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

  “For now, that’s going to be our Customer Service Department. We’ll take turns manning it. From what we gather, there are going to be a lot of complaints coming when we launch the beta, with the power going in and out and the Internet going down. So there will be a lot of angry e-mails and phone calls. Always be polite. Always be professional.”

  “And on that note,” Hilt said, standing at the entrance to the cubicle he had chosen, closest to the stairs leading up to the bedrooms, “no girls are allowed in the house.”

  Garin immediately groaned, and Scott raised his eyebrows. Then he thought about it and realized Hilt was probably thinking smart, as usual. If they were going to be running a business there, they had to keep their professional and personal worlds as separate as possible. This wasn’t the SAE house, after all.

  “Hilt’s right. No girls in the house.”

  “What about the pool?” Garin asked. “Can we keep girls in the pool?”

  “The pool is part of the house.”

  “Even if they can hold their breath for a really, really, really long time?” Shane asked.

  “Those are usually the best girls,” Garin added. “The ones who know how to hold their breath—”

  “Shut up,” Scott said. “No fucking girls in the house.”

  Garin shrugged. Shane sighed. Scott smiled and held up his beer.

  “So that’s settled. Now let’s toast—because goddamn it, we made it this far. And I can’t freaking believe that we’re actually here.”

  They all shouted and drank. Then Garin placed his empty bottle gingerly on the floor beneath his computer desk and clapped his hands together.

  “If we can’t have girls in the house, get that cabby back over here.”

  “Why?” Scott asked.

  “Because someone needs to take us out on the town. It’s time to celebrate.”

  Scott grinned. Garin was absolutely right—that was something they could all agree on.

  It was time to fucking celebrate.

  CHAPTER 13

  Should we do a countdown or something?” Shane said from inside his cubicle. Like the rest of them, he was hunched over his computer, eyes glued to his screen.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Hilt responded from the cubicle to Shane’s left. “This is just a beta test. It’s mostly friends, family, and SAE alumni.”

  “Still, it’s like, momentous. We’re going live.”

  Scott stretched his neck. He was in the cubicle next to Hilt’s, looking at his own computer. His fingers were poised over his keyboard, and he noticed the slightest anxious tremor in his pinkies.

  “I wouldn’t call it live,” he said quietly. “It’s more like artificial life. We’re going to stay in total control of the beta, make sure it goes as smoothly as possible. This is a test run, but we want people to come back when we’re ready to launch the real thing.”

  Artificial life—that seemed like the right term for it. It would be AbsolutePoker.com, with real money from real accounts, maybe fifty or sixty of them spread out, mostly around the United States—well, mostly in and around Missoula, Montana, with a few in St. Petersburg, Florida—but they were going to monitor every second of play. The Koreans had created a handful of employee accounts, numbered accounts so they could keep track of the game play. They would also be able to observe player information, how the shuffle was working, how smoothly the tables were being filled. And after the fact, they’d be able to review the cards and the play in a timed log. For security, the Koreans had built a delay into the review process, so you weren’t actually seeing any cards until after each round was over; but later on, Scott and his team would be able to monitor the game play to observe where it needed to be improved and how things could be made smoother.

  The Koreans had done a pretty good job so far. It had been six months since Scott and Garin met with them in Seoul and four weeks since he and the crew had moved into the house in Costa Rica. In that time, together with the Koreans, they’d worked nearly round the clock getting ready for this day. And for all of them, it had been a truly brutal routine. Rolling out of bed, heading right to their workstations. Plugging away until nightfall, when one or two of them would begin the second shift, working with C.J. and Christian to hammer out the software details.

  The Koreans had nailed the visuals almost from the beginning, but the game play had taken a lot longer. The main problem, as Scott had pointed out when he first met with C.J. and Christian, was that the game had to be smooth—the players must be able to sit down and play wherever they were, whenever they wanted to, even though they could be signing in from cities all over the world, with different modem speeds, hard drives, and Internet providers. When you got down to it, the software was endlessly complicated—and Scott was sure there would be plenty of issues, especially in the beta phase. The superuser accounts would be helpful in calling out some of those issues, but there was also going to be a lot of feedback coming in from the players.

