Ship It Holla Ballas! (23 page)

40

High-stakes poker is like a hard drug. When you sit down serotonin levels spike, your hands sweat and when everything goes just right you are in a state of pure bliss. But just like hard drugs, poker is a double-edged sword. The highs are always followed by a long, slow, soul-hollowing crash.

—Good2cu

FORT WORTH, TEXAS
(February 2007)

Living under the same roof as durrrr has clearly had a profound effect on Raptor. He’s just having trouble deciding if this is a good or bad thing.

In the plus column, he gets to watch durrrr play poker. There’s little doubt in Raptor’s mind that his friend has a gift—like the chess master Bobby Fischer, durrrr can see the game in a way that nobody else can. He routinely makes plays that are unorthodox, brilliant, and highly profitable. Sweating durrrr while he explains the thought process behind each move is like getting a graduate education in shipping it.

Even better, he can use durrrr as a resource. Raptor is deep into a high-stakes session when an opponent makes a big bet on the river. “Shit!” he yells, staring at a decent but far from unbeatable hand. “I don’t know whether to call this idiot or fold.”

Durrrr glances over Raptor’s shoulder, taking about three milliseconds to process all of the variables involved. “Dude, what the fuck?” he says. “
Shove.
”

The idea of reraising with all of his chips hadn’t even occurred to Raptor, but its brilliance is immediately apparent: force the other guy to make the tough decision.

Quantifying durrrr’s impact on his game is as easy as glancing at one of the detailed spreadsheets Raptor uses to track his play. Since they became housemates, Raptor has been making money by the metric ton while playing higher stakes than ever before. His bankroll is quietly nearing the million-dollar mark.

Most twenty-year-olds would be bursting with joy, but Raptor’s not like most kids his age. He understands that the good times can’t possibly last forever because nothing ever does. At times he seems more interested in protecting his bankroll than adding to it. He often puts more effort into scouring the online tables for juicy games than he does playing in them, and he’ll rarely risk any significant amount of money unless he believes he has a considerable edge over his competition.

He doesn’t understand how durrrr stays unfazed by the roller-coaster ups and downs, calmly winning and losing six-figure sums on a daily basis. Raptor worries that he lacks the constitution to do the same.

One afternoon he watches durrrr spread all of the money he’s got in one of his poker accounts across four tables, playing heads-up against the same opponent. Sure, it’s what Raptor did a couple of years earlier, during his second pass at college, but that was $450; durrrr has put $45,000 in play. Raptor can’t bear to watch.
This is not right
, screams the little voice inside his head. He escapes into the next room to watch a movie.

When he returns, durrrr has run the money all the way up to $200,000. Raptor’s happy for his friend, but the doubts linger. The game is making him rich, but it’s also eroding his connection to anything other than poker. He’s having trouble relating to the things kids his age consider normal: stressing about schoolwork, griping about shitty jobs, and setting goals, often centering around money, that in all likelihood they will never attain.

He’s rarely presented with the opportunity to have a “normal” conversation. The minute people find out that Raptor is a professional poker player, that’s all they want to talk about. Attempts to steer the conversation in another direction come off as dismissive; answer the questions, and there will always be more, each loaded with transparent envy.

You don’t want to be me
, he wants to tell them.
Do you really want to spend most of your waking hours staring at a computer screen, lying to professional liars? Absorbing losses that can be thought of in units like “sports cars” or “annual incomes”? Having expected value always hanging over your head, reminding you that every non-poker activity—a TV show, a romantic evening with your girlfriend, a walk around the block—is costing you hundreds, even thousands, of dollars that you could be earning at the poker table?

Nobody wants to hear the bitching and whining. They only want to hear about the time Raptor played against some famous pro, the size of the biggest pot he’s ever won, and his thoughts about how long it will take them to make as much money as him if they quit school and join the professional circuit.

