News quickly spread throughout the gambling community, which was eager for new methods of winning, while Thorp became an instant celebrity among blackjack aficionados. Due to the great demand generated about disseminating his research results to a wider gambling audience, he wrote the book "Beat the Dealer" in 1966, widely considered the original guide to card counting, which sold over 700,000 copies, a huge number for a specialty title which earned it a place in the "New York Times" bestseller list, much to the chagrin of Kimmel whose identity was thinly disguised in the book as Mr. X.