  Which was why at the moment, Garin was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the area they’d designated as Customer Service. In front of him were a computer and a telephone. The 1-800 number that led to that phone had been inserted into the beta introduction page, so for the moment Garin was their call center, ready for action.

  “Okay, I guess it’s time,” Scott said. He signaled Hilt, who began to type into his computer, communicating with the server hosts at HostaRica, then with the Koreans, who would be monitoring the beta test as well. As Hilt had pointed out, it really was mostly friends and family—though they had also sent out notices through a few of the more public poker forums, advertising themselves in a decidedly grassroots manner. No hype, no giant promises—for now, just an offer of good, sophisticated tournament play in what they liked to think of as a uniquely cosmopolitan environment.

  As Scott launched the software on the computer in his cubicle and the screen instantly shifted to the AbsolutePoker.com beta site, he couldn’t help but smile, bathed in the deep blue of the table that dominated the center of the screen. In the middle of the table, the Koreans had added the Absolute Poker logo, which was a red diamond. Scott thought it looked great, set against that cosmopolitan blue. The chairs around the table were still velvety, with little tables between them—after all, you needed someplace to set down your martini glass. The room itself was carpeted in gray, but eventually there would be many room choices. And the cityscape that greeted players when they logged on would change too; the key, Scott felt, was to keep the game modern and interesting, and that meant there would probably be constant changes to the look and feel of the site.

  But again, the visuals would be secondary to the game play. Paradise Poker, to him, had always felt clunky and primitive. Absolute Poker was going to be something different.

  “And go!” Hilt said.

  And then it happened. Slowly, one by one, the seats at the table filled. The players were represented by cartoonish avatars—but that too would eventually change. Scott envisioned that people would be able to pick and choose their own avatars, and maybe one day even upload their own photos. But for the moment Scott didn’t care about the avatars. He was watching the cards, because the deal had just begun—and it was fucking beautiful.

  “It’s working!” he shouted. “They’re playing. Look, that guy just made a bet. And that guy is gonna call—”

  And then, suddenly, Scott’s screen went blank. He heard shouts from the other cubicles—and then, a second later, the lights in the house went out.

  “Christ no!” Garin shouted. “The power just went down.”

  “Is it just the power or the Internet?” Shane asked.

  “I think it’s the Internet too,” Hilt said, his voice tight. “Crap.”

  “What do we do?” Garin asked. “Is it just us, or is the game gonna be screwed up?”

  “The game too,” Shane said. “Because the way we have the beta set up, we need to be connected for it to work. Garin, get on the phone with the server—”

&nbs
p; “Wait,” Hilt said, as suddenly the lights flashed back on. “We’re back online.”

  And Scott could see that they were. His screen was back up, the blue table in front of him again—but the game play had frozen middeal, a card floating halfway across the table, like part of a magic trick gone bad. Scott leaned back in his chair, his face reddening. Inside, he was furious. This was ridiculous. So fucking unprofessional. If anyone had lost money because they went down, they would have to reimburse it. He was sure any minute now Garin’s phone would start ringing with complaints, and the e-mails would be coming in.

  Scott leaned forward, resting his elbows on his computer table, his head in his hands. Christ, what a way to start.

  And then, just as he’d expected, Garin’s phone blared to life, a metallic, noxious sound that seemed to reverberate through the whole house. Scott watched as Garin grabbed the receiver, cupping it to his ear.

  “AbsolutePoker.com,” Garin started. And then he stopped. “Hey, Scott,” he called. “It’s for you. It’s Glenn.”

