Ben Mezrich, the author of the NY Times bestseller The Accidental Billionaire about the rocky genesis of Facebook that was later adapted into the Oscar winning movie “The Social Network” has just release a new book, his 12th book, entitled 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.
It’s a provocative title, no doubt, and the “true story” to which it refers is the rise and fall of Absolute Poker. What’s more, it was made with the full cooperation of one of AP’s founders. In fact, the book was his idea, pitched to Mezrich in an email.
In the book, Mezrich lays out how these young guys discovered that The Wire Act of the 1960s that made sports betting and other types of gambling illegal didn’t say anything about poker. It wasn’t until December of 2006, by which point these young smart alecs became the whiz kids of cyberspace with an online poker monolith serving thousands of players and dealing millions of poker hands daily, that the U.S. government enacted the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act making sites like Absolute Poker illegal.
Sites were given time to shut down of their own accord, and on April 15, 2010, the feds finally took action against the majority of these sites, including AP, that ignored the order and remained open, seizing their accounts, freezing player funds, and shutting down their URLs.
Ben Mezrich’s latest expose’, this time on the flashbang phenomenon that was online poker in early 21st century, is in stores now.