ALL IN: THE (ALMOST) ENTIRELY TRUE STORY OF THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER
October, 2005
I was sitting on my couch in Eugene, Oregon watching the 2003 World Series of Poker on TV when I had what felt like an epiphany: this is the greatest tournament—not poker tournament but tournament, period—in the world. And that was before I’d gotten to the end of ESPN’s coverage, which featured an accountant from Tennessee with the perfect name (Chris Moneymaker) winning the Main Event, turning a $39 investment into a $2.5-million windfall.
My enthusiasm inspired an ambitious but not completely far-fetched urge: I wanted to write a book about the event. I’d previously written for a newspaper in Jackson, Wyoming (first, copy about local events; then, short articles; finally, features and columns) and dabbled in longform articles meant to please no one more than myself. A phone call to Jonathan Grotenstein, a friend from college, confirmed I was onto something. The idea resonated with him and the timing was perfect: he’d just finished writing Poker: The Real Deal and was looking for his next project.
Minutes after signing a contract with St. Martin’s Press, we got to work. We were committed to writing a book that would, to borrow a poker phrase, “stand the test of time.” Jonathan and I lived in separate states but used this to our advantage, with him interviewing players in California and me doing the same in Texas. My two biggest “gets” were T.J. Cloutier, a former road gambler who’d come oh-so-close to winning the Main Event several times, and Thomas “Amarillo Slim” Preston, the 1972 world champion who gave me the lowdown about the tournament’s origins. Interestingly, if only to me, I interviewed both men in restaurants that featured breakfast food—Denny’s and IHOP, respectively.
During the initial stages of the project Jonathan and I occasionally met in Las Vegas on “work trips” so we could do “research.” When we weren’t playing marathon sessions of poker, we were reading any books and articles we could find about the Main Event. Our bibliography ended up being 15 pages long! Our hard work paid off. NPR interviewed us and ran a short segment about our book, and The New York Times gave it a favorable review. To promote All In, St. Martin’s Press billed Jonathan and I as professional poker players, a lie by omission—“semi-professional” would have been more accurate—that I’ve come to accept will remain part of my online persona forever.
“There is something for everyone in this entertaining account by Grotenstein and Reback, both players themselves; history, descriptions of pivotal hands, family feuding, criminal investigations.”
―The New York Times Book Review
FARHA ON OMAHA: EXPERT STRATEGY FOR BEATING CASH GAMES AND TOURNAMENTS
October 2007
Writing All In brought some unexpected perks my way. Two summers in a row, an online poker company flew me to Vegas for the World Series of Poker, rented a condo and car for me, and paid me (handsomely) to interview the best poker players in the world. As it turned out, one of them, Sam Farha, was a big fan of All In.
Sam had finished second to Chris Moneymaker in the Main Event of the 2003 World Series of Poker, but it was how he did it that captured everyone’s attention. Sam was cool. Sam had style. Sam had balls. The man was fearless—and he looked good in a suit. So when he asked me if I wanted to write a poker strategy book with him, I couldn’t say yes fast enough.
Our proximity to each other ensured the project would go smoothly. He lived in Houston, I lived in Austin, and we met at a restaurant roughly halfway in between to discuss the details. Soon after we’d signed a contract with a publisher, Sam booked a room at a swanky resort on the outskirts of Austin, as a famous professional poker player does, and we met there every day for four days to discuss Omaha, the variation of poker he played the most and the best. Then I went home and wrote his book.
I liked working with Sam, but I did find myself having to adjust to his unique lifestyle. When I asked him for the second installment of my pay, most people would have simply put a check in the mail, but Sam had another idea. He asked if I was going to the World Series of Poker that summer—“Of course!”—and told me he’d give it to me there.
Minutes after my plane touched down at McCarran International, I called Sam. He told me he was in Bobby’s Room, Bellagio’s famed high-stakes poker room. When I arrived, he was playing heads-up against a young player who'd built a massive bankroll playing online. There were hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of poker chips on the table, and I could tell by the tension in the air that neither player wanted to leave the table until he possessed all of them.
