Straight Flush: The True Story of Six College Friends Who Dealt Their Way to a Billion-Dollar Online Poker Empire--and How It All Came Crashing Down . . .

by Ben Mezrich

  “Don’t tell me it was Brent on the Harley?” Scott joked.

  “Of course not,” Pete said. “But—well, maybe I should just show you.”

  He gave Scott a minute to grab a shirt and a pair of sweatpants, then led him down the hall to the stairway. They had to walk carefully over the torn-up carpeting and the splintered wood; the tire tracks from the Harley were clearly visible, the rubber burned into an almost cartoonish circle at the top of the stairs.

  When they’d made it to the second floor, Pete led Scott to the fourth door down the hall, the room Brent had been assigned in exchange for two hundred dollars a month. As Pete pulled the door open, Scott could see that the room was probably worth only half that; it was little more than a ten-by-ten closet with enough space for a small desk, a twin bed, and a coffee table; a bare light fixture hung from the ceiling.

  Brent was at the coffee table, sitting cross-legged on the floor. His appearance was a stark contrast to both his Mormon background and the common SAE fraternity look. Dirty-blond hair rained down over his shoulders, freshly released from a ponytail—strands so grungy-looking they seemed halfway to dreadlocks. He was wearing a torn jean jacket over a hemp shirt, and pants that were so baggy they could have doubled for a skirt. His face was covered in three days’ worth of beard growth, and he looked like he hadn’t taken a shower in a month.

  But Pete wasn’t pointing at Brent’s appearance. He was pointing at an object on the coffee table in front of him. Scott’s eyes went wide. A mushroom—a gigantic fucking mushroom, about the size of a loaf of bread—was growing out of the middle of a plastic tray.

  Brent looked up and saw them in the doorway.

  “Hey, guys. Did you hear something this morning? Like, a motorcycle or something?”

  Scott looked at Pete, then back at the mushroom.

  “Um, Brent? You doing a little farming?”

  Not that any of them had anything against a little weed on a Saturday night, or maybe some shared Ritalin from one of the ADD kids in the house. But a mushroom the size of a small dog?

  Brent saw where they were looking and seemed to notice the giant fungus for the first time. Then he laughed, grinning wide. Without a word, he reached out and pulled off a chunk of the mushroom. He held it up in the air, then took a bite.

  “It’s not what it looks like,” he said between chews. “It’s for eating. Like, for a salad or something. I mean, it’s pretty big, but it’s not going to get anyone high.”

  Scott watched his brother wolfing down the mushroom. Brent was a vegan, after all. Still, he wasn’t surprised by the concerned look on Pete’s face. Most of the house was like Pete, Garin, and Shane. Good-looking, athletic guys who would probably eventually do well in corporate America. There were some druggies, to be sure, but there was a constant battle between those elements and the sort of country boys who gave the house its heart.

  Scott knew that he himself was something a little different. Nobody in the house lived like a Rockefeller—except maybe Shane, whose family had a little money from a tractor dealership—but Scott was pretty sure that nobody else in the house had picked up his mother from rehab nine times by the age of fourteen either. And he was certain that nobody else had ever watched his mother stumble across a trailer, bleeding from deep razor cuts to her wrists. No one else in the house had ever been made to kiss his mother’s fresh miscarriage before yet another suicide attempt, this one involving a meat cleaver. Maybe Brent would have to do a little adjusting to fit in, but if Scott could better himself enough to be one of the more popular guys in the house after what he’d been through, anyone could improve himself.

  Scott cocked his head toward Brent. “Just try and keep the fungus from eating any of us.”

  He shut the door and stood next to Pete in the hallway.

  “Really?” Pete said. “You think he’s going to make it through Hell Week?”

