Ultimately, it wouldn't be the players themselves that lead to the team's inevitable demise. After their first hit at the Native American run casino, Mohegan Sun, the casino offices enacted several measures to protect themselves against card-counters including banning players from entering a blackjack game mid-deck, and introducing new cutting and shuffling techniques that made it harder for players to spot specific cards. Compounding this was a private investigation firm called the Plymouth Agency, who was hired by one Las Vegas casino to track the activity of its patrons and hound out the card-counters.
The most exciting portions of Mr. Mezrich's book describe the paranoia that sweeps through the players once they begin to discover that the agency is on to them. At times, Mezrich does straddle the fine line between taut, intense description of the action and overwriting. It seems at points as if he is trying to convince his readers how exciting all of this really is. But for card lovers, or anyone who has ever set foot in a casino for that matter, the description of the games themselves will provide the necessary excitement.
The most exciting portions of Mr. Mezrich's book describe the paranoia that sweeps through the players once they begin to discover that the agency is on to them. At times, Mezrich does straddle the fine line between taut, intense description of the action and overwriting. It seems at points as if he is trying to convince his readers how exciting all of this really is. But for card lovers, or anyone who has ever set foot in a casino for that matter, the description of the games themselves will provide the necessary excitement.
For example, in describing one particularly beautiful hand, Mezrich writes: "Kevin drew a nine for a solid nineteen. Martinez drew another queen, a strong twenty. The dealer had a six showing. Heaven on felt." The last portion of the description seems so trite and hacky that I found myself blushing a little bit when I read it, embarrassed that Mezrich was trying so hard. Were he to have trusted the natural thrill of his subject a little more and left off the extemporaneous and unnecessary tack-on at the end of the sentence, the thrill of the action would have more than described itself.
Also, like many writers who attempt to dirty their pens to describe the gritty Vegas nightlife, Mr. Mezrich falls short of writers like David Mamet whose testosterone-fueled dialogue and expertise in the world of gambling have set the bar for this type of writing so high. At one point, Mezrich describes a beautiful woman as a "high-class arm charm," which not only sounds shamefully dated, it makes one think that Mezrich is over-reaching in an attempt to sound either like a hard-boiled crime writer or a member of the Rat Pack.
Also, like many writers who attempt to dirty their pens to describe the gritty Vegas nightlife, Mr. Mezrich falls short of writers like David Mamet whose testosterone-fueled dialogue and expertise in the world of gambling have set the bar for this type of writing so high. At one point, Mezrich describes a beautiful woman as a "high-class arm charm," which not only sounds shamefully dated, it makes one think that Mezrich is over-reaching in an attempt to sound either like a hard-boiled crime writer or a member of the Rat Pack.
Ultimately the squad's greed is the catalyst for their undoing. At one particularly poignant moment Lewis thinks about how the team's financier and leader, Micky Rosa, once told him that "the most important decision a card counter ever has to make is when to walk away." Unfortunately for Kevin and his teammates, the desire for one last big hit keeps them in the game too long. Banished from every major casino in Vegas, the team tries to move their game to some of the less-regulated gambling establishments in the country and they find themselves face-to-face with some truly ungainly individuals. As Mezrich notes, "This didn't have anything to do with big corporations and mathematical advantage. This was about people, and money. And what measures people would go to to protect their money." For Kevin and the gang, they have to find this out the hard way.
