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Growing up in a strait-laced Southern family, I was always fascinated with casinos. In my twenties on a summer hiatus from teaching in North Carolina, I drove to California and became a dealer at Caesars in Lake Tahoe. My mother highly disapproved of my working in a casino, "a place so bad it has 'sin' in the middle." Eventually, I returned east to take a hi-tech job in Boston. I also began working on my MFA in writing at Emerson. My characters were breathed into life from my years in the gambling industry. You learn a lot about the human personality when you watch thousands of people from behind the felt of a blackjack table.
This is a book made from a screenplay that tells the story from behind the felt. As a croupier you can always tell if an author knows their stuff. Stepping behind the table as a dealer Jack Manfred a rejected author becomes enmeshed in his new job. He intends to write a novel about this fascinating world of casinos. As a writer myself I can relate to his need to tell his story. London dealers are considered the gold standard in the casino world. Their intense training thins the herd. I know because my husband learned to deal at an upscale London casino just like Jack. Ray also went to The Grecian Grill an all-night Greek restaurant in the West End after his shift. That touch of authenticity gave Croupier my stamp of approval.
You have to make a choice in life. Be a gambler or a croupier. Then live with your decision come what may. It's all numbers, the croupier thought. A spin of the wheel. A turn of a card. The time of your life. The date of your birth. The year of your death. In the Book of Numbers the Lord said: "Thou shalt count thy steps." A wave of elation came over him. He was hooked again. Watching people lose. His existence was forming an interesting pattern of betrayals. Sometimes he was unsure whether he was the betrayer or the…
Growing up in a strait-laced Southern family, I was always fascinated with casinos. In my twenties on a summer hiatus from teaching in North Carolina, I drove to California and became a dealer at Caesars in Lake Tahoe. My mother highly disapproved of my working in a casino, "a place so bad it has 'sin' in the middle." Eventually, I returned east to take a hi-tech job in Boston. I also began working on my MFA in writing at Emerson. My characters were breathed into life from my years in the gambling industry. You learn a lot about the human personality when you watch thousands of people from behind the felt of a blackjack table.
Standing behind the table, blackjack dealers are always on the lookout for card counters, find one and they are booted out. Can a team from M.I.T. really break the casino? Card counting is all in the math and as he and his fellow team members hit Vegas they learn how to bet on the count. I think this book really shines when he goes behind the scenes to explore the deceptions the team went through to try to deceive the casino. Well, they can for a while and it’s fun to follow them on their rise and fall.
The #1 national bestseller, now a major motion picture, 21—the amazing inside story about a gambling ring of M.I.T. students who beat the system in Vegas—and lived to tell how.
Robin Hood meets the Rat Pack when the best and the brightest of M.I.T.’s math students and engineers take up blackjack under the guidance of an eccentric mastermind. Their small blackjack club develops from an experiment in counting cards on M.I.T.’s campus into a ring of card savants with a system for playing large and winning big. In less than two years they take some of the world’s most sophisticated…
Growing up in a strait-laced Southern family, I was always fascinated with casinos. In my twenties on a summer hiatus from teaching in North Carolina, I drove to California and became a dealer at Caesars in Lake Tahoe. My mother highly disapproved of my working in a casino, "a place so bad it has 'sin' in the middle." Eventually, I returned east to take a hi-tech job in Boston. I also began working on my MFA in writing at Emerson. My characters were breathed into life from my years in the gambling industry. You learn a lot about the human personality when you watch thousands of people from behind the felt of a blackjack table.
How does a girl go from working in a Thai restaurant to running a sports gambling operation in Costa Rica? All roads lead through Las Vegas, where Beth meets Dink a math genius. Sports bettors love to hang out in casinos it’s like a contact high. He hires her and she trains in the Vegas casinos. She not only becomes enthralled with the eccentric Dink and the colorful cast of characters that surround him but she shares their stories with you. It was the early days of Internet gambling, a free for all or so they thought. It is great to view the industry through the observant eyes of Beth whose colorful descriptions bring the characters to life.
“Beth Raymer’s crackling, hilarious memoir ricochets through the gambling underworld in Las Vegas, and is peopled with all manner of lovable wack-jobs, none of whom is quite as wacky—or lovable—as Raymer herself.”—Marie Claire
Beth Raymer waited tables at a dive in Las Vegas until a customer sent her to see Dink, of Dink Inc., one of the town’s biggest professional sports gamblers. Dink needed a right-hand man—someone who would show up on time, who had a head for numbers, and who didn’t steal. Beth got the job.
