I just finished and excellent book, so I thought I’d post a bit about it, you know, the viral effect. The book is “Bringing Down the House” by Ben Mezrich. It’s a great, and true, story of a bunch of MIT whiz kids (are any MIT kids not whiz kids?), and how they take a bunch of casinos for oodles of money. It’s interesting how they invest in a deep strategy, well above just simple card counting, to win, and win big. Counting cards is something casinos want you to think you can do, but you can’t. However, when you invoke a team approach, counting shoes, and calling in the big players when the shoe is hot, you can take advantage. However, the casinos have millions, if not billions, at stake, so they don’t just take this stuff lying down. The interesting middle ground is that card counting, even using a sophisticated methodology that the MIT kids used, isn’t illegal! But casinos can, and will, kick you out and ban you from their casinos. It makes for interesting tension, and casinos may stretch things a bit beyond just showing you the door, they are trying to send a message here.
On top of all of this are casinos across the country working together to ID the kids, cameras and surveillance that probably blows away what the government has; it all comes together for a really good read.
I also recently read Freakonomics, I’ll write that one up down the road.
