Description:

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.

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, January 2013: Don't let the title throw you off: Ship It, Holla Ballas! is not about raising the precocious young poker star to the status of folk hero. Rather, the narrative reads straight out of Greek tragedy (or Scarface): Guys with a natural affinity for probabilities stumble across online poker; hone their skills and fill their bank accounts; call themselves the "Holla Ballas" and sort of successfully reinvent themselves as hard-partying rock stars; and lose it all through a combination of bad decisions and a government crackdown. Although poker brought them together, they get into trouble according to their personalities: Some decide to dive with sharks and (unsuccessfully) try to pick up Playboy playmates; others invest in TempurPedic mattresses and home cooking. This breezy but electrifying read is a tale of greed, hubris, and how the ability to make a lot of money does not always come with the ability to handle it--or yourself--responsibly. --Darryl Campbell

From Booklist

If you’re asking yourself, “Ship what? Holla Balla what?” then you probably haven’t been following Internet poker. The Ship It Holla Ballas—the name comes from a poker term, a celebratory yell, and a bit of urban slang—are a group of guys whose love of online poker brought them together in 2000, at the height of the online-poker craze, and turned them, virtually overnight, into a sensation, not to mention making them rich. Written in the style of a Ben Mezrich true-life thriller (The Accidental Billionaires, 2009), the book is a story of ego, inspiration, desperation, and wild excess. It’s also a story of some very clever guys, who studied the game, learned how to exploit its mathematical foundation, and made some truly revolutionary changes in the way poker is played. The authors give readers a good sense of the rapid rise and equally rapid fall of Internet poker, and their portrayal of the Ship It crew members as fun-loving, bright guys who succeeded way beyond their expectations seems just right. --David Pitt