Real life all too rarely offers stories that are quite as satisfying as fiction. Bringing Down the House is one of the exceptions: a real-life action thriller oozing with money, sex and some extremely dodgy dealing…

Cheating in casinos is illegal; card-counting – making a record of what cards have so far been dealt to enable the player to make some prediction of what cards remain in the deck – is not. But casinos understandably dislike the practice and make every effort to keep card-counters out of their premises. Bringing Down the House tells the true story of the most successful financial scam ever, in which teams of brilliant young mathematicians and physicists won millions of dollars from the casinos and blackjack tables of Las Vegas, in the process getting drawn into the high life of drugs, sex and spending big.

Bringing Down the House is as readable and as fascinating as Liar’s Poker or Barbarians At the Gate, an insight into a closed, excessive and utterly corrupt world of gambling in Las Vegas.