  Scott looked at Garin, surprised. He had expected it to be a complaining player; Glenn Dwyer was one of the company’s first new hires, an SAE alum who’d been a top student in the frat. Glenn was a CPA and MBA who had specialized in accounting, so they’d set him up as their nominal president, based out of Los Angeles. Really, his job was to handle their accounting and officially manage the $750,000 they’d gotten from their investors. He didn’t usually call the house; Scott called him whenever they needed access to the money or had to make a particularly large purchase.

  Scott felt Hilt’s eyes on him as he crossed to the phone. He took the receiver from Garin and pressed it against his ear.

  “Hey, Glenn, now isn’t a great time, we’ve got some fucked-up issues going on with the beta—”

  “Scott, we’ve got a major problem.”

  Scott could tell immediately from Glenn’s voice that it wasn’t going to be a little issue. The guy was one of the most mild-mannered people Scott knew—and at the moment, his voice sounded almost frantic, at least an octave too high.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, see, it started last Thursday. I was catching up on the banking receipts, and there were a few things I needed clarified, so I called over to Caribe to check with them. And nobody answered the phone. I tried again all day Friday—and again, no answer. I figured, hey, it’s the Caribbean, people are pretty laid-back in the Caribbean, I can wait until Monday—”

  “Glenn,” Scott interrupted, “what the hell are you trying to tell me?”

  “Well, I called back today. A guy from PricewaterhouseCoopers answered. He told me that Caribe Bank has gone insolvent.”

  Scott’s throat constricted. “What?”

  “The bank, man. It went under. Just folded. I mean, it’s gone. That money’s all gone.”

  Scott couldn’t feel the phone in his hand. He looked up and saw that Shane, Garin, and Hilt were all staring at him. His face had gone white.

  “What happened?” Hilt asked.

  “Caribe Bank went under.”

  The air in the room seemed to freeze, like a leather belt snapping tight.

  Then Scott lurched forward and vomited all over the floor.

  CHAPTER 14

  Brent Beckley tossed the last three spoons into the large plastic shopping bag, ignoring the cacophonic clash of metal against metal, then twisted the bag shut and slung it over his right shoulder. The thing was heavy, bulging at the bottom, and there was a very good chance it was going to rip right open, spilling three years’ worth of collected silverware all over his bare kitchen floor. But he didn’t have much choice. The guy who’d come for the potted plants had taken his last box, so the bag would have to do. Besides, the silverware was pretty damn shitty; most of the forks were bent beyond use, and the knives were so dull they might as well have been spoons. But for three bucks, it really was a case of buyer beware. Besides, Brent had been exceedingly honest in his Craigslist ad; he’d described about everything in his apartment as junk—and yet still, there he was, bagging up the very last of it. Every last thing had sold, from the tattered couches to the soap dispenser from the bathroom. Who the hell bought a used soap dispenser?

  Brent shook his head, then headed to the front door. Outside, he carefully placed the heavy plastic bag of silverware on the floor of the hallway, where the welcome mat used to sit, before he’d sold that too. He thought about leaving a note taped to the bag—then decided it wasn’t necessary. Nobody was going to steal a plastic bag of bent forks, and the guy who’d paid for it wouldn’t have any trouble finding it; there was literally nothing else there.

  Brent took his apartment key out of his pocket and stuck it in the lock. He said a mental good-bye, then turned and headed for the stairs.

  Twenty minutes later he was sitting in the front seat of his rust red Buick Century, hands on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead through the windshield. He wasn’t thinking, exactly, more like counting ahead. Seconds, minutes, hours—a sort of psychological exercise to calm his rapidly unraveling nerves. It was a terrifying thing, saying good-bye to everything you knew, starting fresh. But it was also exciting, the kind of thing you wanted to contemplate and remember.

  Unbelievably, it was finally, actually happening. He couldn’t begin to count how many times he’d called his big brother over the past six months, begging Scott to hire him, to let him drop out of school and come down to Costa Rica to join the crew. Again and again, Scott had responded the same way: Absolutely not. Brent shouldn’t have been surprised. Scott had nearly forced him, kicking and screaming, to go to college in the first place. Without Scott, he would have probably ended up selling weed to rebelling Mormon high school kids in Salt Lake City for the rest of his life—well, until he ended up in jail, or in hell.

  Instead, he had finally made it to graduation from the University of Montana. He’d cut his hair, traded his hemp shirts for oxfords with matching ties. He’d actually changed so much, cleaned himself up so thoroughly, that he’d been elected president of the frat house for his senior year, following in Pete Barovich’s shadow.

  And then, less than a week ago, the phone had rung. This time it was Scott calling him—with a job offer.

  “Director of customer service,” Scott had said. “We can only start you at two thousand dollars a month, but you’ll be running your own department. If things go well, there will be a lot of opportunity for forward motion.”

  Brent had nearly dropped the phone. Director of customer service. That sounded like a pretty big title. Running his own department right out of college? It sounded like an incredible opportunity. Then Scott had dropped a bombshell.

  “We need you here tomorrow.”

  Brent had laughed, thinking it was a joke. He’d just barely graduated; he had an apartment, things, a car. But Scott was dead serious. Brent knew the company had just gone through a huge trauma involving a bank failure, but obviously Scott and his team had decided to power through, and they weren’t wasting any time. But packing up his life in twenty-four hours, moving to a foreign country to live, perhaps for a long, long time?

  “Scott, I don’t even have a passport.”

  Scott had paused for less than a second.

  “Okay, by the end of the week. You get here by Friday, or you’re fired.”

  And with that, he’d disconnected. Brent knew immediately that his brother hadn’t been joking. Scott could be intense, to the point of manic, and though he liked to play hard, he did not fool around when it came to something important. He wouldn’t think twice about firing his own brother if he screwed up. Especially with whatever had gone down with the Caribbean bank—and what Scott and his team were trying to do to survive after a blow like that—Scott obviously wasn’t playing games.

  So Brent went right to Craigslist. He’d sold everything in his apartment—down to the goddamn silverware—and then told his landlord that he was leaving. The guy had tried to argue about a lease, but Brent w
as paid up through the month, and there was simply nothing else he could do about it. Then he’d gone into downtown Missoula to get an expedited passport.

  And now, three days later, and just a few hours before his flight—Missoula to Minneapolis to Houston to Costa Rica—he had just one more thing to take care of before he was in the air.

  He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel for a few more seconds, contemplating what lay ahead, step by step, then yanked the keys out of the ignition and stepped out onto the curb.

  The sun was high above the tree-lined street, barely any breeze pulling at his white shirt or his loosely tied paisley tie, the day beginning to bake, but Brent didn’t feel warm at all. He felt ready.

  He walked to the back of his car and got down on both knees. Then he pulled a screwdriver out of his back pocket. It took a few minutes to get the license plate unscrewed, and then he was back on his feet.

  He crossed the street and headed toward a two-story building with glass front doors and smoky picture windows. There was a uniformed guard just inside the doors, but Brent walked right by him, heading straight through the marble-floored lobby. He’d been in the bank a dozen times before—usually to fill out forms, manage student loans, once in a while to deposit checks. It was also where he received wired money from Scott’s dad to help him with tuition, insurance, and, of course, car payments.

  Brent took a deep breath, tasting the air-conditioned air, then headed straight to the nearest teller; behind the window, the woman looked to be in her midthirties, with short auburn hair and too much lipstick, wearing a stiffly tailored pantsuit. It was lucky that there was no line, because today Brent wasn’t sure he’d have the patience to wait.

  He reached the window and, without pause, placed his car keys and the license plate on the counter in front of the woman.

  “What’s this?” the woman asked.

  “Your car. It’s parked out front.”

  The woman stared at him. Her red lips opened, then closed.