Among the friends Good2cu makes during his stay at the Ivy Hotel is an entrepreneur named Danny Fleyshman, at the time the youngest CEO of any publicly traded company. When Fleyshman launches the online card room Victory Poker a few months later, Good2cu finally gets the sponsorship deal he’s been working so hard to attain.
Black Friday brings an end to the business arrangement, but by that time Good2cu has already made an extremely successful transition to brick-and-mortar poker. Today, he shuttles between luxury condos in Las Vegas and Macau, playing in the world’s biggest cash games. He still draws more than his fair share of criticism from all the haters online, but, while he once documented his ups and downs with far too much honesty, he’s now learned to play his cards a little closer to the vest. He hasn’t bothered to inform the haters that he’s toned down the debauchery, settled down with a serious girlfriend, and, oh, by the way, he’s a multimillionaire.
Before Raptor heads off to St. John’s College, where he’ll spend the next two years studying philosophy and literature, he announces his official “retirement” from poker, creating a stir on the blogs and message boards. A year later, they’re buzzing about his comeback after he wins more than a million dollars in a month.
But Raptor doesn’t have any interest in returning to his old life, especially after Columbia University accepts him as a transfer student. Today he’s living in Manhattan with his new girlfriend and a 110-pound Newfoundland, studying Chinese and political science. But nobody ever quits poker for good. He still goes to the World Series every year. And he’s still making final tables.
Whether you believe they’re brilliant young minds who braved uncharted waters to make their wildest fantasies come true or arrogant little pricks who got beaned in the head by good fortune and landed with a horseshoe in the ass, the unique circumstances that spawned the Ship It Holla Ballas are gone forever. While the group’s fluid membership and inconsistent accounting methods make it impossible to be precise, collectively they have won close to $20 million in live tournaments and at least as much in live cash games and online. By these metrics, they are the most successful poker crew of all time.
And they’re all still under thirty.
Irieguy (and friends). (Photo courtesy Craig Hartman)
Good2cu (center, in white) on his way to the prom. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Early attempts at multitabling weren’t easy … (Photo courtesy Mario Silvestri)
… until Raptor cracks the problem with his Quad Monitor Set-Up. (Photo courtesy David Benefield)
Most of the Ballas kept meticulous records. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
The ups and downs were often extreme. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Apathy (literally) burns money in Monte Carlo. (Photo courtesy Max Greenwood)
Good2cu makes business cards. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
The Ballas gather in Texas (from left to right): Apathy, TheUsher, FieryJustice, Deuce2High, Bonafone, TravestyFund, durrrr. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Good2cu, durrrr, and two new friends in a Dallas nightclub. (Photo courtesy Peter Jetten)
DonButtons. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Good2cu in Miami, partying with friends in a stretch limo. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Aruba! (from left to right): TheUsher, Apathy, Raptor, Good2cu. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Raptor, dancing to his own tune. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
TheUsher grinds in a hotel room. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
“The Office,” Ship It Holla Mansion (from left to right): TheUsher, Raptor, Unarmed, Good2cu. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Good2cu prepares for his first trip to the World Series of Poker. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
A young gambler’s tools of the trade. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Good2cu, ready to roll. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
The ill-fated BMW M3. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Chantel and Apathy. (Photo courtesy Peter Jetten)
Raptor and durrrr made enough money to buy a house together before either turned 21. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
A typical Balla home game (from left to right): Empiremaker2, Inyaface, Bonafone. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Exploiting London’s less restrictive drinking laws (from left to right): Apathy, TheUsher, Deuce2High, Good2cu. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
The Halloween Party in Canada (from left to right): Raptor, Jman, TravestyFund, Good2cu, Deuce2High, Inyaface. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
A gift for Apathy from a female fan. (Photo courtesy Peter Jetten)
The Candy Fairy, AKA Jman. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Good2cu gets an ego boost from his self-submitted photo to HotOrNot.com. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Raptor and then-girlfriend Haley. (Photo courtesy David Benefield)
Good2cu and his brand-new Escalade in East Lansing. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Good2cu and Empiremaker2 meet Lee Jones at the 2007 EPT Polish Open. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Sightseeing in Rome, during a rare break from the online action (from left to right): TheUsher, durrrr, Traheho. (Photo courtesy Alec Torelli)
The second Ship It Holla Mansion had its own screening room, rigged to display online poker. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
The infinity pool in the Palms’ Playboy Suite. (Photo courtesy Andrew Robl)
Ballas, circa 2012, outside Manhattan’s Per Se restaurant (from left to right): Apathy, durrrr, Raptor. (Photo courtesy Peter Jetten)
Newly sponsored Good2cu poses for a publicity photo in Vegas. (Photo credit Melodie DeWitt)
Acknowledgments
Anyone who’s spent time at a poker table knows that it’s a game of courage. But it’s still hard for us to fathom the guts it took for the characters in this story to open up their lives, warts and all, to a pair of complete strangers, without any guarantees of a flattering portrayal. Talk about your gambles.