If you can’t beat them, avoid them. Raptor begins steering clear of bars and clubs, tightening his circle of friends and acquaintances. He spends most of his free time with Haley, but even she occasionally takes issue with his abrupt shifts in mood and unconventional lifestyle. Still a student at TCU, she does her best to help him stay grounded and self-aware. Which is why he can’t talk to her about poker—there’s no way Haley could ever get her head around the idea of treating huge sums of money with such indifference. So there are times, many more than he’d like, when he’s forced to plaster a smile on his face to get through a romantic dinner when, on the inside, he’s agonizing over a losing session that could have been the down payment on some family’s dream home.

Money has no meaning,
he tells himself.
It’s just a tool of the trade, like a carpenter’s hammer or level.

While this line of thinking gives him short-term comfort, it also leaves him vulnerable to the existential despair that’s taken root in him.

If money has no meaning, then what’s the point of pursuing it?

He finds himself struggling to stay motivated. He tries to give himself a jump-start by posting a new Raptor Challenge on Two Plus Two; he’s going to make enough money to buy a $1.4-million vacation home in Costa Rica.
Then I’ll be happy,
he promises himself, putting in even more hours in front of the computer screen.
This daily suffering is just a means to an end.

It’s a clever trick, but it comes with another unintended side effect. The card game he loves is starting to feel an awful lot like a j-o-b.

41

When I win the Main Event, I’m going to buy a thirty-second Super Bowl commercial. Filmed like a home movie, the commercial will start with me waking up in my black pj’s next to a scantily clad supermodel. I’ll yawn, stumble out of bed, and make my way to my kitchen, where I will grab an empty bowl and pour some cereal into it. I will open my refrigerator, grab a bottle of Cristal, and proceed to dump it on the cereal. I will then take a bite, smile, and the text “balla” will appear onscreen as it fades to black.

—Good2cu

WARSAW, POLAND
(March 2007)

Empiremaker2 is only nineteen, but in Good2cu’s opinion, the kid is already a bigger degenerate than he is. This is meant as high praise. Tonight the two of them are in an unspoken competition to see who can drink more from the open bar PokerStars has set up at the Hyatt Regency in Warsaw, Poland.

Like Internet start-ups from a decade before, online poker companies aren’t afraid to spend outrageous amounts of money on extravagant parties, especially when they’re trying to lure players to a tournament in Eastern Europe. Good2cu didn’t need much arm-twisting—he’s hoping a little international travel will help pull him out of his malaise. So far it’s working. He and Empiremaker2 are becoming more hilarious and charming with every drink.

In their own minds, anyway. Irish poker pro Andy Black calls them “Beavis and Butthead” every time he walks by. When Good2cu jokingly complains to a server that the champagne isn’t Dom Pérignon, an English player scoffs at him. “Nineteen-year-old kids drinking Dom? Show some class.”

“Are you joking?” replies Good2cu. “We’re Americans.”

For the last few months, Good2cu has felt like a superhero, only in reverse. By day, he lives like a balla. He’s got more money than all his friends in East Lansing combined, so he can flaunt the best clothes, the best liquor, and the best weed. He picks up the tab at bars and restaurants. He buys a vintage Montblanc Sir Henry Tate fountain pen on eBay just because he can. He finally ditches his Saturn for a black Cadillac Escalade, the ride favored by rappers and basketball stars.

When Neverwin Poker publishes an alleged post from Brandi describing, in graphic sexual terms, how horny she’s feeling for an online poker player named Micon (accompanied by a few topless photos), Good2cu sends her a private message, which he posts publicly on ShipItHollaBalla.com:

Brandi,

I see you have still not filled out the date application on my Web site. I would like to remind you that not only am I much much better looking than Micon, but I am also much richer. I will be in Vegas sometime in the next few weeks to meet up with my accountants and was wondering if you would like to go to dinner.

Brandi doesn’t reply. Good2cu isn’t surprised. Inside he knows his persona is predicated on a dream that is rapidly slipping away. He’s struggling to maintain his status as a hundred-thousandaire. Ambitious forays into high-stakes games are killing whatever small profit he’s able to eke out playing Sit N Gos. To buy the Escalade, he needs his mom to cosign the loan.

