Ship It Holla Ballas

The incredible true story of how a group of teenage nerds became the most successful poker crew of all time.

To be a kid in 2006 meant having grown up with the Internet. The dot-com bubble had come and gone, leaving in its wake a medium whose immense powers were not yet fully understood. A group of smart, resourceful teens used it to master the game of poker. Taking advantage of online poker's lightning-fast pace and lackluster efforts at age verification, they earned, in just a few months, the kind of experience that used to take a lifetime.

The Ship it Holla Ballas were the most successful crew to come out of this new world order. With handles like Good2cu, Apathy, and Rapotor, they communicated through message boards and online chats, comparing hands, sharing advice, and working together to develop new strategies. Emerging from dorm rooms and basements in places like Forth Worth, Texas; Okemos, Michigan; and Toronto, Canada, they joined up in Las Vegas, parked themselves in a mansion, and stuck it to the poker establishment winning tens of millions of dollars before most of them were old enough to set foot inside a casino. Along the way, they did what any red-blooded teenagers with mountains of cash and no responsibilities would do: partied like rock stars, transforming themselves from Internet nerds with zero life skills into legends.

This is the twisted and incredible true story of the rise and fall of Internet poker, seen through the eyes of its most unlikely stars: teenage college dropouts, united by social media, who bluffed their way to the top of the game.

Jonathan Grotenstein 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.

Storm Reback is a writer living in Austin, Texas in the USA. He is the coauthor (with Jonathan Grotenstein) of All In: The (Almost) Entirely True Story of the World Series of Poker.

Advance praise for Ship It Holla Ballas!

"The testosterroneous world of high-stakes online poker in America before Black Friday, in all its doomed glory, steadily throbs in Grotenstein and Reback's swift prose."
James McManus, New York Rimes bestselling author of Positively Fifth Street

"In Ship it Holla Ballas!, Grotenstein and Reback share the lives and games of the incredibly young, ridiculously successful superstars of the online poker era. The authors handle the fast pace, shadowy lives, and multiple players and locations with the skill and dexterity of Good2cu, Raptor, or durrr 20-tabling."
Michael Craig, New York Tomes bestselling author of The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King

"An infectious tale, told with the speed of a rocket sled, Ship It Holla Ballas! puts us in with a gang of underage poker geniuses as they trun Las Vegas on its ear, making off with the gelt as well as the girls."
Bruce Porter, New York Times bestselling author of Blow

This book Ship It Holla Ballas is printed in the United States of America by St. Martin's Press, 75 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.