"I don't have a horse in this race" @BenMezrich.

Ya thats because you are the horse.

From the Forbes article:

"Basically, it started with an email from one of the founders of Absolute Poker..."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschaw...8/ben-mezrich/

Ben is nothing more than an AP mouth piece. He was paid by the criminals to write a book about them and he did. End of story. Think of this as nothing more than the typical AP press releases that came out with lie after lie after lie.

Ugh. This guy is a horrible mix of false cluelessness ("i'm just writing a kind of non fictional book guys!" ) and cynical. He does not give a flying **** whether he is writing total bull**** and unfortunately all we are doing is giving his book more publicity.

He loves it. He is the authorial equivalent of Fox News. With Fox the more outraged people are, the more they discuss it - the more the advertisers love it.

it's sitting at 1,541st position on amazon according to some sales ranking website. i doubt this is doing him much good press.

myself and a few others laid into him on the book's amazon reviews section. come join the fun!

The thing I noticed last night was when people were tweeting at him saying things like "Just ordered straight flush, excited to read" and stuff like that some dude would just tweet back saying "Don't read that crap its all lies anyway", which I thought was funny.

I think the constant twitter bashing does the most good. I mean, look at what Annie Duke had to do. She literally had to get dozens and dozens of friends to constantly tweet good things about her or about articles she wrote so that when you search her its not all tweets calling her a cheater.

When someone looks up a screen name on twitter and half of the tweets at him/her are calling him/her a liar I think the points get across pretty clear.

‏@haralabob 10m
I really wish someone would take the time to listen to the UB tapes and tell him exactly when Scott Tom is named. @melissalvla @BenMezrich

@haralabob 8m
Respectfully, @benmezrich do yourself a favor and listen to the UB coverup tapes, Scott Tom is named as an owner of the new AP/UB company.

@benmezrich 5m
@haralabob what year. 2007? 2008? Scott and hilt maintain they were years out by Black Friday, 2011. Will listen, interesting stuff!

@haralabob 4m
@benmezrich They also claimed the same when Cereus was formed. My point is they are habitually lying in an attempt to obfuscate ownership.

@haralabob 2m
@benmezrich 1. Claimed AJ green was cheater (proven false) 2. Claimed Scott Tom had no involvement in Cereus (proven false) see a pattern?

@benmezrich 1m
@haralabob I get what you're saying. But they maintain they were years away from running the company by Black Friday.

Indeed. They had already taken the money and run.

This.

Haralabus basically outlines that they are lying and he just takes their word (who happen to be cheating scumbags who stole millions of dollars) for it. Ben isn't concerned about the facts.

I suggest everyone do this.

The really sad part of this whole situation is that it is highly likely that Ben knows and understands all of the above.

However, to him it doesn't matter. He wrote the book because, and only because, it would result in him profiting and achieving a higher degree of fame and name/brand value.

Ben doesn't care about the truth, doesn't care about his role in aiding bad people to profit and spew out falsely positive PR, and doesn't care about any of the concepts we are roasting him for. He is happy to completely discard integrity if it means he is able to sell more copies of a book to an admittedly stupid target audience.

For that, Ben, **** you.

"...The book has received decent reviews, even from New York Times critic Janet Maslin..."

Holy crap, anyone that reads Maslin's critique (see below) and says she gave it a "decent review" is either clueless, lying, or both.

my amazon review..was I too kind? How this piece of literary work (andi use that term VERY loosely) could ever be billed as a "true story" is totaly beyond me. it seems mr. Mezrich doesn't care about facts in the slightest. his portrayal of these scumbags is not based in fact in any way shape or form,with the possible exception of how they partied it up. (of course leaving out the fact that the money used to do so, was stolen from innocent players) Amazon should use due diligence, and require him to remove his "true story" billing and put this book into the fiction section post haste. if your looking for a poorly writen, overly dramatic book of lies, then you might enjoy this book. otherwise I would suggest passing on this one. two thumbs down. (more if I had more thumbs)

As fiction and entertainment I thought it was good.....as a true story not even close!

i edited his wiki so all his books are now listed as fiction. makes me feel better. honestly believe that this should be the way it stays, as literally NONE of his books are true works of non fiction anyway. they're all mostly "based" on true stories.

I would just like to make it clear that although Ben has linked to my blog to explain how funds are segregated, I do not agree with the analysis regarding the UIGEA, the DOJ, and the "prohibition atmosphere."

thanks for stopping by Ben. we now know why you were selected to write this fairy tale.

Haha thanks for the link. Whoever said that skimmed her review, saw the words and phrases "incredibly adept," "expert" and "nothing if not creative writing," then reflexively said, "Hey, Maslin liked it! She really liked it!"

Also, whoever incrowd is, those are probably the best first two posts in 2+2 forum history.

You guys, you guys, stop being so tough on Ben. Clearly he independently confirmed all of Tom's and Beckley's stories by thinking about it. That's good enough.

Oh, and...

From this very forum on 12 Aug 2012:

From the Mark Shanahan's and Meredith Goldstein's "The Names Blog" in the Boston Globe (4 June 2013) [Punctuation/style corrections are mine.]

Based on the way this thread has gone, it appears Mezrich read SumNewb's post almost a year ago and now uses it as a talking point for his interviews, mostly because it really is a great sales pitch.

Is that true? Who knows? But now that I've put it into writing, it's now in people's heads as a plausible story. In time, it will simply be seen as the truth. (Cue the Liberty Valance scene about legend and fact.) But who would ever be so manipulative as to do that?!

I wonder if we'll see Mezrich in this thread again or does he realize he won't pull the wool over our eyes and will never be seen again.

In case this helps anyone, if you bought the book on Kindle you can get a refund within 7 days of your purchase (go to 'Manage Your Kindle' on Amazon's website).

Thanks for saying that Alex, because I realized I still have the receipt, it is within thirty days of purchase, and the book still looks new so I can get all my money back from the bookstore I got it.

I'm still waiting to hear how Scott and Hilt managed to go back in time seven weeks with their plans to fly off into the Caribbean on a jet, to nobly save their company from all the lies about the cheating that were commencing in October of 2007.

Mr. Mezrich has a case of selectiveresponsivitis to rival that of the legendary Lock Poker Shane.

I wonder what the betting line is for Ben selling the movie rights to his book and Hollywood turning this monstrosity into a movie? Ben has already had two books turned into movies, so there's probably a studio executive somewhere dumb enough to greenlight this one ...

Often it's the "pitch" - and not necessarily the facts - that get a project greenlighted. For instance, James Cameron's pitch for "Titanic" went something like this: "This is a movie about a terrible tragedy that happened in 1912. It's a chick flick, a movie about feelings, and there's no sequel." That pitch eventually grossed over $2 billion dollars. If Ben comes up with a good pitch, he can probably get this fairy tale greenlighted.