Breaking Vegas. Ben Mezrich. 2006.

For nearly five years, he was known as the ‘Darling of Las Vegas’, the biggest high roller to hit Sin City in decades, a hotshot, twenty-one-year-old kid with an unlimited lust for big money action. His name was Semyon Dukatch, and stories swirled in his wake. Some said he was a Russian arms dealer, others a pop star from Eastern Europe. But the truth was even more unlikely: he was an MIT graduate student who had a plan that would one day make him richer than anyone could possibly imagine.

Dukatch quickly became a legend in the casino world. He is the only person banned from the island of Aruba. He was held, at gunpoint, in a cave in Monte Carlo. And he made millions of dollars playing blackjack, using brilliantly simple playing techniques, revealed in this book for the first time.