{"id":182,"date":"2004-06-25T01:10:00","date_gmt":"2004-06-25T01:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=182"},"modified":"2007-03-03T08:39:53","modified_gmt":"2007-03-03T13:39:53","slug":"bringing-down-the-house-by-ben-mezrich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/2004\/06\/25\/bringing-down-the-house-by-ben-mezrich\/","title":{"rendered":"Bringing Down the House, by Ben Mezrich"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0743249992\/ericnehrlisho-20>Amazon link<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I read <a href=http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wired\/archive\/10.09\/vegas_pr.html>a Wired article<\/a> a couple years ago about the MIT blackjack team, a group of MIT students who used their ability to count cards to beat the system at Vegas and make a lot of money.  Millions of dollars allegedly.  This intrigued me both because it was about MIT students, but also because it turned out one of the guys I knew at MIT had been on one such team.  The Wired article turned out to be a condensed version of a book, Bringing Down the House, which I finally managed to borrow a copy of recently.<\/p>\n<p>The book-length version is also pretty entertaining.  It&#8217;s undoubtedly exaggerated, but it&#8217;s a good story, and a real page-turner &#8211; I read the book in a couple nights, staying up way too late to do so.  The explanation of how you can set up a team to beat the system at blackjack is interesting, and the vision of these MIT geeks playing the part of high-rollers in a Vegas casino cracks me up.  It&#8217;s a quick fun read, probably not worth buying unless you see it cheap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amazon link I read a Wired article a couple years ago about the MIT blackjack team, a group of MIT students who used their ability to count cards to beat the system at Vegas and make a lot of money. Millions of dollars allegedly. This intrigued me both because it was about MIT students, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun_nonfiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}