I wish I could do Math good.

The movie "21" is out at theaters right now, so when I saw the book the movie was based on, I thought it would be a good one to blog about. All I knew of the storyline was what I had heard on the history channel, that some MIT math geniuses had come up with a way to count cards with alarming success, and it paid big. This was true to an extent, but the casinos caught on eventually, and banned the people from the casinos completely. I thought this was what this book was about, but it turns out the people I had learned about were from the 70's, and this was about a totally different group of kids.
The author writes it in an interesting style, alternating from a third person story of Kevin Lewis, and a first person account of the author researching his book. Kevin Lewis (we find out in the second paragraph that its a fake name) is one of about a dozen math whiz kids who were recruited to be on a card counting team. These guys learned an effective method for determining when the deck was going to be hot, even with six decks in circulation. They worked in teams, and played different parts to trick the casinos into believing they were playing the game the losing way. The thing is, card counting isnt illegal, so all the casinos can do is ban you from playing blackjack. This isnt a good thing, since the word started to get around about these kids. They started getting shook down at every casino they went into, and this wasnt very good for business.
Even though Kevin was eventually driven out of the business, his team made like 4 million dollars in three years. Pretty amazing. The author does a great job describing Kevins struggle with his duel life, and all the scenes with casino security are pretty nail biting. This book is definitely worth a read, and it stirs up thoughts that probably are better left alone..
So double down and enjoy.