Ship It Holla Ballas! (22 page)

In the fall of 2006, NWP reporter DanDruff “breaks” the story of a budding romantic relationship between Neverwin and Chantel, who is single after parting ways with both DocHolatchya and Apathy. DanDruff’s story follows these star-crossed lovers from their chance meeting aboard a poker cruise in March to the moment they both decide to end their current relationships so they can be with each other. The piece is presented as an effort to “set the story straight,” a counterpoint to the supposed rumor and innuendo floating around Two Plus Two.

The only problem is that very little of it is actually true. Neverwin and Chantel are sleeping with each other, but everything else in the story is largely embellished.

“We would go home and read all the threads about it and get amusement,” Neverwin later admits. “It was always more entertaining to read about yourself or about somebody that you knew really well.”

For the next few weeks, Neverwin and Chantel see their fame (infamy?) increase exponentially, at least within the poker community. But their proverbial fifteen minutes gets cut short by a series of even juicier scandals.

The first surrounds the dramatic arrival on the scene of Brandi Hawbaker, a very attractive twenty-four-year-old self-proclaimed “free spirit,” who turns Two Plus Two’s NVG forum into her personal diary, providing an intimate and ongoing account of a titillating dispute with the fifty-six-year-old poker pro “Captain” Tom Franklin.

According to Brandi, she allowed Captain Tom to mentor her through the poker world, giving her lessons, helping her decide which tournaments to play, and, apparently, managing her bankroll. She naively believed him when he spoke of maintaining propriety—
Wouldn’t want to give people the wrong idea about an older man and a younger beauty, now would we?
—until, according to Brandi, their relationship took a sordid turn in a hotel room in Indiana. It was there, Brandi claims, that Captain Tom climbed naked into bed with her and rubbed his penis against her back, an activity he called “huggling.” When she refused to play along, Captain Tom responded by tightening his hold on the money she had entrusted him with.

The post kicks off an avalanche of comments. Most are sympathetic to Brandi, until a player named Newhizzle chimes in. It seems that he used to have a similar relationship with Brandi—poker guidance, with blurry sexual boundaries—until she logged into one of his online accounts and lost $30,000 of his money in a high-stakes cash game. According to Newhizzle, the ensuing argument led Brandi to try to kill herself in a hotel bathroom, slicing her wrist with a broken wine bottle and using the blood to write a message on the wall:

I will fly one day.

Brandi responds with venom, using the forum to deny the story and criticize Newhizzle for his shortcomings as both a poker player and a sexual partner. The back-and-forth drags on for weeks, shifting the group consensus: Brandi is mentally unstable, a creator of “dramabombs,” a walking trainwreck. The opinion becomes even more entrenched after she gets into a public altercation with Dutch Boyd at the Bellagio—she calls him a “schizophrenic asshole”; he responds by calling her “an evil bitch.” Needless to say, Brandi becomes an instant celebrity on Two Plus Two; from here on out her every move will be chronicled and annotated with detailed descriptions and commentary.

Brandi has to share the spotlight, however, when Two Plus Two’s other founder, David Sklansky, uses the site to unreel a series of controversial opinions and personal revelations. Even by comparison to his mercurial partner, Sklansky has always come off as eccentric. He’s clearly brilliant, but his intelligence is attached to a social tone deafness that suggests some form of autism. In the past he’s used Two Plus Two to speculate about whether chimpanzees could ever be “trained” to be as intelligent as humans (through a process that sounds an awful lot like eugenics) and whether a woman should ever be president (no way, he argues, given the effects of premenstrual syndrome).

This month he issues a $50,000 challenge to Christian fundamentalists—a group he dismisses as “relatively stupid (or uninterested in learning)”—that he can beat any one of them on the math portion of the SAT. The post gets picked up by several other Web sites, drawing the attention of Ken Jennings, a devout Mormon famous for winning the TV game show
Jeopardy!
a record seventy-four times in a row. When Jennings publicly accepts Sklansky’s challenge, the poker guru quickly backpedals, revising the wager to exclude members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

But the real fun begins when fifty-five-year-old Sklansky reveals that he once had an intimate relationship with a sixteen-year-old runaway. Five years ago, after meeting on an Internet dating site, he and “Saura” lived together for eight months until he discovered that she wasn’t really twenty years old, as she’d claimed.

