''Busting Vegas'' (stylized as ''Busting Vega$'') is a 2005 book by

Ben Mezrich Ben Mezrich ( ; born February 7, 1969) is an American author. Early life and education Mezrich was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Molli Newman, a lawyer, and Reuben Mezrich, a chairman of radiology at the University of Maryland Schoo ...

about a group of

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...

card counters Card counting is a blackjack strategy used to determine whether the player or the dealer has an advantage on the next hand. Card counters are advantage players who try to overcome the casino house edge by keeping a running count of high and l ...

and

blackjack Blackjack (formerly Black Jack and Vingt-Un) is a casino banking game. The most widely played casino banking game in the world, it uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as Twenty-One. This fami ...

players commonly known as the

MIT Blackjack Team The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students and ex-students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and other leading colleges who used card counting techniques and more sophisticated strategies to beat casinos at bla ...

. The subtitle of the original, hardcover edition was ''The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees'', but the subtitle of the subsequent paperback editions was ''A True Story of Monumental Excess, Sex, Love, Violence, and Beating the Odds''. While represented as non-fiction by Mezrich, the book contains significant fictional elements. The book is a sequel to '' Bringing Down the House''; however, the team discussed in ''Busting Vegas'' were primarily active prior to the team discussed in ''Bringing Down the House''.

Synopsis

The book's protagonist,

Semyon Dukach Semyon Dukach (born 25 October 1968) is a Russian-American entrepreneur and former professional blackjack player. He is the founding partner of One Way Ventures, a venture capital fund that backs immigrant entrepreneurs. He was the managing dir ...

, is recruited by team leader Victor Cassius while attending

to play on a highly specialized

team. They employ advanced

advantage play Advantage gambling, or advantage play, refers to legal methods used to gain an advantage while gambling, in contrast to cheating. The term usually refers to house-banked casino games, but can also refer to games played against other players, suc ...

strategies like card steering and Ace sequencing. The team deals with the crises of success, and one of the players develops a substance abuse problem that will ultimately prove their downfall. An aggressive investigation by casinos into the teams' various false identities forces them to travel outside of America to continue play, culminating in a high tension climax in

Monte Carlo Monte Carlo (; ; french: Monte-Carlo , or colloquially ''Monte-Carl'' ; lij, Munte Carlu ; ) is officially an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco, specifically the ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is ...

after being caught steering cards.

Characters

Semyon Dukach

is a real person and MIT alum. The story is primarily based on his experiences and told from his perspective.

Victor Cassius

Victor Cassius is a composite character. Many of the events involving Victor appear to be drawn from the experiences of Johnny Chang including the plane crash detailed at the start of the book.

Allie Simpson

Another composite character at least partly based on an MIT team member known only as 'Katie' who appeared in the

History Channel History (formerly The History Channel from January 1, 1995 to February 15, 2008, stylized as HISTORY) is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by A&E Networks, a joint venture between Hearst Communications and the Disney ...

documentary 'Breaking Vegas'.

Factual Inaccuracies

* The team never got robbed by a casino executive on a golf course in Aruba. This story is allegedly based on the experiences of one of Johnny Chang's associates. * Semyon was not abducted at gunpoint outside a casino in

Atlantic City Atlantic City, often known by its initials A.C., is a coastal resort city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States. The city is known for its casinos, Boardwalk (entertainment district), boardwalk, and beaches. In 2020 United States censu ...

. This story was based on an experience he had while working delivering pizzas in Houston, and had no connection to blackjack or gambling. *The team that played in Monte Carlo consisted of Semyon,

Andy Bloch Andrew Elliot Bloch (born June 1, 1969) is a professional poker player. He holds two electrical engineering degrees from MIT and a JD from Harvard Law School. Blackjack While studying at MIT, Bloch became part of the MIT blackjack team, fea ...

and Katie. *Semyon did reach out to a casino private investigator to help locate a teammate, but not due to drug use. *There was no player on the team with whom Semyon had a romantic relationship. In fact he was married with a child at the time of the events in the book. *Semyon did not at any point meet Ben Mezrich in a brothel. *Ben Mezrich did not learn or use these techniques himself. Semyon demonstrated steering a 10 card for him once.

References

{{Ben Mezrich Non-fiction books about gambling 2005 non-fiction books Massachusetts Institute of Technology student life