Lost Genius

Author: Ben Mezrich
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: With a masterful pen, author Ben Mezrich reveals the secrets of card counters for the first time, transporting readers from the academic ivory tower to the anything-goes world of casinos, introducing the little-known underground world of the gambling industry—chambers, cameras, escalating confrontations with these lost geniuses who support themselves with seemingly plausible justifications, straddling the edge of dual personalities, indulging in the realm that everyone dreams of but few truly achieve—winning at the casinos, until the furious pursuit and expulsion of the casino detectives, causing their luxurious lives to collapse like a bad hand of cards. This is a true story from the 1990s: a group of brilliant MIT students were selected by a quirky professor to join a century-old blackjack club. After training, they mastered a unique card-counting technique, learning to communicate through coded language and body language, and from then on, they dominated the world's casinos, winning with ease. They moved east and west, north and south. While their classmates buried themselves in libraries and labs, they came and went from casinos across North America, legally winning $3 million, becoming the subject of awe from gamblers, the object of attention from celebrities and stars, and the target of expulsion and intimidation by the casinos.