  Hell Week was the infamous last seven days before you became a full-fledged member of the fraternity house. Your future brothers spent that time hazing you nonstop to see if you really had the guts and drive to be in SAE. Though it varied from frat house to frat house, there might be things like military-style 4 A.M. wake-ups, with all the brothers gathered around wearing masks, beating drums, holding baseball bats; then you might be dragged out into the snow, stripped down, hosed off, maybe expecting those baseball bats to rain down upon your head. You might be asked to drink cases of beer, then made to do the most disgusting things: clean shit off the floors, march into town wearing nothing but a summer dress, memorize every detail of the house’s history and recite it while being pelted with various objects. Your assigned Big Brother acted as a guide and refuge through the process. Scott’s Big Brother had been Shane, but even Shane had indirectly gotten in on the action, urging other active members of the house to give Scott a hard time—especially when he noticed how enthusiastically Scott had taken to being hazed.

  Then, finally, if you survived Hell Week, you made it into the house. And everything changed from hell to heaven. You were part of the group.

  After all that hazing—maybe because of some of that hazing—Scott now considered his housemates the closest people in his life. Shane, Garin, and Pete were really his brothers. He desperately wanted that same experience for Brent. Brent deserved to have people in his life who were loyal and supportive of him, no matter what happened.

  “I’ll give him the hose myself,” Scott said. “And he’ll come out smiling.”

  There was no doubt in Scott’s mind that Brent would survive Hell Week and make it into the house. Having a future to look forward to was something Scott and Brent had never experienced before. Given where he and his brother had come from, things could only get better.

  CHAPTER 5

  LIQUOR UP FRONT—POKER IN THE REAR.

  “I guess it doesn’t get any more straightforward than that,” Garin said as he stood next to Scott, Pete, and Shane beneath the pulsing red-and-white neon sign, surveying the façade of the nondescript building in front of them. “Doesn’t look like much from the outside.”

  Scott grinned, reaching up to put a hand on Garin’s shoulder. No, it sure as hell didn’t; other than the sign and a couple of beer and Coca-Cola logos above the dark glass windows that ran along the first-story storefront of the two-story building, there was very little to indicate that the place was even open for business—let alone that it was one of the oldest bars in Missoula. The structure was concrete, paneled in slabs that were a mix of peach and vanilla, very 1970s construction. The sign—which read STOCKMANS CAFE BAR and sported a sketch of a longhorn glaring out angrily over the dark downtown sidewalk, daring anyone to step inside—was far from inviting; the motto scrawled in circular script across the darkened plate-glass window—shoulder-high for a regular-size human, waist-high for a giant like Garin—was, on the other hand, pregnant with temptation.

  “It’s a real game?” Shane asked, sounding a little nervous. “I mean, legal?”

  Shane was a pretty straight eagle. Sure, he knew how to enjoy college, was great with the ladies, drank like everyone else—but he rarely got into trouble, kept his room immaculate, and often cleaned up Scott’s messes when Pete and Garin weren’t around to do the sweeping or explaining. But in this instance he had nothing to worry about. Scott had done his research. He’d discovered Stockman’s about a month earlier—nearly a full semester into his junior year and just a few days after they’d welcomed Brent into the fraternity—on a late-night jaunt into Missoula with another frat brother. They’d been looking for cheap beer and even cheaper girls and had stumbled into heaven instead.

  “Perfectly legal. It’s a single table, nine seats, and they have to keep the pot below three hundred dollars. They’ve got real dealers and everything.”

  “What about the players?” Pete said.

  Scott was beginning to get impatient, standing out there on the street, people walking by and looking at them like they were fucking tourists.

  �
��A few college kids like us, who sit down with twenty bucks and try to double it by the end of the night. And then a lot of regulars, guys who sit down with a couple hundred and play until morning.”

  Scott reached for the door before any of the Three Stooges could ask another question. Then he ushered them inside.

  The front section of Stockman’s was about as inviting as the angry longhorn on the neon sign. The ceiling was low and covered in graffiti, mostly people’s names, a few hearts with arrows through them, a handful of mini diatribes against one perceived wrong or another. To the right, a long wooden bar ran down one entire side of the rectangular room, lined with red stools, only about a quarter of which were occupied. To the left, a wood-and-glass wall studded with old photos and framed pictures, everything from horses to cows—if it had hooves, it was on that damn wall.

