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6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
He Swears It's All True, 10 Feb 2004
As a big fan of caper movies and con stories (Ocean's 11, The Thomas Crown Affair, Catch Me if You Can), I can enthusiastically recommend American Roulette.Richard Marcus (most likely not his real name, in fact, the name is the same as that of the actor in a TV series called The Pretender) tells of his successful career as a casino cheat. He started as a garden-variety gambler, lost all his money, found himself homeless in Las Vegas, and became a blackjack dealer. Marcus was recruited by a well-to-do casino rip-off gang and rose to the top over the years. He tells great stories about which casinos the gang hit, how they engineered the con, the trouble they ran into, and how they were nearly caught several times. The gang even made their way to casinos in London, the Continent, and Australia, although their base was in Las Vegas. The opening of casinos in Atlantic City and across the U.S. made for some easy pickings as well. American Roulette is not an instructional manual on how to scam the casinos. In fact, as Marcus points out, even if you were to learn the mechanics and technicalities of the scam, there is something more basic to the success of the con game and that is being cool under pressure. These characters are glaciers. American Roulette is a terrific read, and would make a fantastic movie.
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by Richard Marcus
by Richard Marcus
by Marcus
by Ben Mezrich
