Bringing Down the House Week 6

In the chapters that i read the blackjack team was becoming more and more successful now that Kevin had gotten promoted to Big player alongside Fisher and Martinez. Kevin begins to fall in love with Vegas and says that he is now living a double life. He has a girlfriend back at MIT but i forgot her name and he has trouble keeping the Vegas secret from her and everyone else. Every weekend he come home with like 10000 and has to hide it in his dorm room. He has so much money that he has to pay everything in 100 dollar bills in order to get rid of all of them. He buys a bunch of cool expensive things like a huge tv and a brand new snowboard and other things like that. Since he is buying so many nice things his girlfriend and family get suspicious and think that hes dealing drugs. He brings his girlfriend to see his parents over thanksgiving and then tries to tell his dad about card counting but doesn't have the balls to do it. His father grew up in china and had a really hard life at a young age and had to over come a lot so his dad would be mad if he thought he was cheating or stealing or whatever so hes worried to tell him. Kevin also meets a cheerleader for the Rams i think who is a very very very hot girl and i think he cheats on his girlfriend a lot(it doesn't really say). At the end of this section that i read they kick out Mickey because Martinez Fisher and Kevin have gained enough money to fund the team without the financial help of Mickey. Mickey takes it sort of well but also gives them advice which seems kind of ironic because it seems as if later on in the book he will mess it up for them or something like that.

Bringing down the house week 5

One thing that i find that is really cleaver is the way that they set up their system once they are in the casino. First, all of the spotters come in one by one with 5 minute increments inbetween each other as to not create suspicion. Each spotter chooses a table to sit at and they do not raise or lower their bets at all they keep it all the same because the spotters are not their to make money, they are there to figure out the count and then give the Big player or the gorilla a sign to come in and play that table when the count is high. A high count consists of basically anything in the teens and then 12 11 10 9 are still pretty good as well. The sign that the spotters give the big players and the gorillas for them to come and play that table is that they cross their arms and put them behind their back. When the Big players get to the table they have to know how good of a count they are playing with so that they can keep the count going in their head, and also they need to be able to know how much to bet so in a very clever scale they made a system to tell the big players what the count is. The spotter will make a remark/comment/question/etc. with one of the following words to tell the big players the count. Tree-1 because 1 looks like a tree. Switch-2 because a switch is binary. Stool-3, 3 legs. Car-4, 4 wheels. Glove-5, 5 fingers. Gun-6, 6 bullets. Craps-7, lucky seven. Pool-8, 8 ball. Cat-9, 9 lives. Bowling-10, 10 pins. Football-11, 11 looks like goalposts. Eggs-12, a dozen. Witch-13, witch number. Ring-14, 14 carrot gold. Paycheck-15, get payed on the 15th. Sweet-16, sweet 16. Magazine-17, name of the teen magazine. Voting booth-18, age you can vote.

Bringing Down the House week 4

In these chapters Kevin starts to play with the blackjack team and Kevin starts out as a spoter. Kevin is still clueless on how much they will actually be making from this so he is surprised to hear that from his 6 hour shift, the team made 38,000$, which means that he made 2,500$. The majority of the money goes to Mickey and the other investors which does include Fisher and Martinez who have kind of upgraded to small investors in order to make more money for their work. Fisher and Martinez are the big players which makes their jobs the highest risking and they should be paid a whole lot more money, more money then even the investors who shouldnt even be their considering that Fisher, Martinez and the others have enough funds to fund their own team without Mickey or the investors. Mickey is a useless coach of the team and makes well over 50% of the money, and he never even plays a single hand for the team because of how dangerous to the casinos he is. Just to try it out the team(Martinez and Fisher) allow Kevin to be something more then just a spotter on his 2nd night of blackjack, but instead of being a big player they allow him to be a Gorilla which is where you wait for the count to be high and then just throw your chips in without thinking until the count is low, which is differant then a big player because a big player would split, double down, vary his bets based on the complex formula that they have. One thing i learned which i think would really give the counters an advantage is playing more then 1 hand at a time at one table. I had no idea that you were able to do this, but if the count is high it would be very beneficial to have a bunch of hands going.

