Synopses & Reviews
He played in casinos around the world with a plan to make himself richer than anyone could possibly imagine but it would nearly cost him his life.
Semyon Dukach was known as the Darling of Las Vegas. A legend at age 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 has never been revealed until now; that has 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. Although they were taking classes and studying for exams during the week, over the weekends they stormed the blackjack tables only to be harassed, banned from casinos, threatened at gunpoint, and beaten in Vegas's notorious back rooms.
The stakes were high, the dangers very real, but the players were up to the challenges, consequences be damned. There was Semyon Dukach himself, bored with school and broke; Victor Cassius, the slick, brilliant MIT grad student who galvanized the team; Owen Keller, with stunning ability but a dark past that would catch up to him; and Allie Simpson, bright, clever, and a feast for the eyes. In the classroom, they were geeks. On the casino floor, they were unstoppable.
Busting Vegas is Dukach's unbelievably true story; a riveting account of monumental greed, excess, hubris, sex, love, violence, fear, and statistics that is high-stakes entertainment at its best.
Synopsis
This exclusive, pulse-pounding story by the author of the bestselling Bringing Down the House is an even more incredible story that Vegas doesn't want told the story of the MIT whiz kid who brought the casinos to their knees.
About the Author
Ben Mezrich graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991. Since then he has published seven books with a combined printing of more than a million copies in nine languages. He is the author of the blockbuster New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House: The True Story of Six MIT Kids Who Took Vegas for Millions, which is being made into a major motion picture produced by Kevin Spacey and MGM. Ugly Americans is Mezrich's eighth book and his second foray into nonfiction.