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

A small fortune, but Scott knew that the software was going to make or break them. So he’d written the check. It was half of the money Hilt had brought with him to the company, but Hilt had assured his partners that money begot money. Already, their compact business guru had made inroads to a handful of other family members and friends down in Florida, who had reacted positively to their work-in-progress business plan. And even more significant, Shane’s mother and uncle had made critical investments, totaling a quarter of a million dollars. They now all felt sure that with a good software package to present to potential investors, they would quickly be able to reach their goal of $750,000.

  All of which meant that Scott was going to spend fourteen hours in a tiny airplane seat fighting the urge to down that bottle of Blue Label. According to Shane and what he’d found on the Internet, it was a tradition in Korea to give a gift at a business meeting, and supposedly Koreans were nuts about scotch. They probably weren’t nearly as nuts about Japanese baseball players. Still, even though he could be a fool sometimes, Garin was the best choice to go along for the software meet and greet. Hilt was the business guy, Shane the conservative research man. Scott was the ringleader, the showman, the guy in the top hat. And Garin was the meat and potatoes. Sometimes more potato than meat, but at least he was always enthusiastic.

  “Just for the hat,” Scott said as he led Garin toward the line of people that was already forming at the entrance to their gate, “I’m taking the window.”

  “Go right ahead. I’m gonna try and flirt my way into first class. Maybe one of the stewardesses is a big Ichiro fan.”

  “Just don’t get yourself arrested before we reach Seoul,” Scott said with a grunt. “We’ve got about fifty bucks in traveler’s checks to last us through two days, so nobody’s getting bailed out of airport jail until we get our damn software.”

  Three A.M., Korea time, and they hit the ground running. Thankfully, there was a uniformed driver with a sign waiting for them after they passed through Customs, because otherwise they’d have been completely lost. Every sign they passed was in Korean—squiggles that might as well have been hieroglyphics, because even with a Lonely Planet guidebook, neither one of them could have translated their way to a subway.

  The airport was a good hour from the city; the modern highways that looped through tunnels, down ramps, and along overpasses might as well have been northern New Jersey, for all they could see out the sleek sedan’s tinted windows. And then blam, there it was: a modern pincushion of frighteningly bright lights, towering skyscrapers, glowing bridges, crowded boulevards—and so much goddamn neon the whole place looked like a spaceship that had crash-landed, flipped over twice, and caught on fire. It was beautiful, strange, foreign—and totally futuristic. Scott was jet-lagged, his head still throbbing from the canned, dry airplane air, his legs cramped from the coach seat—but looking at the lights of Seoul, he felt his insides come alive.

  A kid who’d grown up in a trailer at the mercy of a mentally disturbed, majorly addicted single mother, literally dodging frying pans, irons, razor blades, and the odd shotgun blast—and here he was, speeding through the streets of Seoul, in the back of a Mercedes sedan, on his way to a business meeting. All those hours spent jammed in that basement downing Red Bull and crunching numbers were suddenly worth it; this was really happening.

  He looked at Garin, whose face was striped with reflected neon.

  “This is Blade Runner shit,” he murmured, and then he pressed his face against the side window, letting the rumble of the Mercedes’s engine play deep into his bones.

  Floor-to-ceiling windows; high-tech, chrome-and-leather ergonomic office chairs; thick, blindingly white wall-to-wall carpeting; giant glowing TV screens hanging from the ceiling; and a burnished redwood boardroom table running the entire length of the room, supporting a half dozen state-of-the-art computer monitors and keyboards.

  “This is quite an operation,” Scott said as he followed two steps behind C. J. Lee’s mechanized wheelchair, flanked on his left by Garin, whose jaw was down to his chest, gawking at every damn detail like he’d just stepped off a tractor, and on his right by Christian, C.J.’s younger brother. “And everyone in here is going to work on our account?”