I had the wisdom to wait for a break in the action before approaching Sam. When I reminded him I’d come to get the money he owed me, I might as well have been a cocktail waitress asking if he wanted another drink. He barely acknowledged me. I didn’t have the patience to wait for Sam to rake in a pot big enough to improve his mood. I pressed the issue. Finally, he grabbed several red, white, and blue poker chips, each worth $5,000, from his stack and flicked them in my general direction. I failed to catch one of them and had to bend over to pick it up off the floor. When I looked up, Sam had returned his attention to the game.
SHIP IT HOLLA BALLAS!: HOW A BUNCH OF 19-YEAR-OLD COLLEGE DROPOUTS USED THE INTERNET TO BECOME POKER'S LOUDEST, CRAZIEST, AND RICHEST CREW
January 2013
For a certain demographic in the United States, generally skewing young and mathematically inclined, there was a time, a golden age if you will, when mastering online poker made you the coolest person in the room. People quit their day jobs to play the game full-time. It was the new day trading, the latest in a long line of get-rich-quick schemes that invariably left the majority of participants broke. But a lucky few for whom luck had little to do with it succeeded, and no one did it better than a group of kids—and, yes, they were just kids—who flippantly called themselves the Ship It Holla Ballas, because, you know, why the fuck not?
I was interviewing Andrew Robl (Good2CU), the guy generally viewed as the group’s creator, for an article for All In magazine when, mid-conversation, I was shocked with a lightning bolt of inspiration. “You should write a book!” I blurted. My enthusiasm (and the possibility of future wealth) eventually won him over. Convincing my former writing partner Jonathan Grotenstein to come aboard made it official: We were going to write a book about a bunch of teenagers dropping thousands of dollars in strip clubs, wrecking fancy sports cars, and yelling, "Ship it!" any chance they got.
One of the project’s highlights came during one of our infamous “work trips” to Vegas. After interviewing Peter Jetten (Apathy), David Benefield (Raptor), and Phil Galfond (Jman), Jonathan and I spent an evening hanging out with Andrew Robl. First, we had a drink at his stylish and envy-inducing apartment, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and jaw-dropping views of the Strip. From there we headed to the MGM Grand Garden Arena, where we watched heavily favored Anderson Silva lose to then unknown Chris Weidman at UFC 162. The seats Andrew had reserved were close enough to the octagonal ring we had to consider the possibility of getting splashed with a fighter’s blood.
Just as we were putting the finishing touches on the first draft of the book, the federal government froze the assets of the biggest online poker companies, effectively shutting them down in the United States. The engine that drove the story we’d written was no more. We sulked for about a day before we discovered the silver living: we’d found the perfect ending!
I’m not bragging when I say that we succeeded in writing a page turner. More than one person told us they read our book in a single sitting. NPR interviewed us once again. Reviews were positive, sometimes even effusive. Unfortunately, none of this translated to life-changing sales. It was our own fault. Jonathan and I had ignored the truism we’d discovered after our first joint effort: poker players, our target demographic, don’t read.
Luckily, they do watch movies, so we weren’t all that surprised—but we were extremely delighted—when Paramount Pictures optioned the rights to turn our book into a movie. Our response upon hearing the news was exactly what you'd expect: “Ship it!”
"A catchy chronicle primarily geared toward poker and online-gambling fanatics... The authors astutely explore the history, intricate gaming strategies and psychologies employed by the successful Ship It Holla Ballas crew..." ―Kirkus Reviews
"Ship It Hollas Ballas! was engaging, spellbinding and at times unbelievable. It is, without a doubt, the best nonstrategy book I’ve read in recent years. Grotenstein and Reback told the story in such a captivating way that I managed to plow through the 320-page book in just two days. To say I couldn’t put it down is a lie, but to say I only did once isn’t. It’s just that good."
―Poker News
THE CONTRACTOR: HOW I LANDED IN A PAKISTANI PRISON AND IGNITED A DIPLOMATIC CRISIS
June 2017
Up to this point in my career I’d never strayed too far out of my lane, focusing mainly on sports and sports-like activities (poker, dog mushing, bowling, NASCAR). Then my agent suggested I write Ray Davis’ book. “Sure,” I said while Googling Ray’s name. That he was a military contractor who’d shot and killed two guys in Pakistan in 2011 intrigued me. It was (well past) time for me to start writing about something other than poker.