His growing frustration about his lack of success gets amplified every time he hears how well his friends are doing. Raptor, Apathy, and Jman are regularly crushing the high-stakes cash games online. Durrrr recently won a million dollars online. In a single night.

Good2cu’s hoping his travels with Empiremaker2 will be the tonic that restores his mojo. They’re supposed to be playing in tomorrow’s Polish Open, a $5,000 European Poker Tour event that will pay the winner nearly a half-million dollars, but when they try to register for the tournament, they learn that it’s sold out. All they can do now is pound drinks and complain about the injustice of it all. As loud as they are, it doesn’t take long for word to reach Lee Jones.

Jones, a fifty-one-year-old with a masters in Electrical Engineering who was just named the EPT’s new tournament director, is something of a celebrity in the poker world. Two years ago, while working as PokerStars’ card room manager, he wrote
Winning Low Limit Hold’em
, one of the first strategy guides to specifically address online poker. The popular book includes a new system for beating Sit N Gos, developed with the help of a math professor, that outperforms the now outdated Independent Chip Model and helps hasten the end of the days when proprietary knowledge can give those in the know such an extreme edge.

Jones walks Good2cu and Empiremaker2 to the registration desk and helps them sign up for the tournament. Empiremaker2 uses the moment to address one of online poker’s most popular urban legends.

“Hey, Lee,” he says. “You used to work at PokerStars, right? Can you get them to shut off the doomswitch for me? Ever since I pulled $50,000 out of my account, it’s been one bad beat after another. I’ve lost like $200,000 in the past couple months.”

According to conspiracy theorists, the “doomswitch” is a secret computer algorithm that punishes players for making big withdrawals from their poker accounts. Trigger the doomswitch, and you’re going to suffer an improbable run of bad “luck” for some indeterminate period of time.

Jones laughs. “There’s no such thing as a doomswitch,” he says. “But I can tell you this—the only people who should be losing $200,000 are people who are already set up for life.”

Good2cu feels a twinge of regret.
I had $200,000 not that long ago. Why didn’t I put any of it away? I could have bought a place like Raptor did. Instead I’m going to end up broke with nothing to show for it.
“Good point, Lee,” he says, washing down the insecurities with another swig of champagne. “But it’s just so much more fun to spend all our money now.”

Producing a weak smile, Jones wishes them good luck and moves on to a quieter section of the room.

Empiremaker2 slaps Good2cu on the back of the head. “Fuck this place!” he yells. “Let’s go find a strip club.”

42

Heads-up for rollz!

—A popular online poker challenge

ROME, ITALY
(April 2007)

After spending his birthday partying in Poland with Good2cu and Empiremaker2, twenty-year-old Traheho flies to Italy to meet up with durrrr and TheUsher. He finds them holed up in a luxury hotel in Rome playing a near-endless loop of high-stakes cash games online, often sharing a single account to minimize the individual risk.

Pooling bankrolls is one of the many responses to online poker’s new reality: the games have gotten significantly harder to beat. Six months after the UIGEA’s passage, the full extent of its effect is starting to become clear. The recreational players that once fueled the poker economy with their habitual $100 deposits on Friday nights have all but vanished. With fewer fish to eat, the sharks are now forced to go after each other. By sharing risk, durrrr and TheUsher are increasing their chances of not only success but survival.

They prefer to play in shorthanded games—fewer players at the table mean you get to play a lot more hands, which in theory should mitigate luck and emphasize skill. Heads-up poker takes this argument to the extreme: against a single opponent, you’ve got to play almost every hand or else get steamrolled into oblivion. It’s a completely different experience than a nine- or even six-player game, far less methodical and mathematical, way more instinctive and psychological.

Heads-up games have always enjoyed a storied perch in the poker world. In 1951, nearly twenty years before the creation of the WSOP, Benny Binion hosted a series of matches between one of the greatest poker players to ever play the game, Johnny Moss, and the legendary gambler Nick “The Greek” Dandalos. The publicity stunt dragged on for five months, only ending after Moss had tapped Dandalos for a reputed two or three million dollars—or around $20 million by today’s standards.