  There had to be twenty people in the place—at least eight in the boardroom, already waiting for them, gathered around the monitors, some clattering away at the keyboards, and another dozen or so scattered throughout the rest of the fourteenth floor of the glass-and-chrome skyscraper in downtown Seoul—where the Mercedes had taken them after they’d showered, changed, and gotten a couple hours of downtime at the Hyatt, where C.J. had insisted they stay.

  “Software is a lot more labor-intensive than people realize,” C.J. responded. His English was near perfect, which made sense, because, as he’d explained over coffee in his corner office, down the hall from the boardroom, he’d gone to high school in L.A. and had even spent a few years at Berkeley developing an obsession with software development. “And gaming software has its own unique complications. But we’re very good at what we do.”

  Christian nodded vigorously, a cigarette dangling precipitously from the corner of his thin lips. Nearly everyone they’d seen was smoking—and not just socially, not just a cigarette here and there. These guys were chain-smokers, constantly pulling packs out of back pockets, tossing butts toward the numerous ashtrays situated on every windowsill, desktop, and computer tray. The air was thick with smoke, but somehow it didn’t bother Scott—maybe because of those windows, and the spectacular view of downtown Seoul, which made the place feel airy and clean, even though he was basically breathing in pure exhaust.

  “Complications, complications, complications,” C.J. continued, navigating his wheelchair to the head of the long boardroom table. He waited for Scott and Garin to sidle up next to him, then nodded at Christian, who grunted and said something in Korean to the other employees. The door shut behind them, and all of the employees rose from the keyboards and monitors, standing at a sort of attention, hands clasped behind their backs.

  Scott felt like he was back in college, surrounded by new fraternity pledges. He watched as C.J. touched buttons on the armrest of his wheelchair, moving himself close enough that he could just barely reach out with a finger and touch one of the nearby keyboards.

  Scott and Garin had been pretty shocked at first by the wheelchair. C.J. had almost immediately given them the whole story—how he’d gotten into a bad auto accident while in high school, hit his head on the windshield and severed his vertebrae, leaving him a quadriplegic. Even so, he seemed to cope extremely well; he could speak, move his head a bit, and use his hands. As a software designer, he’d explained, he didn’t need much else. Scott was extremely impressed by his resilience, and especially his optimism. He was all smiles behind his constant cigarettes, and with his mop of jet-black hair, his animated features, and his wide smile, you almost forgot about the chair.

  His brother was much quieter—lean, tall, with narrow features and a sharp, almost beak-like nose. Not particularly friendly; the only conversation Christian had initiated since they’d arrived at the offices was about the next fifty-thousand-dollar payment—and what it was going to take to get it sent as soon as possible. Scott had assured him that as soon as they put together a good beta version of the poker software, they’d get that check.

  “And especially,” C.J. continued as he used the keyboard to pull up what they’d been working on since getting the first payment, “since you’re so set on poker. A sports book—now, that’s something you could get in no time. That’s where the money is.”

  There it was again, the same damn refrain. Scott vigorously shook his head.

  “Poker.”

  “Poker,” Garin added, almost simultaneously, as he leaned over the other side of the redwood table, looking toward the screen. “And like we said on the phone, real sophisticated-looking, James Bond kind of shit. Like, you order a martini, you smoke a cigar, and you play a little poker.”

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nbsp; C.J. did his best to nod. He flicked a finger toward the screen, which had now lit up with a primitive-looking website. “This is just a mock-up. We still have many questions, and I do apologize, we’re not yet as familiar with the game as we need to be.”

  Although the site was truly basic, Scott immediately recognized some of the design cues that he and his team had suggested to C.J. over the phone. The oval poker table in the center of the screen was a deep royal blue. The chairs looked like red velvet, and there was a little cityscape in the background—very cosmopolitan. It had a long way to go, but it was a thrill to see even the most basic elements up there on the screen.

  As soon as the digital cards began being dealt, however, things went rapidly downhill. Everything seemed sluggish, as if the cards were floating through a thick soup. And the game play was just flat-out wrong. All the cards were being dealt faceup—so that they could see what was going on—but even from the start, Scott could tell that the Koreans had no knowledge of the game itself.

  “I think we’re going to have to go over the rudiments of Hold’em again—” Scott started, but Garin was a lot less subtle.

  “Why are there five aces?”

  “That too,” Scott said. “Look, I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know, but poker is even more complicated than I think you realize. You need more than just software that can make transactions. With poker, it’s all about game play, and there are a lot of important timing issues: when you put your bet in, how long it takes for the chips to get there, how long it takes to deal the cards, everyone getting info at the same time. And everyone’s using a different type of connection—dial-up, DSL. And what do you do when someone loses their connection? What do you do when someone goes offline?”

  Scott was rolling now, and the room had gone real quiet, everyone just watching him and smoking. He knew he wasn’t telling them anything magical, but if he was going to pay these guys $150,000, they were going to have to indulge him.

  “You play poker with a bunch of your friends, you expect shit to happen. Someone misdeals, someone spills a drink, someone gets upset and turns over the goddamn table. Over the Internet, everything has to work a certain way. There has to be a flow. And most important of all, nothing can interrupt the play. The game has to be available to anyone who wants it, whenever they want it. If this seems too complicated for you, if these problems seem too difficult—well, we can take our business elsewhere.”

  Scott hadn’t meant to end his diatribe on such a hard note, but, well, there it was. This wasn’t a game to him—this was his life.

  If C.J. was put off by Scott’s tone, he certainly didn’t show it. In fact, his face seemed to light up behind his ever-present cigarette.

  “Complicated doesn’t have to mean impossible,” he said. “In software, music, in life, it’s the complications that make a thing worth doing.”

  That, and one hundred fifty grand, Scott thought. Even so, looking at that computer screen, seeing that blue table and those pixelated velvet chairs, it was hard to stay cynical.

  After all, given enough time and guidance, a guy who could run a software company out of a wheelchair could certainly learn to play Texas Hold’em.

  The girl was only five foot two, but at least half her height seemed to be legs. They were bare all the way to the thigh, her skin so smooth and tan and toned that it almost seemed shiny, and the rest of her draped in a white-on-white silk gown that shimmered around her long, lithe lines, revealing way more than it obscured—everything about her was damn near spectacular. And she was right up next to Scott on the leather banquette, close enough that he could smell her floral perfume, could see his own reflection in the glassy black strands of her shoulder-length hair. It took every ounce of his willpower not to reach out and touch her, but C.J., his wheelchair rolled up next to the low glass table in front of the banquette, working his way through his second pack of cigarettes, had been extremely clear. Unlike the Del Rey, this was a look, don’t touch, kind of establishment.

  Officially, C.J. had explained when the black Mercedes had deposited them at the front entrance, the place was a karaoke bar. A rectangular, warehouse-style building, it was outfitted almost entirely in leather and glass, with multiple levels connected by an open, ascending spiral staircase, attached to the underside of which was the most obtrusive speaker system Scott had ever seen—giant, conical woofers and subwoofers dangling like futuristic barnacles. Still, Scott didn’t have to be a genius to realize that karaoke wasn’t the place’s main draw.

  To be sure, there was a stage near the back of the giant hall, bordered on two sides by enormous projector screens. There were microphones set up, and a constant stream of inebriated Korean men stumbling up the four steps to that stage—taking turns at the mike, warbling incomprehensible words as images flashed across the screens—but the karaoke was really just a background screech.

  Once they were seated at the banquette, first came the bottles of whiskey—brands Scott had never heard of, with price tags he couldn’t believe. And then came the girls—brought to the table in groups of three and four by a hostess in a clingy blue dress. C.J. had explained, almost apologetically, that the girls were there to be looked at, to giggle at your jokes, and to pour the whiskey. If Scott and Garin were looking for more, C.J. assured them that he could take them to places with less restrictive menus.

  Scott was happy right where they were. They weren’t in Seoul to get laid; they were there to build a partnership. He was content to let the beautiful Korean girl sitting next to him pour his drinks. Besides, it was obvious that she didn’t speak a word of English. Still, the way she was smiling at him, intermittently letting her hand brush against his thigh . . .

  Scott turned away from the girl, forcing himself to concentrate on the two Korean software programmers on the other side of the banquette. C.J., in his wheelchair, up against the glass table, knocking back cigarettes and scotch. And Christian, next to Garin on the two-seater directly opposite Scott. Christian was in midsentence, again going on about the second fifty-thousand-dollar payment. Garin was assuring him that the money would be there when the site was ready. If it had been Christian alone, and a team of Koreans who couldn’t speak English and didn’t play poker, Scott wouldn’t be going back to Seattle with any sense of confidence.

  But looking at C.J., who seemed to be perfectly at home in the karaoke club, with the screeching singing in the background and the goddesses strolling past the banquettes, Scott felt much more at ease. His gaze drifted to C.J.’s hands, the way his fingers almost imperceptibly bounced up and down against the wheelchair’s armrests in rhythm with the music.

  Then he felt another brush of motion against his leg and turned to see the beautiful Korean girl holding yet another bottle of scotch. Her eyes were low, not meeting his, but again there was a smile pulling at the corners of her lips.

  No common language, a culture so different she may as well have been an alien—Scott smiled right back at her.

  Even if the software still had a long way to go, it was clear that he and C.J. at least agreed on one thing.

  He let his hand glide along the banquette, let his fingers rest against the girl’s bare thigh.

  Complicated doesn’t have to mean impossible . . .

  CHAPTER 11

  Well, this is encouraging,” Scott said as he climbed down from the rickety bus, staggered through a thick cloud of exhaust mixed with yellowish dust from the poorly paved road, and stepped up onto the sweltering curb. “Nothing says international banking mecca like a guy pissing in the street.”

  “At least he’s aiming for the grate,” Hilt responded, exiting the bus behind him. Hilt had his suit jacket off, his tie flung back over his shoulder, but still his white oxford shirt was nearly soaked through with sweat. Being from Florida, he hadn’t uttered so much as a single complaint during the two-hour, un-air-conditioned bus ride from the tiny island airport, but Scott had to believe his stoic friend had suffered just as much as
he had. “I think that kid sitting next to you on the bus was pissing right onto the floor.”

  “And could you blame him?”

  The bus ride had been an ordeal, and not simply because of the heat. Once they’d left the grounds of the small island airport, the road had been almost entirely unpaved, winding in and out of what appeared to be undeveloped jungle. Even as they’d entered Roseau, the island of Dominica’s capital city, the ride hadn’t gotten much smoother; the road remained unpaved, even as untouched jungle gave way to urban poverty, punctuated every now and then with a glimpse of the Caribbean. They knew from brochures that there were a handful of resorts on the other side of the city, situated on white-sand beaches, but the bus had given that part of the island a wide berth.

  Scott and Hilt were the only two Americans taking public transportation, but everyone had been polite and friendly. Even the man now standing not ten feet away, urinating toward the sewage grate in the center of an intersection just beyond the bus stop, was smiling. In fact, the guy caught Scott’s stare and paused long enough to offer him free advice.

  “You can do it too!” he shouted in a heavy island accent.

  Scott laughed as Hilt joined him on the curb, straightening his tie while peering past the pissing man to the small row of buildings behind him. By the time the city bus had pulled away, its balding tires kicking up a new cloud of dust and dirt, Hilt had found what he was looking for—pointing his free hand at what appeared to be a tiny, single-story building set behind a pair of palm trees. The place couldn’t have been more than one or two rooms, with brick and cinder-block walls and only a tiny, barred window. There was no sign out front, no parking lot, not even really a driveway—just another strip of dirt leading up from what was supposed to pass as a road.

  “That’s it?” Scott said.

  “You were expecting the Taj Mahal?”