I finally got around to reading two of the popular gambling books that became best sellers last year. While I find most anything written in the area of casinos fairly interesting, I was deeply disappointed with both POKER NATION and BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE.
They both served to reinforce stereotypes about card counting and especially the MIT book stretched the boundaries of non-fiction. The one chapter in POKER NATION on blackjack was rather humorous and typical of the public perception of BJ. The author makes it sound like you need a photographic memory to count cards and then goes on to detail how he joined a team. He was the BP and hung out at the bar with his entire bankroll (30K) in chips. That in itself is pretty laughable as no one would ever convert cash into chips for numerous reasons, such as the hassles of CTR�s at every stop, as well as time and exposure of buying and cashing out. But the real topper was when he said he would wait for the spotters to find a shoe where 80 of the first 100 cards were small. He said that may seem unusual, but it will happen often enough. Well, that is a RC of plus 60 in high low and I played over 20 years and I never, ever saw a count close to that.
While I would expect a poker player to misrepresent some aspects of BJ, I was appalled by the fabrications and inconsistencies of the MIT book. They go from top bets of 2K to three hands of 10K seemingly on a whim and they supposedly give 21 year old kids duffel bags with several hundred thousand dollars. I can�t believe there is any team in the entire world that would be stupid enough to bankroll a young lush like Kevin Lewis who bragged about tipping cocktail waitresses black chips and routinely going to strip bars and slipping C-notes to his favorite girls like he owned a printing press.
Up until the appendix I assumed the author had just done a shoddy job of research and had made up facts when he needed them to spice up the story. But when I read Kevin Lewis�s essay at the end, I seriously had doubts whether he really played on the MIT team. He recommended betting 4% of your bankroll on a true count of plus 5. That advice will bankrupt many would-be players and is four times the criteria I always used. Then he goes on to talk about shuffle tracking and how they would cut exactly 52 cards. That in itself is nearly impossible and I seriously doubt the veracity of that story. But he explains if the 53rd card was an ace, they would bring it around for their hands, which makes sense. Then he states that is the card was a ten, they would manipulate it so it would become the dealer�s bust card. Besides the obvious difficulty in doing that and how he could know it would bust the dealer, anybody would want to start their hand with a face card. Although far less valuable than an ace, it still gives an edge of at least 15% and it would be ludicrous to not want it in your hand.
At that point any credibility Kevin Lewis had went out the window. It�s no wonder he eventually got kicked off the team. I can see how the mystique of the MIT blackjack team would be a big draw to the public. But I quickly tired of a bunch of self-proclaimed math geniuses who make it sound like they invented team play and the BP routine, yet decide to use the high low count so they don�t make mistakes. And less you think this is just sour grapes coming from an author whose book languished in sales compared to the MIT book, I recently had the pleasure of dining with Stanford Wong, and he totally agreed the book was unbelievable.
So anyway, that is my take.