The message boards get flooded with comments, especially after Saura agrees to do a Q&A, fielding a barrage of questions from how much cash she accepted from Sklansky to the size of his penis. Sklansky—who argues that he’d never have engaged in the relationship had he known her real age—handles the hurly burly with what appears to be a detached sense of amusement. He doesn’t come across as embarrassed or ashamed, and, as some speculate, he may even be profiting from the controversy. In the online business world, traffic equals money, and the nearly forty pages of questions Saura receives suggest that the site is doing better than ever.

Good2cu loves reading about the drama and being part of such a fascinating community of freewheeling degenerates. Another long, drab winter has descended upon Michigan, but thanks to his Internet connection, he lives in a world that is bigger, stranger, and more wonderful than anything he can see from the windows of his apartment.

39

Regular folks who used to come home from their job as a waiter, construction worker, or retail manager and log on to Party Poker for some relaxation are no longer doing that. Not only have they stopped, they basically think that it is against the law to play online and they are no longer even interested. Now, there are still plenty of fish obviously. America never held the exclusive rights to bad poker play. But removing a few million recreational American players from the pool of fish is likely to have an effect on the ebb and flow of money online.

—Irieguy

EAST LANSING, MICHIGAN/COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO
(Winter 2006)

So far the UIGEA has turned out to be more smoke than fire. Americans can still play poker online, and many do. But a chill has settled over the once-scorching poker economy. Per the law, banks and credit card companies will no longer transfer money in or out of online poker accounts. It’s a small speed bump: Intermediaries like Neteller, a payment processing company located on the Isle of Man where it enjoys protection from prosecution, rush in to fill the breach. But the hostile climate intimidates many new and recreational players, vastly shrinking the pool of easy money, making online poker that much tougher to beat.

Good2cu misses the games on Party Poker. He hasn’t enjoyed the same kind of success on Full Tilt and PokerStars, where his opponents don’t seem to make as many mistakes as they used to. The days of mindlessly grinding out a steady return seem to be slipping away. Good2cu isn’t losing money, but he isn’t winning very much either.

That said, he still has almost $200,000 in the bank, a small fortune for a kid sharing the rent on an apartment in a Midwestern college town.

“Imagine being twenty and able to buy all the movies and DVDs you want for like two hours of work,” he blogs. “Obviously, you would too.”

The holidays are an opportunity to indulge his consumerist impulses while showing everyone how far he’s come since his days as a self-described “punkass broke college student.” He splurges on Christmas gifts for his family: a $750 Best Buy gift card for his dad, an LCD TV with a built-in DVD player for his mom, and a brand-new laptop for his sister.

Good2cu has grown very comfortable playing this new role. He loves the awed expressions on the faces of the tellers at the bank when he withdraws thousands of dollars in cash. He’s overflowing with confidence, or at least bravado. During the long weekend after Thanksgiving, he uploads a picture of himself to a Web site called “Hot or Not,” where visitors rate attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10. Good2cu gets a 9.9, which he brags about on his Web site to all the “gold diggers and hottie-chasers of the world”:

APPLY TO BE MY GIRLFRIEND

I’ve been playing the field for over two years now, and am now ready to stay in my apartment all day long having long sexual marathons.

In case you haven’t heard of me I’ll sum up the important details (i.e. why you are dying to be my girlfriend).

—I am a 9.9 on Hot or Not

—I make more than your boyfriend

—I also make more than your dad

—I enjoy traveling the world and spending large sums of money

—I am the epitome of an alpha male

—I am famous on the Internet

—Am often accused of being humble

Basically, I’m every woman’s dream.

He’s joking—mostly. Good2cu isn’t someone who takes himself very seriously. But there’s a small part of himself that’s willing to entertain the notion that at least some of it might be true.