Bringing Down the House week 3

In this section that i read kevin returns from the casino he went to back to his normal life as a student. A month after he gets back he get taken from his swim meet to go to an old math room where Fisher and Martinez are trying to get Kevin onto the Blackjack team. Kevin meets Mickey who he finds out is the top dog of the blackjack team. Kevin is told about other basic strategies and is asked what he knows about blackjack. Kevin is impressive to the group and they tell him that he is accepted if he can pass the test. A week later Kevin arrives at an underground chinese casino which is run by a local gangster, and Kevin is supposed to act like its Vegas. Kevin receives the clues from the spotters and goes to a table with Martinez and Mickey. Everyone seems to be watching him as he wins over 600$ and he starts to have a whole lot of fun. Somebody then comes and drags him with a bag over his head to an enclosed room and he is asked if he knows what the count is. Kevin says 7 and he is correct so he does pass the test( it turns out to be JUST a test all along). Kevin and the team head to Vegas and Kevin has to carry all the money through, and he also caries a bunch of chips because a 500$ chip looks exactly like a 1$ chip. Kevin also learns that Mickey is a very notorious blackjack card counter, and if he is ever seen with him by a casino he will probly be taken to the back room and beaten.

Briging down the house week 2

In these new chapters i learn that Kevin learned about counting cards and he was introduced to the Vegas lifestyle through his two friends Martinez and Fisher. Martinez is amazingly good at math and finished grad classes by freshman year, and Fisher is a giant, 6'3'' 220. They both are really good at math and both dropped out of school. They still go to MIT though which would confuse you at first but then you learn that its because they are still in the math club which is how they make their money. Martinez and Fisher kind of let Kevin into their secret by telling him to come to a famous boxing match in Atlanta, they also show him a stack of 100's which really surprises him and makes him wonder about his friends. First he thinks they are drug dealers, but then when they arrive in Atlanta he learns that they make their money through blackjack. Martinez and Kevin get picked up in a limo by the casinos owner and later are put in an extremely nice expensive room. they then hit the casinos and Martinez gives Kevin a huge stack of 100's to play with which equal out to 10,000$. Kevin is unsure if he wants to because he doesn't know anything about blackjack, but Martinez reassures him that he will help him. They end up making over 10,000$ and Kevin learns how they can afford such extravagant lifestyles. Martinez and Fisher also teach Kevin the basic strategies they use to make a lot of money.

Briging down the house week 1

I have not read much of the book so far, but from what i have read i have learned about the main character; Kevin Lewis. Kevin is an MIT student who has finished all his premed things but isn't even going to go to med school, he just finished it to make his dad happy. Kevin in the bulk of his free time and even into some of his school time, counts cards and makes a fortune. The book says that no one really knows how much Kevin really has but they guess that it has to be around 4-5 million that he has made off counting cards. I haver not learned how they actually go about counting cards but i am eager to find out. After watching the movie in Disney, one of my fellow teammates told me that basically it is face cards make the count -1 and every other card makes it +1 except some cards in between. Kevin and his spotters give each other signs to tell each other what the count is and if the table is hot, or, like in the first chapter, signs to get the he11 out(hand through their hair). Kevin is sort of a shy kid in real life(back at MIT), but when hes in Vegas he lets loose, it says that he has partied with people like Kevin Costner, Micheal Jordan, Howard Stern, and Dennis Rodman. Also it tells of how he has to bring the money to and from Vegas, he has to tape the money to his chest, thighs, arms and back and also has to stick some in his pants.

Outside reading book project

The book that i choose is Bringing Down The House by Ben Mezrich. The reason that i want to read this book is because my brother, David, recommended it to me and told me that i'd like it alot. He read it and toldme that it is the book that 21, the movie, is based on. In disney last week for spring break, our whole lacrosse team was really bored with the lack of cool things for 17 year olds to do there, so we went to 21. I absolutely loved the movie. I love gambling, and i love blackjack, and this whole book is based on blackjack in vagas, and how they count cards.