Blog Widget by LinkWithin

Thursday, December 17, 2009

American Roulette by Richard Marcus

American Roulette: How I Turned the Odds Upside Down---My Wild Twenty-Five-Year Ride Ripping Off the World's Casinos (Thomas Dunne Books) 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




I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks.

6 comments:

  1. I can see why this book with both fascinate and appall. It sounds really interesting, Lisa. He doesn't sound like a very likable guy though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmmmm. I think I'll avoid this one. Thanks for the "warning".

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't think this is for me. I think the author's attitude would irritate me no end.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This guy sounds like a real ass! I'm wondering how a con-artist (which he essentially is) can write and sell books.

    On another note...I haven't chatted with you in a while. I got hit with an office move at work and then a head cold from HELL so I am just now coming up for air.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This does sound interesting aside from the fact that the author sounds like an arrogant jerk. :-P I'll probably give it a miss based on that.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for visiting, please leave a comment! Whenever possible I reply to comments via email, so please leave an email address if you want a direct reply. Anonymous users, I'm sorry, but until you stop leaving spam, you can't comment.

  © Blogger templates Psi by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP