American Roulette by Richard Marcus

 by Richard Marcus is pretty much what you'd expect it to be from the title-American Roulette: How I Turned the Odds Upside Down---My Wild Twenty-Five-Year Ride Ripping Off the World's Casinos (Thomas Dunne Books).  Marcus spent his life cheating casinos all over the world out of a LOT of money.  Near the end of his career he invents a new way to cheat and he's so proud of himself he retires from gambling to write a book and brag about it.American Roulette: How I Turned the Odds Upside Down---My Wild Twenty-Five-Year Ride Ripping Off the World's Casinos (Thomas Dunne Books)

So what did I think? I was by turns fascinated and appalled. The parts about the casinos and how he actually did the scams was really interesting- quite like watching the shows about it on TLC or The Discovery Channel is.  It was similar to learning how magic tricks are performed in that it really is a bit of slight of hand. However,  Marcus is really arrogant. He really belives that he is The Shit and he writes like it. He talks about women like they are objects and is often crude when talking about them. His language is very coarse in places and it seemed to be thrown in for shock value. I'm not usually a prude about language or sex, but the manner in which he talked about it was a big turn off for me. Despite this, I would be willing to read his second book- The World's Greatest Gambling Scams, or other books about gambling in general. (Uh, not how to gamble, that doesn't really interest me.) If you're at all interested in this sort of book, this is a good general description of how scam artists work and how casinos can be taken.

American Roulette by Richard Marcus
St Martin's Griffin
2004
384 pages




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