Read Online Ship It Holla Ballas! by Jonathan Grotenstein - Free Book Online
Authors: Jonathan Grotenstein
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tables. They come to be known as Raptor Challenges, and inspire many of the regulars on the forum to play longer, higher, and better than they ever have before.
But looking back on the year, he’s also ready to admit that the glamorous life of a gambling man hasn’t turned out to be quite as glamorous as he’d imagined. He spends most of his days and nights staring at a computer screen, clicking a mouse, making decisions that, 99 percent of the time, don’t require an iota of conscious thought. The only humans he interacts with are poker players, and that’s mostly through online forums and instant messages. He’s definitely not meeting any girls. Depression has become a very viable diagnosis.
Hoping to fill the growing void inside him, Raptor reenrolls for the fall semester at TCU. He cashes out all the money he has in his online accounts except for $450, enough to fool around at some low-limit games should he feel the itch, but vows to take the entire first semester off from poker.
For a last hurrah he returns to Vegas over Labor Day weekend to play in a “heads-up” (one-on-one) poker tournament hosted by Irieguy. Many of the regular posters on the Single-Table Tournament Forum fly in from all over the country to play what they dub the inaugural STTF-HU Championship. Raptor manages to finish in second place and, for the first time, leaves Las Vegas with more money than he brought with him.
Back in Fort Worth, he does his best impersonation of a normal college student. He pledges a fraternity. He begins dating again and lands a serious girlfriend. His off-campus apartment becomes a popular place to party into the wee hours of the morning. A little too popular—after the eighth noise complaint, the property management company evicts him. Luckily his friend TravestyFund has a spare bedroom to rent, but the change of scenery doesn’t do anything to curb the partying. One morning Raptor wakes up and realizes he hasn’t been to class in two weeks. His grades are so poor he’s not going to get initiated into the fraternity. And there’s no way the school is going to let him take another leave of absence. If he flunks out this time, it will almost certainly be for good. He needs a plan.
Or an escape. His eyes drift to the Quad Monitor Set-Up in the corner of the room. He brushes dust from the screens and fires up the computer. In one of his accounts he finds the $450 he’s been saving for a rainy day.
The smart move would be to stick to low-stakes—he hasn’t played in a while, and he could easily lose all his money in one sitting. Hell, the smart move would be turning off the computer and going to the library to study.
Instead, he spreads his entire poker bankroll across four $109 Sit N Go tables.
All right, time to run good. Either I win or I’m done.
In the parlance of the game, he “runs good,” winning three of the tournaments and finishing second in the fourth. He doesn’t bother standing up, using his winnings to enter eight more Sit N Gos. Then twelve. When he feels like his bankroll will allow it, he moves up from the $109s to the $215s.
Thirty-six hours later, he’s too bleary-eyed to see the cards on the screen. It takes all his remaining energy just to power down his computer, but before he does he takes one last look at his bottom line, just to reassure himself that what he thinks just happened really did happen.
Thirty-six hours of poker, and he’s transformed the last $450 in his online accounts into a $20,000 bankroll.
Well, I guess I’m a poker player again.
11
The Single-Table Tournament Forum on Two Plus Two was a small community. There were probably less than a hundred people who played those games for a living, so everyone kind of knew each other. I started talking to Raptor on AOL. He and I were playing a lot of the same games against the same opponents, and we would talk strategy. He was probably making more money playing those games than anybody else, so everybody
But looking back on the year, he’s also ready to admit that the glamorous life of a gambling man hasn’t turned out to be quite as glamorous as he’d imagined. He spends most of his days and nights staring at a computer screen, clicking a mouse, making decisions that, 99 percent of the time, don’t require an iota of conscious thought. The only humans he interacts with are poker players, and that’s mostly through online forums and instant messages. He’s definitely not meeting any girls. Depression has become a very viable diagnosis.
Hoping to fill the growing void inside him, Raptor reenrolls for the fall semester at TCU. He cashes out all the money he has in his online accounts except for $450, enough to fool around at some low-limit games should he feel the itch, but vows to take the entire first semester off from poker.
For a last hurrah he returns to Vegas over Labor Day weekend to play in a “heads-up” (one-on-one) poker tournament hosted by Irieguy. Many of the regular posters on the Single-Table Tournament Forum fly in from all over the country to play what they dub the inaugural STTF-HU Championship. Raptor manages to finish in second place and, for the first time, leaves Las Vegas with more money than he brought with him.
Back in Fort Worth, he does his best impersonation of a normal college student. He pledges a fraternity. He begins dating again and lands a serious girlfriend. His off-campus apartment becomes a popular place to party into the wee hours of the morning. A little too popular—after the eighth noise complaint, the property management company evicts him. Luckily his friend TravestyFund has a spare bedroom to rent, but the change of scenery doesn’t do anything to curb the partying. One morning Raptor wakes up and realizes he hasn’t been to class in two weeks. His grades are so poor he’s not going to get initiated into the fraternity. And there’s no way the school is going to let him take another leave of absence. If he flunks out this time, it will almost certainly be for good. He needs a plan.
Or an escape. His eyes drift to the Quad Monitor Set-Up in the corner of the room. He brushes dust from the screens and fires up the computer. In one of his accounts he finds the $450 he’s been saving for a rainy day.
The smart move would be to stick to low-stakes—he hasn’t played in a while, and he could easily lose all his money in one sitting. Hell, the smart move would be turning off the computer and going to the library to study.
Instead, he spreads his entire poker bankroll across four $109 Sit N Go tables.
All right, time to run good. Either I win or I’m done.
In the parlance of the game, he “runs good,” winning three of the tournaments and finishing second in the fourth. He doesn’t bother standing up, using his winnings to enter eight more Sit N Gos. Then twelve. When he feels like his bankroll will allow it, he moves up from the $109s to the $215s.
Thirty-six hours later, he’s too bleary-eyed to see the cards on the screen. It takes all his remaining energy just to power down his computer, but before he does he takes one last look at his bottom line, just to reassure himself that what he thinks just happened really did happen.
Thirty-six hours of poker, and he’s transformed the last $450 in his online accounts into a $20,000 bankroll.
Well, I guess I’m a poker player again.
11
The Single-Table Tournament Forum on Two Plus Two was a small community. There were probably less than a hundred people who played those games for a living, so everyone kind of knew each other. I started talking to Raptor on AOL. He and I were playing a lot of the same games against the same opponents, and we would talk strategy. He was probably making more money playing those games than anybody else, so everybody
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