Lay the Favorite is the story of Beth’s years in the high-stakes, high-anxiety…
Growing up in a strait-laced Southern family, I was always fascinated with casinos. In my twenties on a summer hiatus from teaching in North Carolina, I drove to California and became a dealer at Caesars in Lake Tahoe. My mother highly disapproved of my working in a casino, "a place so bad it has 'sin' in the middle." Eventually, I returned east to take a hi-tech job in Boston. I also began working on my MFA in writing at Emerson. My characters were breathed into life from my years in the gambling industry. You learn a lot about the human personality when you watch thousands of people from behind the felt of a blackjack table.
This is a novel based on Frederick’s own gambling addiction on the Mississippi riverboats. Ray and Jewel Kaiser love to gamble, until a fun night out becomes a compulsion. They find themselves showing up at the Paradise casino all hours of the day and night, becoming intimate with the employees and escalating their bets. After visiting the area, I knew the scenes in the casino ring true and the dialogue is so on point, that you root for Ray and Jewel even though in the back of your mind you know the house always wins.
A New York Times Notable Book In this darkly funny story, Ray and Jewel Kaiser try (and push) their luck at the Paradise casino. Peopled with dazed denizens, body-pierced children, a lusty grocery-store manager, and hourly employees in full revolt, this is a novel about wising up sooner rather than later--"a wise and funny tale" (New York Times Book Review) that is "masterfully observed" (John Barth).
I grew up on the coast of South Carolina, where many of the Golden Age pirates were welcomed as business associates and charming guests by some of the most influential people of the day. They are, to this day, considered local heroes. I read everything I could lay hands on about them, fiction and histories, and I knew my first book would have to be about the pirate I always pretended I could be, if I’d only been born two hundred years ago.
If there’s anything I like as much as pirates, it’s heist stories. The excellent follow-up to the amazing Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas rang every one of my bells by taking our favorite thieving bastards Locke and Jean to sea, under the command of a strong, brilliant female captain, Zamira Drakasha. And she’s not just a woman pirate – she’s a middle-aged, Black single mother, running her ship and being the best pirate any denizen of the high seas could aspire to be. Lynch caught a good bit of flack for this character, but I was delighted. You will be, too.
Escaping from the attentions of the Bondsmagi Locke Lamora, the estwhile Thorn of Camorr and Jean Tannen have fled their home city. Taking ship they arrive in the city state of Tal Varrar where they are soon planning their most spectacular heist yet; they will take the luxurious gaming house, The Sinspire, for all of its countless riches.
No-one has ever taken even a single coin from the Sinspire that wasn't won on the tables or in the other games of chance on offer there.
But, as ever, the path of true crime rarely runs smooth and Locke and Jean…
I’ve been playing card games since childhood, and have had a parallel interest in the mathematics behind the games for nearly as long. While I didn’t visit Las Vegas in person until 2000, the stories of how that city was built around the gaming industry quickly came to fascinate me. Digging into the details of the people who have made that city what it is and have come to make their way in the desert has been a fascinating sidelight that has enhanced my recent work writing books on gambling mathematics.
Forgotten Man is a natural follow-up to Grandissimo, as it tells the story of Bill Bennett, the casino executive who took over Circus Circus from Jay Sarno and built it into a successful resort catering to low-rolling visitors to Nevada.
Bennett had a rocky start in the business world in Phoenix before moving into the gaming industry at Circus Circus, and his path to a successful career in casino management is told entirely through interviews with those who knew him and worked with him.
When listing the top movers and shakersin the history of Las Vegas gaming,Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, and HowardHughes inevitably garner a mention.But such a list is incomplete without BillBennett - the Forgotten Man.While Wynn and other resort operatorscatered to high-rollers, Bennett focusedon middle-class Americans to fillhis hotel rooms and play his slot machines.He transformed Circus Circus from astruggling curiosity into the Strip's mostsuccessful resort.Forgotten Man, told through in-depthinterviews with family members, friends,employees, and others who knew Bennett,tells the story of a man who as much asanyone built modern Las Vegas.Bennett shared the lead with SteveWynn in reinventing the Strip during…
I am a voracious reader who loves to escape my hectic busy life with a good book when I don’t have the opportunity to do so in person. I’m a sucker for a good love story with a little angst and mystery. I read all genres but sexy romantic thrillers are my absolute favorite. I love them so much I started writing my own sexy stories in this genre. It has become my passion. I currently have three published books, Mr. Black, Mr. Stone, and Mr. Bennett, books one, two, and three of A Black Stone Series. My fourth book, Luke, the first book in my new Cross Security series is scheduled for release later this year.
Bad Blood is edgy, fast-paced, and thoroughly entertaining. Cora Kenborn and Catherine Wiltcher create pure magic together, giving readers two characters whose hate-fueled lust heats up the pages while war and dissent brews around them. It’s a well-balanced storyline that flows perfectly. The romance and mafia elements played really well against each other. There was humor and action and fantastically written dialogue.
From Cora Kenborn and Catherine Wiltcher comes Corrupt Gods, a brand new arranged marriage mafia duet.
A Santiago is a lesson in ruin. A Carrera bleeds for revenge.
Thalia Santiago is the daughter of my enemy. A beautiful rebel with a single cause. Impulsive. Fearless. And ripe for her father’s undoing.
I recognized her the moment she stepped into my casino. I watched her start the fires that burned her pretty fingers, and then I poured gasoline on the flames. Now she’s in my debt, and her dues are a shiny gold ring and a vow of deception.
I was a mailman when I became obsessed with card counting at blackjack. Not having enough money to play at a pro level, I decided to sell a mathematical formula I’d devised for evaluating games and systems. I offered it for sale through gambling newsletters at $100. I immediately had big sales because no one had ever seen a method for estimating card counters’ win rates. I got letters from college math professors asking me how I’d come up with the math. So, I started my own blackjack newsletter where I published my discoveries. I was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame in 2002 and soon had big investors funding my play.
The author, a former casino executive, exposes the industry’s “comp system,” through which casinos give away more than a billion dollars in “complimentaries” every year, as an enticement to get people to gamble. Although the book appears to be aimed at amateur gamblers looking for casino freebies (room, food, booze, show tickets, etc.), the information in this book has been devoured by professional gamblers at the highest levels because it reveals the inner workings of how players are evaluated and rated, with tips on how to look like you’re betting more than you are, how to look like you’re losing when you’re winning, and basically how to look dumb when you’re smart. I personally made a lot of money from the information in this book.
Win every time you gamble? Is that possible? It is if you play for comps.
Every year, U.S. casinos give away more than a billion dollars worth of amenities to customers in return for their gambling action. These giveaways, known as “comps” (short for complimentaries), range from parking and drinks to gourmet meals and airfare. Are you getting your share? From nickel slot players to $500 a hand blackjack high rollers, Comp City has shown tens of thousands of gamblers how to get free casino vacations.
Since the first publication of Comp City, author Max Rubin has been teaching gamblers…
I’m a Korean American author who believes life is too short to read books that bore you, classics or otherwise. I’ve always had eclectic tastes and like to pick out books the way customers choose bonbons at my chocolate shop (which I’ve co-owned since 1984). And while I do read and often write longer works, I’ve always preferred to fall into a world from the opening line and bow out soon thereafter. By nature, I’m a minimalist – and maybe don’t have the greatest attention span – so I’m in awe of short works that stand on their own. They’re just more dramatic and memorable to me.
The author, a columnist, wrote these family stories as an homage to his bigger-than-life mom Patty while she was battling cancer. Told with heart, laugh-out-loud family anecdotes, and love, always love, Saalman brings you into an unforgettable midwestern world of then and now, although even the modern-day Indiana stories echo with “yore” to my more urban ears: his parents’ solid working-class values, their casino date every Saturday night, Patty’s job as the hostess of a diner. Ultimately, she would outlive her death sentence by five years.
"Scott's personal, poignant essays are a tribute to family and to the enduring nature of love. Read them in one delicious gulp or sit back on the couch and imagine yourself on Brushy Fork Road and savor then slowly." - Angela Himsel, A River Could Be A Tree
Richard L. Weissman is one of the world’s foremost authorities and thought leaders in the fields of derivatives, risk management and technical analysis. He is the author of two books: Mechanical Trading Systems: Pairing Trader Psychology with Technical Analysis (Wiley, 2004) and Trade Like a Casino: Find Your Edge, Manage Risk and Win Like the House (Wiley, 2011) which was a finalist for the 2012 Technical Analyst Book of the Year Award. Mr. Weissman has over thirty years experience as a derivatives trader and has provided training and consultation services to traders and risk managers at investment banks, hedge funds, energy, and agricultural companies for over twenty years.
Traders often ask me for a book that will teach them the nuts and bolts (pricing models, volatility, the Greeks, spread strategies, etc.,) of options and I always recommend this book. When I was learning options, the Natenberg book hadn’t been written and although there were “good” books on the topic, Natenberg is truly the gold standard for options traders.
WHAT EVERY OPTION TRADER NEEDS TO KNOW. THE ONE BOOK EVERY TRADER SHOULD OWN.
The bestselling Option Volatility & Pricing has made Sheldon Natenberg a widely recognized authority in the option industry. At firms around the world, the text is often the first book that new professional traders aregiven to learn the trading strategies and risk management techniques required for success in option markets.
Now, in this revised, updated, and expanded second edition, this thirty-year trading professional presents the most comprehensive guide to advanced trading strategies and techniques now in print. Covering a wide range of topics as diverse and…
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