Busting Vegas by Ben Mezrich

Ben Mezrich may have done well to stop writing after Bringing Down the House; neither this book nor the Ugly Americans one in between was as good. This book follows a second set of MIT students through Vegas and other casino-havens as they use non-card-counting methods to beat the house. As in Ugly Americans, too much of the book follows Mezrich's travels to write the book rather than the subjects. The romance in the book seems contrived and too convenient, the characters too stereotypical. The tactics the team use in the casinos are intersting, and it's fun to think about how they got good at these skills. But I didn't find myself excited to pick the book up each night and see what happened.