Review of Beat the Players

Title:

Beat the Players

Author:

Bob Nersesian

Publisher:

Pi Yee Press

Date:

2006

ISBN:

0-935926-28-3

Pages:

320

Price:

$19.95

Reviewed by Nick Christenson, npc@lvrevealed.com

August 23, 2006

It comes as no surprise that casinos don't like players who habitually take money from them. Of course it's okay for them to separate billions of dollars each year from the folks who come in their doors, but if just a few dollars flow the other way, they can get pretty upset. In fact, more frequently then anyone would like to have happen, they get so upset that they break the law in the treatment of those who are ostensibly their customers. Beat the Players is a book about what happens when "casinos attack" and what ordinary citizens can do to protect themselves. The author, Bob Nersesian, is a Las Vegas based attorney who specializes in civil litigation for players under these circumstances.

As casinos have become more corporate, one might expect them to become more responsible citizens, and generally this has been the case. On occasion, however, casino employees will violate the rights of their customers. Moreover, as Nersesian points out, law enforcement sometimes abets these illegal acts. Figuring out how to respond in these circumstances is difficult without experienced legal advice.

Beat the Players provides information on several different but related topics. First, it provides advice for customers if they are mistreated by casino employees. This should be required reading for any advantage player. Unfortunately, sometimes the advice as presented here is mildly contradictory, though. For example on the one hand, the reader is told to avoid having one's picture taken, on the other hand we are told to make sure everything they do is in full view of the security cameras. Nonetheless, there's very good advice here that everyone who tries to win money from the casinos hopes they never need, but ought to know, just in case.

Nersesian provides many case studies of actual events that have transpired in casinos and in the courts. Nobody knows more about how these events play out in the Nevada legal system than the author. The reader receives a great deal of insight about these situations from the best source in the business. Naturally enough, most of the events Nersesian discusses take place in Nevada, but there are interesting examples from Michigan, Mississippi, and New Jersey. The book is still Nevada focused, but it's useful for those who gamble in any jurisdiction within the United States.

Beat the Players also includes a listing of and commentary on the Nevada laws and regulations as they are likely to apply to professional gamblers. The complete Nevada Revised Statutes are available online, but it's almost impossible for a lay person to make sense of them. The insight provided by Nersesian on these regulations makes this book a useful reference.

On the down side, the book lacks coherence. It's an aggregation of useful information to be sure, but it never comes together to be more than the sum of its parts. However, the parts are still very useful, and I expect that most every serious gambler will want to know what's in these pages.

Besides advantage gamblers, two other groups of people who could really benefit from reading this book are casino employees and law enforcement personnel. Unfortunately, because the tone of the book is more than a little adversarial against these two professions, I can't imagine this audience making it all the way through before throwing it across the room in disgust. Several times the Nersesian sounds like he's making a closing argument rather than providing the facts in a dispassionate manner. The book's material is rock solid, and the author doesn't need any rhetorical flourishes in support of his claims. This is my biggest complaint with Beat the Players.

Despite these flaws, Bob Nersesian has assembled some knock-out material on a woefully neglected topic. The situations that are documented in this book can happen to any casino patron. The odds of something like this happening may be relatively low for most advantage players, and lower for those who aren't playing with an edge, but they're decidedly non-zero. If something like the events in this book happen to you, you'll be in one of two camps. Either you'll be glad you read this book or you'll wish you had. Beat the Players could have been written better, but it's an extremely good thing it was written. I recommend it.

Capsule:

Attorney Bob Nersesian is an expert on the law as it applies to advantage gamblers against casinos, especially in the state of Nevada. In Beat the Players, he provides a sober look at the ways in which gamblers can run afoul of casino security and the law, both deservedly and not. The book isn't as coherent as I'd like, and the perspective is too strongly slanted toward the player, but the information is so good that it's absolutely a must read for every serious casino gambler. This is expert information on an important topic.

Note: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher. I have no other interest, financial or otherwise, in the success of this book.