As long as he can keep making money, of course. It would help if Mike Sparks paid him the $50,000 he owes him for the wrecked BMW, but Mike stopped answering his calls months ago. So Good2cu does what he thinks a Balla should do. Using Chantel as a go-between, he sends word to Sparks that he’s ready to take legal action if the debt’s not settled immediately.

Sparks calls back right away. The conversation is brief and to the point. He tells Good2cu that he’s never going to see the money, and if he ever calls again or hires a lawyer, Sparks will have him killed.

Good2cu isn’t sure how seriously to take the death threat, but it’s enough to convince him to drop the matter, chalking it up to a lesson learned, albeit a painful and expensive one. So much for any romantic notions he had about professional gamblers honoring their word.

He spends the first half of the holidays with his dad in Okemos, the second half with his mom, who is vacationing in Colorado with her new husband. Bonafone lives in Colorado Springs. Good2cu hasn’t seen him since the World Series of Poker, but they’ve maintained their friendship through the forum and the occasional chat online. Good2cu gives him a call.

Bonafone celebrates Good2cu’s arrival with a party. They mix generous servings of “Ecto-Coolers,” a fluorescent green concoction made with vodka, Red Bull, and Hpnotiq, named for its resemblance to a Hi-C/
Ghostbusters
tie-in from childhood. “You seriously need no game to get laid on this stuff,” Good2cu boasts, then sets out to prove it.

His playbook is straight out of
The Game.
He “negs” a girl, telling her that he heard she was a bad kisser, predictably inspiring her to prove him wrong. From there he moves on to “peacocking,” showing off his Rolex, dropping hints about his net worth. Smooth or not, the moves work—he winds up skinny-dipping in the hot tub with two girls, before pulling one of them into the snow for a play-wrestling match that carries over into a bedroom.

In the morning, a hungover but freshly sexed Good2cu calls a limo service to pick him up. One of Bonafone’s high school friends sees him off.

“I hope I’m as cool as I seem on the Internet,” Good2cu tells him.

The expression on the kid’s face makes it clear that he is.

*   *   *

Good2cu returns to Michigan ready to take his game to the next level. Fuck Sit N Gos—he’s ready to dominate the cash games just like Raptor and durrrr. The journey begins with a $100,000 downswing, including a $65,000 loss in a single day.

“This is not even close to a significant loss at this level,” he blogs. “But the psychological damage is much greater than the monetary blow. How am I supposed to grind out a few thousand dollars a day when it is going to take me a month to win back what I lost in one day? Logically, I know it’s the only way, but my emotions want to have all the money back, now. This results in me playing an emotional game, which of course results in further losses.”

Reeling from the setback, he can’t muster the energy to maintain his public persona. When his poker sessions end, he retreats to the couch to watch
The Sopranos
. “Tony Soprano is a motherfucking badass balla,” he writes. “And he is depressed too. How depressing.”

The news gets worse. On January 15, Stephen Lawrence and John Lefebvre, the two Canadians who founded Neteller, are arrested while traveling through the United States and charged with violating the UIGEA. Neither man is still actively associated with Neteller, but that doesn’t stop the FBI from freezing the company’s assets, even after the current management announces that they’re pulling out of the American market.

Good2cu is unable to access the $30,000 he has in his Neteller account, and he’s not sure if he’s ever going to see it again. The future of online poker—and, by extension, the lifestyle it’s helped him attain—is starting to look bleak. “Logically, I know all of this doesn’t matter,” he writes. “I am not even of legal drinking age. [But] I am deathly afraid of failing. Poker is my life. I could not go back to living like a normal person. How could I be content making $100,000 a year when I’ve made that in a month? I could never feel alive at a real job.”

He decides to blow off some steam, going to a party with his friend DieselBoy. It feels good not to think about poker for a night. They meet a girl who accompanies them back to Good2cu’s apartment. She seems amenable to sleeping with either of them. When she ducks into the bathroom to freshen up, DieselBoy suggests they flip a coin.

“Heads!” calls Good2cu.

The coin lands tails. Good2cu spends the night on the couch, listening to bestial grunts emanating from his bedroom, taking stock of his life.

I am running sooooooo bad
.