In the midst of the go-go eighties and nineties, a group of overachieving, anarchistic MIT students joined a decades-old underground blackjack club dedicated to counting cards and beating the system at major casinos around the world. While their classmates were working long hours in labs and libraries, the blackjack team traveled weekly to Las Vegas and other glamourous gambling locales, with hundreds of thousands of dollars duct-taped to their bodies. Underwritten by shady investors they would never meet, these kids bet fifty thousand dollars a hand, enjoyed VIP suites and other upscale treats, and partied with showgirls and celebrities.If I didn't know that this was what actually happened, I wouldn't believe it to be true. It looks more like the script for a Hollywood movie than something that could occur in reality; but, then again, to paraphrase the blurb on the back cover, truth can often be stranger than fiction.
Handpicked by an eccentric mastermind - a former MIT professor and an obsessive player who had developed a unique system of verbal cues, body signals, and role-playing - this one ring of card savants earned more than three million dollars from corporate Vegas, making them the object of the casino's wrath and eventually targets of revenge. Here is their inside story, revealing their secrets for the first time.
The edition from which I will be quoting was published by the Free Press; no publication date was given, but the notice of copyright to the author is for 2002. I should note that Mezrich includes the occasional profanity, which I do not always take the trouble to excise when I quote from the book, so I have labelled this post accordingly. Let it also be noted that we're talking about Vegas here, so I might need to refer to unseemly activity from time to time.
