Straight Flush

April 29, 2013
Mezrich (author The Accidental Billionaires, the basis for the film The Social Network) displays his well-established storytelling chops in this brisk narrative of the rise and fall of an Internet gaming empire that stars six frat brothers from Montana. The tale opens in 2011 with Brent Beckley’s surrender in a Costa Rican airport to an American official. While not convinced of the illegality of his acts, Beckley admits that “maybe we were stupid.” The scene returns to the beginning at the SAE house on the University of Montana campus in 1997, where principals Garin Gustafson, Pete Barovich, Shane Blackford, and Scott Tom are introduced. After graduation, Tom’s enthusiasm for poker inspires him to create Absolute Poker, an online poker site. As the money flows in, Blackford suffers a breakdown and two different cheating scandals mar their success. Ultimately, the question of legality dogs them. In 2006, the men flee corporate offices that they have set up in Vancouver when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police begins an investigation. The passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling and Enforcement Act in the same year ultimately spells their downfall. Readers curious about fast-living frat boys with questionable judgment will enjoy this debauched business saga. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME.

June 1, 2013
Mezrich is well known for his accounts of provocative tales from the worlds of gambling and the Internet, two of which were made into movies, including The Social Network, based on his book The Accidental Billionaires (2009). The real-life characters of this story are six fraternity brothers who parlayed their interest in poker into one of the largest and most profitable gambling sites in the world, before it all fell to darkness and ruin from the stroke of a bureaucrat's pen. Mezrich follows Brent Beckley, Scott Tom, and friends from their University of Montana frat house to Costa Rica and Canada as the young entrepreneurs' extravagant lifestyle of booze, fast cars, and hot women spirals into death threats, auto accidents, 24-hour bodyguards, and federal indictments. Mezrich takes his time getting to the meat of the story and sometimes meanders off track into the personal lives of the principals involved, but once it gets moving, the action is nonstop.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)