Editorial Review
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 been revealed until now; that has nothing to do with card counting, wasn't illegal, and was more powerful than anything that had been tried before.
Las Vegas. Atlantic City. Aruba. Barcelona. London. And the jewel of the gambling crown -- Monte Carlo.
Dukach and his fellow MIT students hit them all and made millions. They came in hard, with stacks of cash; big, seemingly insane bets; women hanging on their arms; and fake identities. Although they were taking classes and studying for exams during the week, over the weekends they stormed the blackjack tables only to be harassed, banned from casinos, threatened at gunpoint, and beaten in Vegas's notorious back rooms.
The stakes were high, the dangers very real, but the players were up to the challenges, consequences be damned. There was Semyon Dukach himself, bored with school and broke; Victor Cassius, the slick, brilliant MIT grad student who galvanized the team; Owen Keller, with stunning ability but a dark past that would catch up to him; and Allie Simpson, bright, clever, and a feast for the eyes.
In the classroom, they were geeks. On the casino floor, they were unstoppable.
Busting Vega$ is Dukach's unbelievably true story; a riveting account of monumental greed, excess, hubris, sex, love, violence, fear, and statistics that is high-stakes entertainment at its best.
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Customer Reviews
entertaining, but there are better novels 
2008-08-19
This book is pretty much an advertisement for one of the subject's seminars. So many things in this are clearly fabricated. If a casino sees you make hugely varying bets and coming out ahead, they will ask you to leave, ban you from the casino, then share your picture with the other casinos. It's actually fairly easy to beat blackjack, but it's hard to do it without the casino.
A True Page Turner 
2008-08-19
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.
easy-to-read trashy fiction with ridiculous self-justification squeezed in 
2008-08-08
if this book were simply an exciting fast-paced story (albeit poorly written), i would rate it 2 stars
unfortunately, about halfway through it goes moralistic with dripping hypocrisy - an unnecessary element i found annoying. an example from page 151:
"'okay,' victor said as he surveyed the group, lined up on the balcony, blue water behind them, the glass casino glowing on the horizon. 'let's show this little island what a bit of math, in the right hands, can do to balance out a few hundred years of economic oppression, shall we?'
semyon grinned, and barely felt the pinch of his still bruised lower lip. robin hood had nothing on them"
just like robin hood - except they keep the money for themselves (MIT/harvard students)
the 'afterword' takes the ridiculous moral justification a few steps further. an example from page 283/4:
"for me and my teammates, beating the casinos has never been entirely about the money. of course the money was important, and on the surface, the whole enterprise may have even resembled a kind of crazy financial start-up on steroids, but anyone looking deeper would have seen that for us, the blackjack team was not a business, but a passionate, desperate struggle against the mighty evil empire that was and continues to be the casino industry... inspired by the success of open source, i've come to believe that to really make a substantial impact against a powerful adversary like the casino industry, you have to sacrifice the short term profits of a select few in order to enable the masses to cooperate and innovate... once this book is published, millions of people will get exposure to some of our key methods"
uhhh.. what?!!!! the book is glammed to the max with regard to gambling (the cover is no anomaly) and somehow it's still a "desperate struggle against the mighty evil empire"? comparing casino cheating to a productive venture - like a startup or successful open source teams - is ridiculous
with a world of other books to read, i do not recommend this one
Smart and rich 2008-03-09
A great tale compellingly told. Would have been nice to have had some of the math exposed in an appendix for those who care, but a grand story
Not that great 2008-01-23
Technically, this is not a sequel to Bringing Down the House. The characters are different, and they are not card counters. Yet this story of MIT kids who used a new system to gain an advantage (and millions) playing blackjack feels very much like Bringing Down the House II. There's the genius leader, the beautiful girl, and the brilliant kid who's the main character in the story and writes the afterword. There's blackjack, Vegas, Atlantic City, and even a trip to the Caribbean gone awry.
Obviously, Mezrich found a winner with his previous bestselling book and here he simply tried to duplicate his successful formula. Unfortunately, the result feels a little like painting by the numbers -- unoriginal and uninspired.
A good tale 
2008-01-13
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 been revealed until now; that has nothing to do with card counting, wasn't illegal, and was more powerful than anything that had been tried before.
Las Vegas. Atlantic City. Aruba. Barcelona. London. And the jewel of the gambling crown -- Monte Carlo.
Dukach and his fellow MIT students hit them all and made millions. They came in hard, with stacks of cash; big, seemingly insane bets; women hanging on their arms; and fake identities. Although they were taking classes and studying for exams during the week, over the weekends they stormed the blackjack tables only to be harassed, banned from casinos, threatened at gunpoint, and beaten in Vegas's notorious back rooms.
The stakes were high, the dangers very real, but the players were up to the challenges, consequences be damned. There was Semyon Dukach himself, bored with school and broke; Victor Cassius, the slick, brilliant MIT grad student who galvanized the team; Owen Keller, with stunning ability but a dark past that would catch up to him; and Allie Simpson, bright, clever, and a feast for the eyes.
In the classroom, they were geeks. On the casino floor, they were unstoppable.
Busting Vega$ is Dukach's unbelievably true story; a riveting account of monumental greed, excess, hubris, sex, love, violence, fear, and statistics that is high-stakes entertainment at its best.
A fun book 2008-01-09
This was my first experience with Ben Mezrich and won't be my last. This book was fast-paced and the "based on a true story" part of it definitely helped.
The only problem I had with it was when Mezrich attempted to make himself a character and wrote about his exploits meeting the books main character. These chapters are unnecessary and I'm unsure whether he did it to add lenght or to make himself appear cool.
Other than these few incidents, this book is well-structured, fun, and definitely worth the $5 for the hardcover. I also enjoy playing cards, so that aspect obviously attracted me to the book.
Overall, a great read.
Bust is right 
2008-01-03
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.
Feels like a companion-piece to "Bringing Down the House"; an incomplete story 2007-12-31
I thoroughly enjoyed Mezrich's first "Vegas" novel and couldn't wait to finally read this second novel, about the guy who came first and is supposed to have been the most successful of the MIT "Whiz Kids". From everything I have read and seen about Semyon Dukach, his story seems incredible and ripe for both literary and cinematic glory. However, this novel rushes past all of the good times and comped shows, rooms, tickets, etc and goes straight to the team getting busted and finally the inevitable breakdown of the team. The true story goes on with Semyon forming his own team and continuing to make millions with his "Amphibians" team, but this story just sort of ends before we get there; no mention at all of Semyon continuing to play. Mezrich also writes as if you have read Bringing Down the House (though I am sure most who read this will have), skipping a lot of details or just skimming over them as if you're glancing through a text book minutes before a test; you'll remember a lot from the first book, but feel like something was just....left out.
I know I spent this whole review bagging on the book, but it was a good read. If you enjoyed Bringing Down the House, you will enjoy
Quick Read 2007-12-16
I read this in the middle of law school exams, so take everything that follows with a grain of salt - it's a very quick read, entertaining, but much weaker than the previous blackjack book he wrote, "Bringing Down the House." The story follows another incarnation of the clandestine (not so much anymore) MIT teams that come around every-so-often, only this time, the technique is not card-counting in the conventional sense, but a something else. One reviewer likened it Mezrich's style to that of a movie, and it's a fair analogy. It's fast with no real regard to language in and of itself. Anyone looking to take their minds off whatever they are doing will enjoy this. Might be perfect for a flight home because you can finish it in a few hours.