  But Scott wasn’t there for the bar or the pictures; he kept moving, quickening his pace lest one of his friends lose his nerve on the way to the rear door, still a good ten yards away. Sure, the place had plenty of cheap beer. Better yet, if you could present a piece of paper that even insinuated that you were twenty-one, you could drink there. But there were plenty of establishments in Missoula where you could drink; this was the only place Scott knew of where you could also play cards.

  When he reached the rear door, he ushered his three friends inside.

  “Say hello to your new second home.”

  The back room was only a minor improvement on the front: another low ceiling, more framed cattle on the walls, some actual sawdust on the floor—and an oversize circular poker table situated close to the back wall, surrounded by uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs. The table had a real felt cover, drink holders, and a cabinet built in for the dealer’s chips. There was also a slot cut into the table next to where the dealer sat, leading to a box that hung beneath the lip of the felt.

  The table was nearly full. All men, most of them in their twenties, a few trending toward middle age. At least half were wearing baseball hats low down over their eyes. None were particularly well dressed; a couple were college kids, like Scott and his friends. A couple more probably worked construction, or were painters, or maybe electricians. Scott doubted any of them were professionals—though in a place like this, nobody was going to ask for your résumé. If you had a few bucks in your pocket, you could play.

  A couple bucks—that’s all it had cost Scott to get started, the first time he’d wandered into Stockman’s that late night about a month ago. The stakes were real low—you could play a hand for as little as a dollar, with the pots topped at three hundred, to stay within the law. That first night, Scott had been more than a little green. The game was Texas Hold’em—the most popular form of poker, the one that nearly every college kid and almost 50 percent of high school boys played regularly, that almost 70 percent of men in the country had played at least once for money, that was practically an American institution, on par with baseball, basketball, and beer. A seven-card game, in which you used five. The play itself was pretty simple. Each player got dealt two cards, then, over the course of the game, five more would be laid out in the center of the table, faceup; each player used three of the center cards to make a hand, and the best hand won. But though the play itself was simple, the game was much more complex.

  As the cliché went, the game of poker wasn’t really about the cards, it was about the players. You had no control over the cards you were dealt—that was pure luck. But what you did with them—or more specifically, how you wielded them against the other players at the table—that was pure skill. Which made the game itself much more about skill than about luck. Over time, a good player would consistently beat a table of bad players, regardless of how the cards were dealt.

  That first night, Scott had been anything but good. He’d lost twenty bucks—a small fortune to him, at least one missed meal that week, maybe two—but he’d found himself hooked on the action. The idea that you could look across that table at a total stranger, try to get a read on him just from the way he looked at his cards, or how he fingered his chips, or how he bet, aggressive or cautious or just plain dumb. It was an awesome feeling, an incredible high.

  The next day Scott had headed directly to the school library, a place he had seldom gone before. He’d picked up a book called The Winner’s Guide to Texas Hold’em Poker, and had studied it intensively over the next three days.

  Then he returned to Stockman’s. Phil, his rediscovered dad, had begun giving him a four-hundred-dollar-a-month allowance—for food, books, and spending money—which had left Scott just enough extra to play cards. And over the course of the next week, he had become a Stockman’s regular.

  Now he was going to introduce his three best friends to the hobby that was rapidly becoming a welcome addiction. He wished Brent had been willing to come along, but his younger brother hadn’t been interested. Since entering the university and joining the house, Brent had been on a nearly 24/7 mission to transform himself, and he was hardly recognizable now. His hair was cut short, and he often wore a tie; he’d even gotten the house involved in a handful of charities, including a soup kitchen in Missoula. Even Pete had admitted that he’d been 180 degrees wrong about Brent.

