Ship It Holla Ballas! How a Bunch of 19-Year-Old College Dropouts Used the Internet to Become Poker’s Loudest, Craziest, and Richest Crew

The popularity of poker, and online forums to talk about it, led to “the most successful poker crew of all time,” write Grotenstein and Reback (All In: The (Almost) Entirely True History of the World Series of Poker). The members of the Ship It Holla Ballas met on TwoPlusTwo.com, a site for a publisher of poker books that became a place for players to discuss strategy and swap tips. This group of numbers-savvy, computer-bound young men soon meet in the real world, proceeding to dive right into a work-hard, party-harder, 24/7 lifestyle that two key members, Good2cu and Raptor, tackled with varying degrees of success. Good2cu becomes overly concerned with celebrity; Raptor, despite millions in the bank, is dissatisfied with his life. Grotenstein and Reback do a fine job detailing the debauchery of these lost boys, but without a decent narrative arc and glancing over ripe side stories—the decline of online poker; the rise of the anyone-can-play poker champ—the book feels like a collection of ribald stories featuring sex, giant bets, and youthful stupidity. Everything blurs together after a while. Breezy and readable, for sure, but lacking substance. (Jan.)