Busting Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees » (Abridged)

Ben Mezrich has published ten books, including the New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House (now a Sony picture starring Kevin Spacey). He is a columnist for Boston Common and a contributor for Flush magazine (London). He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Semyon Dukach was known as the darling of Las Vegas. A legend at 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 had 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. While they were taking classes and studying for exams during the week, over the weekends they stormed the blackjack tables, only to be banned from casinos, harassed, on the wrong end of guns, and beaten in the notorious back rooms of casinos.

Library Journal

Ugly Americans author Mezrich profiles a 21-year-old computer/mathematics genius who figured out a way to win a lot of money in Vegas. Look for Mezrich's Playboy feature on this topic in the fall. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.