Busting Vegas: The Mit Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees

by Ben Mezrich

Book Overview

He played in casinos around the world with a plan to make himself richer than anyone could possibly imagine -- but it would nearly cost him his life.

Semyon Dukach was known as the Darling of Las Vegas. A legend at age twenty-one, this cocky hotshot was the biggest high roller to appear in Sin City in decades, a mathematical genius with a system the casinos had never seen before and couldn't stop -- a system that has never...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060575115
• ISBN13: 9780060575113
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A True Page Turner

For the longest time, I thought Busting Vegas and Bringing Down the House were the same book with different titles. After not being thrilled with Mezrich's RIGGED, I ran into Busting Vegas at a nearby bookstore and realized that indeed it was a completely different book than BDTH. I thoroughly enjoyed this very entertaining account of a completely different formula to "Beat the House" than card counting. If you have read Mezrich's other works and enjoyed them, as well as enjoy the game of blackjack, I think you cannot go wrong with this one. The characters are vivid and the story telling is rich and vivid with detail.

fun ahoy

Ben Mezrich has made a career of glamorizing geeks as they go from nerdy ivy-league academic overachievers to boyz with toyz (girls, guns, and cash). Along the way as he crafted his page-turners, folks suspect that his earlier career as a novelist is informing or overshadowing his latter career as a Tom Wolfe-journalist of hidden subcultures. In "Breaking Vegas" (BV) he continues with his well-honed formula, but as transparent as Mezrich's style and agenda may be, he writes a great book. BV follows the arc of the career of Russian émigré and MIT student Semyon Dukach as he and his team mates deploy three probability enhancing strategies over "basic strategy" (Blackjack's -2% probability equivalent optimal strategy). Along the way they meet thugs, casino "hosts," Police, prostitutes, and druggies, making the whole thing as atmospheric as any memory of Vegas you may have. There are many irritating elements in the work: Mezrich's breast-fetishism for one (not a single female appears in the book without her breasts being described!). But the single most irritating is how much of a "math genius" Semyon is. It is an old literary trope...keep referring to your character as a genius, even if they do ordinary things...surround the character with folks who laud his/her genius...and eventually the reader believes you even if you haven't shown him to be genius. The techniques described in this work are no more genius beyond Statistics 102, and the skills employed are fully confessed to have been honed by sheer repetition, so where's the beef? A competent close-up magician of average intelligence could do this...genius it does not take. But make no mistake, the book is a fun read. Those parts that are true are interesting and those parts that are embellished, compressed, or narrative devices are all forgivable.

A helluva good story!

This book claims to be a true story of Semyon Dukach, who bested the world of casino blackjack. Could be true. Maybe it isn't. Doesn't matter. It's a helluva good story about some MIT students who followed a mentor with a new and not illegal system of beating the odds at blackjack. It tracks this team from Vegas to Atlantic City and finally to Europe and Monte Carlo. The Afterword by Mr. Dukach, himself, expains the winning system, so you too can be a big winner at the casinos. Just don't get greedy like he and his partners did. This is an easy, fun, roller-coaster ride of a book.

A Thrilling Easy Read

This book is a very easy read. I read it in one day. It is more like a fiction book so I can see why people are wondering how much has been embelished. I am definitely wondering myself how much has been changed from the actual facts. But nonetheless it is an exciting adventure to read about. If you love casino gambling you will love this book. I would never have the guts, brains or skills to pull the stunts that that the crew in this book did. But it was thrilling to live through their story.

I would recommend to anyone

This is the type of the book that you read all at once because you can not stop reading. It is exciting, thrilling and stimulating. Even if the book doesn't seem to be hundred percent true story - the author has never said that everything in the book is absolutely true, this is not a book on history - the guy lived that life and most likely his life was a great adventure. Ben Mezrich is a good story teller, and Semyon Dukach is a great character. I really like it and would recommend to anyone.