Ben Mezrich
"I picked up this book at the airport on the way to a trip to the Dominican Republic. I just picked it up in the airport bookstore; it looked kind of interesting.
It is about some MIT students who start going to Vegas and basically manage to win thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars before getting caught, and it is so much fun. I'm a gambler, and it was so great to kind of like hear how they cheated the system.
So they would have somebody at the table counting cards, and then they would flag or clue one of their like little floater people to come when basically the deck was hot and it was ready. Then this random person would come and sit down and make all the high bets, win the money and then walk away so that the person that was actually doing the betting, making a lot of money wasn't the same person that was counting the cards. So it kind of made it more difficult for them to track.
There's a follow up book to it that I haven't read that I'm interested in getting at some point in time. It was kind of exciting and fun, and I love the idea - like I love gambling, and so just kind of like the thrill that goes with it is very exciting to me, especially when the numbers are in your favor. So this book definitely did a good job of recreating that excitement. I'd give it four out of five stars."