Working with Ray expanded my worldview in a way none of my previous projects had. Even though we’d grown up in the same state (Virginia), we inhabited completely different worlds. While I was at Duke studying English and hanging out on the Quad, Ray was serving in the Army Rangers and defending our country. Before this project I’d had an admittedly narrow view of military contractors, believing they were meatheads driven by greed and bloodlust. Then I met Ray, who shocked me with his gentle demeanor and humility. Three years had passed since the incident in Pakistan, and yet I could tell he was still wrestling with his role in the drama. I'm sure he would have preferred to settle the dispute with an arm-wrestling contest, but the two Pakistani men had drawn a gun and pointed it at him, so...
In the end I felt sorry for Ray more than anything else because it was clear, at least to me, that he was a pawn in a game being played by political higherups who would never have to suffer in the same way he had. They were protected by layers of secrecy so thick finding the truth seemed a fool’s errand. I enjoyed an enlightening conversation with the former US ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter only because he’d recently left the State Department and was working in the private sector.
My attempt to interview Carmela Conroy, who had been consul general at the US consulate in Lahore at the time of the incident, was more reflective of the mystery surrounding the event. I was asked to submit my questions for her in writing. She responded in kind but informed me that her responses had to be approved by a communications director before I could see them. That was in February 2015. Even after filing a Freedom of Information Act request, I have yet to receive a copy of her responses.
The closer we got to the publication date the more pushback we received from the US government. If Ray wanted to keep his job, we needed to submit our manuscript to the State Department. What came back was heavily redacted. Apparently, the State Department didn’t want Ray and I to write about stuff that was common knowledge: in recent years the United States had flooded Pakistan with CIA agents who were constantly involved in a game of cat and mouse with their Pakistani counterparts. Pakistan’s not-so-secret nuclear arsenal played a large role as well.
If Ray could be said to be lucky in any way, it was in the timing of his 49-day-long imprisonment. While he was languishing in jail, the CIA was honing in on Osama bin Laden. Conducting a mission on Pakistani soil without getting the Pakistani government’s permission would surely deny any chance Ray had of getting released and possibly result in his death, so the US government did what it had to do to get him out. The book's conclusion is reflective of the story as a whole: exciting, dramatic, and laden with mystery.
IN FULL COLOR: FINDING MY PLACE IN A BLACK AND WHITE WORLD
March 2017
When my agent asked me in early 2016 if I wanted to write Rachel Doležal’s book, I didn’t need to Google her name. She'd been a trending story on the internet for weeks, and everyone had an opinion about her. Her story had it all: racial tension, evangelical Christians, white supremacists, and, of course, that infamous moment when a reporter stuck a camera and microphone in her face and quizzed her about her background.
After the reporter “outed” her as a white woman who had been “passing” as Black, the internet nearly exploded with speculation about her intentions. Was she dishonest or crazy? That she might have meant well was never an option. By the time I’d finished writing Rachel’s book her choice to live as she did made sense to me, but would it to readers?
Working with Rachel was a wild ride. There were many eventful days. Like the day she announced our book deal on The Today Show. Or like the day she changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo. Or like the day we were asked to reenact a scene of us working together for The Rachel Divide, a documentary about her life. Or like the day the documentary was released on Netflix and I first saw footage of myself (starting around the 1:11:09 mark, but I swear I haven’t mentioned this to anyone before). Or like the day my sister emailed to say she’d seen a blurb about the book in People magazine—in her view, the highest possible achievement.
Writing this book was mostly a joy for me. Sadly, I can’t say the same for Rachel, er, Nkechi. The media’s fascination with her had put her in an impossible situation. Whenever she publicly talked about her life and the choices she’d made, she got roasted, but she needed to pay her rent and feed her kids and writing books and going on talk shows were the only opportunities she had to make money. Not only had she lost her job teaching at a university, she’d effectively been blacklisted from the job market in general. At one point this former academic, professional artist, and dedicated activist was forced to donate plasma to pay her bills. Say what you will about her—but really hasn't it all been said by now?—she's fierce in her resolve, and I will always admire her for that.