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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
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
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
Ebook360 pages4 hours

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

By Jonathan Grotenstein and Storms Reback

3/5

()

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About this ebook

Who were the Ship It Holla Ballas?

Arguably the most successful poker crew of all time, they took advantage of the online poker boom to win tens of millions of dollars before most of them were old enough to set foot inside a casino. Then they did what any red-blooded teenagers with mountains of cash and no responsibilities would do: They partied like rock stars, transforming themselves from Internet nerds with zero life skills into legends, at least in their own minds.

In Ship It Holla Ballas!, Jonathan Grotenstein and Storms Reback trace the rise and fall of Internet poker through the eyes of its most unlikely stars: A group of teenage college dropouts, united by social media, who bluffed their way to the top of the game.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherMacmillan Publishers
Release dateJan 15, 2013
ISBN9781250021274
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
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Author

Jonathan Grotenstein

JONATHAN GROTENSTEIN is a writer and professional poker player living in Los Angeles. He is the coauthor (with Phil Gordon) of Poker: The Real Deal.  

Read more from Jonathan Grotenstein

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Reviews for Ship It Holla Ballas!

3/5

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  • 3/5
    Luck delivered this paperback into my hands when I won a giveaway on Twitter; it was not one I normally would have pulled off the shelf. It's a book you can read with virtually no poker knowledge at all, just substituting "extreme good luck" and "extreme bad luck" at appropriate points. Mainly I kept with the reading as a sort of reference to a set of characters I know I wouldn't meet in person if I were given a thousand years, because the kinds of things that motivate them never matched those that I followed. I found it instructive as a student of human nature to take a look at people who drive themselves so single-mindedly adopting means and chasing a goal that none of the rest of us would select. Still, I completely understand the fascination that follows the prodigal, even in this case where none of the ballas ends up being smacked down by the life he's chosen as dramatic irony would have it.By the end I was able to start telling the different handles apart and keep straight the level of degeneracy associated with each, which helped it become a more palatable narrative.
  • 3/5
    As usual I received this book from GoodReads as part of a giveaway. Also as usual, despite the very kind and generous consideration of getting a free book, I give my candid opinions below.The subtitle really sums it up pretty nicely. A group of kids from different parts of the country get hooked on online poker, do nothing but play all day for years and make a ton of money doing it. They live decadent lifestyles, learn some key life lessons (or don't) and finally end up happy (or not). Think bildungsroman with computers, gambling and lots of illegal mind-altering substances.The writing in this little bit of non-fiction is merely sufficient; it's readable and can be consumed in a handful of determined hours. There's nothing particularly gripping about the whole thing except the anticipation of some explosive failure on the part of our protagonists as you either cheer for their success or their comeuppance. The book provides us with a view of a subculture we'd normally not get to see and paints an intimate enough portrait to keep the reader engaged.I will spare my own reader the rather obvious and easily anticipated rant that I could go into about children gambling illegally and engaging in all manner of idiotic behavior, though as an adult it's hard not to have one's mind wander there. There is quite a bit of anthropological value to be found in these pages to be sure but it sets a rather poor example.Pondering to whom I could recommend this book, I do have some difficulty finding a target for it. Most adults will doubtless be rather put off by the various irresponsible shenanigans demonstrated and I would be terrified for any teenager who reads it for fear that they will view this as an example to be emulated. The book lacks any of the technical detail that would make it interesting to either the mathematically inclined or the gambling addict. It can be assumed, at least, that those who were caught up in the now defunct gambling craze of the mid-2000s might be interested.In summary, the book is a well-constructed view of society gone amok. It has, I suspect, a fairly narrow range of appeal and should be kept out of the hands of impressionable children. There is some very small bit of moral to our story but it fades rather quietly behind the glitz of $200 bottles of liquor and generally decadent lifestyle choices.