But these aren’t just any characters, and winning a lot of money isn’t the only way they’ve beaten the odds. It would have been so easy for these kids to grow up to be assholes. Instead, we discovered a remarkable collection of thoughtful, self-possessed, and charismatic young adults who are just as interested in the world outside of casinos. As incredible as it might seem, given the exuberance of their youthful indiscretions, each and every one of the Ship It Holla Ballas we talked to has grown up to be the kind of person that would make any parent proud.
There would be no book—or, for that matter, a Ship It Holla Balla crew—without our brilliant and fearless tour guide, Andrew Robl. He was subjected to many torturous hours of impertinent interrogation, gamely answering questions that would have driven a lesser man to mortification. Our greatest fear about this book is that we haven’t done an adequate enough job of conveying just how far he’s come in terms of maturity and personal growth. Thanks for taking the leap with us, Andrew.
Special thanks also to David Benefield, who always found time to set aside his own fears of personal embarrassment to respond to our panicked Facebook messages whenever the waters got murky. His honesty, especially in regard to the emotional highs and lows, was invaluable.
Ditto to Craig Hartman, who has been an instrumental ally throughout, and, as we came to discover, one of the most amazingly cool guys we’ve ever met.
Peter Jetten, Kevin Boudreau, Alec Torelli, and Aaron O’Rourke all deserve to be thanked twice: once for their generosity in sharing intimate details and photos; a second time for their tolerance in regard to their portrayal. We’re sorry for any liberties we might have taken on the way to producing what we hope is a coherent narrative.
Max Greenwood, Mario Silvestri, Jonathan Little, Casey Diener, and Aaron Nadell were all extremely forthcoming with their time and helped us to get the ball rolling. Thanks also to Harry Greenhouse, Chantel McNulty, Travis Rice, Ivan Solotaroff, Melodie DeWitt, Bryan Hadley, and Dustin Woolf.
As proprietary as we’ve come to
feel about the Ballas and their incredible story, we can’t take credit for having discovered them—Nick Gair, Michael Kaplan, and Chris Vaughn all wrote about them first.
A shout-out also to Jim McManus, for inspiring us to play and write about the game of poker, and to David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth, for giving poker players a virtual home, plenty to read, and plenty more to talk about.
It’s going to be impossible to butter our agent, Daniel Greenberg, with any praise that he hasn’t already heard or read in countless other literary acknowledgments; suffice to say that all of it is earned. Same goes for everyone at St. Martin’s Press, especially our visionary editor, Marc Resnick, who understood where this book needed to go and what it needed to say long before we did, and his tireless editorial assistant, Kate Canfield. And to Michael Cantwell, the attorney who, with relentless good humor, helped us wrangle our story into legal compliance.
Finally, to our wives and sons, for their unwavering patience and support throughout this project and beyond. There’s not enough money in the world to pay the debt we owe you, but hopefully our love, delivered in steady doses, will gradually chip away at it.
Holla!
Jonathan Grotenstein
Storms Reback
June 26, 2012
About the Authors
Jonathan Grotenstein (left) has authored or coauthored nearly a dozen books with NFL linebackers, comedy legends, celebrity dog trainers, and the occasional fictional character. His first book, Poker: The Real Deal (with Phil Gordon), remains one of the bestselling poker books of all time.
Storms Reback (right) is a writer living in Austin, Texas. He is the coauthor (with Jonathan Grotenstein) of All In: The (Almost) Entirely True Story of the World Series of Poker.
SHIP IT HOLLA BALLAS! Copyright © 2012 by Jonathan Grotenstein and Storms Reback. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Young Jin Lim and David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photograph of people © kzenon/iStockphoto; poker chips © Pocike /shutterstock
e-ISBN 9781250021274
First Edition: January 2013
Ship It Holla Ballas! Page 25