The Players Ball
A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet's Rise
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Narrated by:
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George Newbern
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By:
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David Kushner
About this listen
"An engrossing microcosm of the internet’s Wild West years" (Kirkus Reviews), award-winning journalist David Kushner tells the incredible battle between the founder of Match.com and the con man who swindled him out of the website Sex.com, resulting in an all-out war for control for what still powers the internet today: love and sex.
In 1994, visionary entrepreneur Gary Kremen used a $2,500 loan to create the first online dating service, Match.com. Only five percent of Americans were using the internet at the time, and even fewer were looking online for love. He quickly bought the Sex.com domain too, betting the combination of love and sex would help propel the internet into the mainstream.
Imagine Kremen’s surprise when he learned that someone named Stephen Michael Cohen had stolen the rights to Sex.com and was already making millions that Kremen would never see. Thus follows the wild true story of Kremen’s and Cohen’s decade-long battle for control. In The Players Ball, author and journalist David Kushner provides a front seat to these must-hear Wild West years online, when innovators and outlaws battled for power and money.
This cat-and-mouse game between a genius and a con man changed the way people connect forever, and is key to understanding the rise and future of the online world.
"Kushner delivers a fast-paced, raunchy tale of sex, drugs, and dial-up." (Publishers Weekly)
©2019 David Kushner (P)2019 Simon & SchusterListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Jake Halpern introduces us to a former banking executive and a former armed robber who become partners and go in quest of "paper" - the uncollected debts that are sold off by banks for pennies on the dollar. As Halpern shows, the world of consumer debt collection is a wild and unregulated shadow land, where operators may misrepresent a debtor's situation, make illegal threats, and even lay claim to debts that are not theirs to collect in the first place.
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An Examination of Bad Debts; its Buyers & Sellers
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-16
By: Jake Halpern
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Double or Nothing
- How Two Friends Risked It All to Buy One of Las Vegas' Legendary Casinos
- By: Tom Breitling, Cal Fussman
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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If Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn had come of age at the end of the 20th century looking for an all-American adventure, they probably would've headed for Vegas. However, they'd have been hard-pressed to go on a wilder ride than the one taken by Tom Breitling and Tim Poster to the top of the famed Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino. Call them the Odds Couple.
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A look at lives of 2 guys who bought casino
- By Anonymous User on 01-05-21
By: Tom Breitling, and others
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The Asylum
- The Renegades Who Hijacked the World's Oil Market
- By: Leah McGrath Goodman
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 16 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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They were a band of outsiders unable to get jobs with New York's gilded financial establishment. They would go on to corner the world's multitrillion-dollar oil market, reaping unimaginable riches while bringing the economy to its knees. Meet the self-anointed kings of the New York Mercantile Exchange. In some ways, they are everything you would expect them to be: a secretive, members-only club of men and women who live lavish lifestyles; cavort with politicians, strippers, and celebrities; and blissfully jacked up oil prices to nearly $150 a barrel while profiting off the misery of the working class.
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A far better book than its come-on implies
- By Philo on 01-05-14
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The Unwinding
- An Inner History of the New America
- By: George Packer
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Unwinding, George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, tells the story of the United States over the past three decades in an utterly original way, with his characteristically sharp eye for detail and gift for weaving together complex narratives. The Unwinding portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation.
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Can't understand the low ratings!
- By Anonymous User on 05-27-13
By: George Packer
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Exploding the Phone
- The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell
- By: Phil Lapsley
- Narrated by: Johann North
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Before smartphones, back even before the Internet and personal computer, a misfit group of technophiles, blind teenagers, hippies, and outlaws figured out how to hack the world’s largest machine: the telephone system. Starting with Alexander Graham Bell’s revolutionary "harmonic telegraph", by the middle of the 20th century the phone system had grown into something extraordinary, a web of cutting-edge switching machines and human operators that linked together millions of people like never before. But the network had a billion-dollar flaw, and once people discovered it, things would never be the same.
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Great Story along with Great Technical Research
- By Anonymous User on 04-25-16
By: Phil Lapsley
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Inside Scientology
- The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion
- By: Janet Reitman
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 15 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Scientology, created in 1954 by a prolific sci-fi writer named L. Ron Hubbard, claims to be the world's fastest-growing religion, with millions of members around the world and huge financial holdings. Its celebrity believers keep its profile high, and its teams of "volunteer ministers" offer aid at disaster sites such as Haiti and the World Trade Center. But Scientology is also a notably closed faith, harassing journalists and others through litigation and intimidation, even infiltrating the highest levels of government to further its goals.
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My cup of tea.
- By Anonymous User on 08-09-11
By: Janet Reitman
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Glass House
- The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town
- By: Brian Alexander
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The Anchor Hocking Glass Company, once the world's largest maker of glass tableware, was the base on which Lancaster's society was built. As Glass House unfolds, bankruptcy looms. With access to the company and its leaders, and Lancaster's citizens, Alexander shows how financial engineering took hold in the 1980s, accelerated in the 21st century, and wrecked the company.
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What really happened to the American Dream?
- By Bill on 05-10-17
By: Brian Alexander
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Ghost in the Wires
- My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker
- By: Kevin Mitnick, William L. Simon
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Kevin Mitnick was the most elusive computer break-in artist in history. He accessed computers and networks at the world’s biggest companies—and however fast the authorities were, Mitnick was faster, sprinting through phone switches, computer systems, and cellular networks. He spent years skipping through cyberspace, always three steps ahead and labeled unstoppable.
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For a smart guy, Mitnick was an idiot
- By Anonymous User on 09-17-14
By: Kevin Mitnick, and others
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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
- By: Jonathan Grotenstein, Storms Reback
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Who were the Ship It Holla Ballas? Arguably the most successful poker crew of all time, they took advantage of the online poker boom to win tens of millions of dollars before most of them were old enough to set foot inside a casino. Then they did what any red-blooded teenagers with mountains of cash and no responsibilities would do: They partied like rock stars, transforming themselves from Internet nerds with zero life skills into legends, at least in their own minds.
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Fun trip down memory lane
- By Anonymous User on 03-31-24
By: Jonathan Grotenstein, and others
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Appetite for Self-Destruction
- The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age
- By: Steve Knopper
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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For the first time, Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the story of the precipitous rise and fall of the recording industry over the past three decades, when the incredible success of the CD turned the music business into one of the most glamorous, high-profile industries in the world - and the advent of file sharing brought it to its knees.
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Awesome Book
- By Anonymous User on 08-15-09
By: Steve Knopper
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Unlabel
- Selling You Without Selling Out
- By: Marc Ecko
- Narrated by: Todd Haberkorn, Marc Ecko
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Instructive as it is innovative, Unlabel will empower you to channel your creativity, find the courage to defy convention, and summon the confidence to act and compete in any environment. This blueprint will teach you how to grow both creatively and commercially by testing your personal brand against the principles of the Authenticity Formula. Marc Eckō shares the bruising mistakes and remarkable triumphs that reveal the truth behind his success, growing from a misfit kid airbrushing T-shirts in his parents' garage to the bold creator of two hugely successful branded platforms.
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...So Real, It Should Be Illegal
- By Anonymous User on 01-20-16
By: Marc Ecko
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Red Notice
- A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man's Fight for Justice
- By: Bill Browder
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Red Notice is a searing expose of the wholesale whitewash by Russian authorities of Magnitsky's imprisonment and murder, slicing deep into the shadowy heart of the Kremlin to uncover its sordid truths.
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This is an absolute "YES" as your next read/listen
- By Anonymous User on 02-07-15
By: Bill Browder
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