Bringing Down the House

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Henceforth, these book reports will be a time-saving device. You need not read entire books anymore. Read these condensed versions instead. You'll have that much more time for your own blog.

Today I read "Bringing Down The House" by Ben Mezrich, published in 2002.

It was about former students of M.I.T. who made lots of money at casinos, by "counting cards" playing blackjack. Most of the students were half-Asian. The initial leader of operation realized he would make the most money if he ran the team like a company, in which each member received a percentage of the profits, depending on the role they played, in contributing to the bottom line. He would train and lead a few teams at the same time. Some members got angry and broke off to form their own team. The author follows one six-member team throughout the book.

The members were mostly male 20-somethings, who enjoyed the thrill and challenge of making large amounts of money at the expense of the casinos. In the long term, unless a gambler possesses an incredible level of intelligence and counts cards as these members did, he will lose all of his money in the long run. The casinos, the members rationalized, were thieves. It is controversial whether counting cards is cheating. The rule of law has not deemed it illegal because the gambler does not physically change his probability of winning, whereas marking the cards or conspiring with the dealer would. But the casinos can legally bar card counters from their premises.

Blackjack, or "21", is the only casino game at which the odds may favor the gambler rather than "the house" in the long term for a certain period. It is played with six decks of cards, that get used up eventually, and then are shuffled before the next round of play. Probability-wise, the gambler will beat the house more often when there are more face cards left in the remaining stack of cards.

One team member would start gambling, perhaps losing on small bets, while keeping track in his head, of the cards that were being played. He might put on an act of naivete, so that no one would suspect that he was counting cards. When he ascertained the odds were in his favor, he would, through his body language or verbal code language, signal to another team member, the number indicating what the odds were. The second member, who might be across the room, would switch tables and take over, acting as though his teammate was a stranger, so as not to arouse suspicion. The second team member would turn into a high roller, appearing as though he wasn't even trying to win. But the team did win; sometimes tens of thousands of dollars in one night. Sometimes a team member would be sitting next to the bettor, giving him signals as to what he should do.

There were various other tricks the team used to make the maximum amount of money counting cards without getting caught. The team would switch casinos frequently, trying places in Las Vegas, Illinois and Louisiana. They gambled mostly on weekends, always flying in from Boston, where they lived. Holiday weekends were especially profitable.

Eventually, the casino security would catch on to the fact that they were counting cards, and bar them from gambling in its establishment. Casinos wised up through the 1990's, installing hundreds of security cameras and posting guards (who acted like bouncers) everywhere. The casinos hired a security service to collect personal information on all offenders. The security service shared such information among many casinos so that eventually, the team was recognized before even starting to gamble. The team tried different ways of eluding security. They gambled at a casino different from the casino-hotel at which they stayed. They were still recognized. One member would signal the others as soon as he saw security was onto him. The author describes a couple of incidents in which security broke into their hotel room with no small amount of hostility, and demanded they leave the premises immediately.

After realizing they would be caught almost anywhere they went, the team still persisted in trying to think of a way to continue counting cards without getting caught, the greedy gamblers. They were addicted; they needed the adrenaline rush. The team tried wearing disguises, thinking security wouldn't recognize them. They were wrong. Another tactic was to take on new members who wouldn't be recognized, but be very careful about whom they accepted onto the team.

One member of the team was power hungry, and convinced a few of the members to let him lead them. The other members continued as a smaller team. This smaller team included a married couple, who were burglarized of $75,000 in team money. The money was contained in the safe in the wall of their apartment, that was broken into. The apartment was trashed. The members never guessed who committed the crime. It had to be rival teams or perhaps the security personnel associated with the casinos, who knew the money was there. Another team member was audited by the IRS. He couldn't guess who had prompted that action. The author said that fortunately, the member had all of his receipts in order, and had reported all of his winnings.

These days, card counters are making much less money than they once did, if they are still operating at all. As the teams got smarter, so did the casinos. There are now automatic shuffling machines, and security personnel who are on the lookout for high-stakes gamblers who win too often.