With the recent outbreak of blackjack
fever hitting around these parts, I thought I'd share my thoughts on blackjack's answer to
The Professor, the Banker, and
the Suicide King. So you can all relax, I'm talking about Ben Mezrich's awesome 2003
book about the
MIT Blackjack team, not
the Queen Latifah/Steve Martin, uh, comedy. "I try
to control my breathing as I stroll through Logan International Airport. Terminal C is buzzing and chaotic, an
over-air-conditioned hive of college students escaping Boston for a long weekend. I am dressed like everyone else:
baggy jeans, baseball hat, scuffed sneakers. But in my mind, I have as much chance of blending in as a radioactive
circus clown. There's enough money hidden under my clothes to buy a two-bedroom condo. And to top it off, there's
$100,000 worth of yellow plastic casino chips jammed into the backpack slung over my right shoulder."
From the first page, you know that you're in for a hell of a ride. Ben Mezrich takes you inside that world we
all dream of visiting when we go to Vegas: The Rainman Suite, High-Class Strippers and Call Girls, hundreds of
thousands of dollars thrown around like white chips during Chowaha at BARGE, and the thrill of not just winning, but
consistently winning
big.
Bringing Down The House is a great and quick read. It achieves the
perfect balance of geekery, intrigue, and excitement, and will make even the most dedicated non-blackjack-playing poker
grinder want to try counting their way to a big rack of chips.
Poker Pro Andy Bloch is one of the more well-known former members of the
team, and when I discussed the book with him at last year's WPT Celebrity Invitational at Commerce, he
told me and
Poker Geek that he was pretty unhappy with the book, because it only told one
particular version of one particular story. Poker Geek and I encouraged him to write and sell his own story, because,
seriously, man. (
Seriously, man, while often working with great success on me and my friends, failed to work
with Andy. We'll try
Dude! and its variant,
dude, seriously, next time we see him.)
There's a great
excerpt from the book in WIRED
10.09 called
Hacking Vegas. If you're not racing out to buy the book after you've read it . . . well, that's
just one more thing we don't have in common.
Bringing Down the House is now out in paperback, and
there's a movie script in development. Ben's newest book, which I have but haven't read yet, is called
Breaking
Vegas.
The Ultimate Blackjack Tour recently held the Battle of the Superstars, a competition where some of the world's best blackjack and poker players competed for $100,000 in prize money. The winner was Robert Williamson III, beating Kenny Einiger, Hollywood Dave (who is well known throughout the blackjack world and hosts a number of card events on television) and Annie Duke, who placed fourth in the event. 
Expert Insight
As we all know, the 
Over the past few years the 
It's Blackjack Week at Card Squad! To celebrate the upcoming World Series of Blackjack,
we will be featuring blackjack tales, trivia, strategy, instruction, polls, and whatever else we can come up with
- along with our regular poker news, stories, and tournament information. 