  Scott glanced over at his frat brothers, his three best friends. Shane was still near the door, eyeing the table and stacks of multicolored chips in front of each player with obvious suspicion. Pete was a few steps ahead of him and seemed to be concentrating on the dealer, on the way he counted up the chips in the center of the felt—the pot—and how every few hands he swept a couple of chips out of the pot and flicked them down the slot in the felt. This was the rake, the house’s little cut, which was a few percentage points of the total bets placed—a few bucks here, a few bucks there. But Garin was already reaching for his wallet. Scott grinned, because he recognized the glint in Garin’s eyes. Maybe Pete and Shane could resist the lure of the cards, but Garin was a goner, just like him.

  THREE WEEKS LATER

  2 A.M.

  There was no greater feeling in the world.

  It was a frigid night outside, wisps of icy wind drifting up through the floorboards and poorly paneled walls of the crypt-like back-room poker parlor. Pulling a scarf tight around his throat, Scott fought to control his breathing and to contain the spikes of adrenaline that ricocheted up his spine. It was a sudden, primal thrill, hardwired into his nervous system. The minute the dealer had first flipped over the cards, just a few seconds earlier, something inside of Scott had fired off—a chemical reaction surging up from the animal portion of his brain. Anyone who’d ever placed a bet would understand the feeling. Beyond logic, beyond math, beyond statistics and practical thought and strategy was a fire that drove him to play—and win.

  It didn’t matter that tonight it was mostly his friends—Garin, Pete, Shane, and a couple of his other brothers from SAE—crowded around the felt in the corner of the dimly lit back room. And it didn’t matter that Scott was halfway to drunk. He was still lucid enough to recognize the cards—two in his hands, the rest lined up in the center of the table for everyone to see. His cards, on their own, were decidedly unimpressive: a six and a seven, both of clubs. But when you added them to the three cards on the table—that was something else. An eight, a nine, and a ten, also of clubs.

  A goddamn straight flush.

  That was the opposite of unimpressive. That was something you never, ever saw.

  Scott didn’t care that the entire pot—a metropolis of colored plastic chips rising like a miniature Technicolor skyline above the center of the round table—came to a little less than sixty dollars. A straight flush was a miracle, whether you were playing for pennies or for millions.

  He loosened the scarf a little, letting the cold air bite at his lungs. The other players were watching him, so instead of returning their looks, he watched the dealer—who was in the midst of taking another rake. Just as he had done after every raised hand throughout the night, the man—midtwenties, with a well-trimmed goat
ee, too many rings on his fingers, and wearing a white-and-red Stockman’s sweatshirt with that angry bull stitched across the dead center—swept a few chips out of the pot and slipped them into the slot in the felt. And as usual as of late, Scott more than noticed the ritualistic move—he found his mind replaying a narrative he’d been writing in his mind for the past week or more.

  A few chips to the house, every hand. Pennies against pots made up of dollars—but over the course of an evening like this one, the rake would certainly add up. Scott had struck up a conversation with one of the dealers a few days after he’d first introduced his frat brothers to the bar—and he’d learned that over the course of a year, that one table’s rake added up to more than two hundred thousand dollars. The number seemed crazy, impossible. A single table, with a dollar ante, a pot capped at three hundred dollars—two hundred thousand dollars of pure profit a year?

  When he’d told Pete about the number—because Pete, a marketing major with a real head for economics, had seemed equally intrigued by the rake—Pete had voiced his own thoughts. If only there was a way they could run a table like that. But of course, without licensing from the state, that would be illegal—a boiler-room operation, illegal gambling, the kind of thing you could go to jail for.

  Even so, Scott was more and more possessed by the idea. If one little table in the back room of a bar, limited by the bar’s hours and the number of players who stumbled in, could earn six figures a year—what if there was some way to bring the game to more players, maybe many more players, whenever they wanted it—and somehow do it legally? The profit you could make seemed infinite.

  At that moment, as the dealer finished with his rake and turned back toward the players, Scott had something more immediate to keep him occupied.

  With a flourish, he turned over his cards.

  The table went silent. Then Garin whistled low, impressed. Pete stared, stunned. Shane laughed.