21: Bringing Down the House By Ben Mezrich

REVIEWED BY JOSH GARKAWE

They say whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. This story tells the total opposite. The author, Ben Mezrich, explains how a group of six M.I.T. students take the casinos of Las Vegas for millions. The team is commonly known as the M.I.T. blackjack team.
The main characters name is Kevin Lewis. The team would count cards to win the big hands. They used a system called the hi-lo counting system. It involves spotters, lookers and big players. To count cards you must be extremely smart and Kevin is just that. We see changes with him throughout the duration of the book.
The book is written from two perspectives. There are chapters which recall the past in a real sense of happening and range from 1994 to 1998 and there are chapters which are written in the present day, explaining the authors encounters with Kevin and his colleagues about the time he lived a double life.
Whilst going through the pages we see many conflicts between characters. One major problem includes Kevin being thrown into jail. During the week, you wouldn’t be able to suspect that these young adults would be such big high-rollers as during the week they are studying and learning at school. On the weekends they do crazy things that only a handful of M.I.T. students would ever experience. On weekends they stay in large Vegas pent-houses, go to parties with celebrities, get front row seats at big boxing events and much more.
After reading the book I think a bit strangely about the coach and the big mastermind of the team – a man called Micky Rosa. He was an ex card counter himself who has the knowledge to take the team to great extents and new levels of card-counting. Although not much information is given about him, we know that he considered Kevin to be someone just like himself, actually when he speaks to Kevin he says, “……you have the mind I had 20 years ago…..” and “……you’ll do great. I seemed to be just like you when I was your age…..” .
The title, 21: Bringing Down the House, was a great choice of a title by the author. In the game of blackjack the winner is basically the person that manages to get the closest score to 21. That covers the 21 part of the name and for the Bringing Down the House part, every hand that the team managed to win was slowly but surely making big dents in the casinos. The team took millions. For a company any loss is bad, but to lose millions is even worse.
To conclude, I was very pleased with this book. I happened to watch the movie before reading this marvellous book. I partly regret this and also feel a bit happy for this. If it wasn’t for the movie, which so well enticed me, I wouldn’t have stumbled on the book and have spent a large amount of time reading the book. Overall, I recommend it for everyone but mainly for all those people that would love to see how the game of blackjack really works and how it is possible to strategically win whilst playing it.

Overall rating: 8.5 out of 10