Journal Entry 1 by CrazyDutchwoman from Heemstede, Noord-Holland Netherlands on Friday, August 08, 2008

I just received this book from Xeyra. I was her Triple Happiness partner (and I she was mine, lol)

She has given me 3 wish list books and lots of fun goodies.
Going to read this book immediately. The first few pages are so exiting.

Shy, geeky, amiable" MIT grad Kevin Lewis, was, Mezrich learns at a party, living a double life winning huge sums of cash in Las Vegas casinos. In 1993 when Lewis was 20 years old and feeling aimless, he was invited to join the MIT Blackjack Team, organized by a former math instructor, who said, "Blackjack is beatable." Expanding on the "hi-lo" card-counting techniques popularized by Edward Thorp in his 1962 book, Beat the Dealer, the MIT group's more advanced team strategies were legal, yet frowned upon by casinos. Backed by anonymous investors, team members checked into Vegas hotels under assumed names and, pretending not to know each other, communicated in the casinos with gestures and card-count code words. Taking advantage of the statistical nature of blackjack, the team raked in millions before casinos caught on and pursued them. In his first nonfiction foray, novelist Mezrich (Reaper, etc.), telling the tale primarily from Kevin's point of view, manages to milk that threat for a degree of suspense. But the tension is undercut by the first-draft feel of his pedestrian prose, alternating between irrelevant details and heightened melodrama. In a closing essay, Lewis details the intricacies of card counting.
 

Journal Entry 2 by CrazyDutchwoman from Heemstede, Noord-Holland Netherlands on Sunday, August 10, 2008

What a great and interesting book. I do not know anything about black jack. Okay I have played this game when I was young so maybe a bit, but this book was so exiting.
I could not put it down and read it in one day.
Want to read more by this author. short and sweet.


Update Juli 21. Neem ik mee naar de meeting in Castricum voor violoncellix