Brian Townsend confesses multiaccounting

[GaF]

http://blogs.cardrunners.com/Brian/My-Apology

For the past 6 months I have been playing under the 2^nd aliases Stellarnebula on FTP and makersmark66 on PokerStars. I have not used the aba20 account on Stars since I began playing on the Makersmark66 account. I have since gone back to using the aba20 account and will play only that account. During this time I played the 25/50 and 100/200 PLO games. I played under the Stellarnebula account from February until the end of June at which time Lee Jones and I had a discussion and we came to an agreement that I needed to close it. During this time I was playing under the Brian Townsend account, never at the same table with the Stellarnebula. Under the Stellarnebula account I played 25/50, 50/100, and 100/200 PLO. During this time I played a very small amount of 50/100 PLO and primarily 200/400 PLO under the Brian Townsend account. I wanted to have come forward and make this public sooner, but unfortunately because of certain business relationships I could not do that. What I did was wrong and I am going to be punished by FullTilt poker by having my red pro status revoked for 6 months. I am unsure what action, if any, PokerStars will take. I have also hurt those that I work closely with primarily at CardRunners but also at FullTilt. To compensate those that were hurt by my actions I am going to be donating 25,000 dollars to a charity to be determined in the future. This money will be removed from my CardRunners distributions. This is by no means me making my actions correct but I hope that it shows some good faith towards those that I work closely with. I am very proud of CardRunners; we are doing something very special. My first reaction when this occurred was to go hide under a rock. I am not going to do that and I will answer any questions that are asked of me. I feel that I have nothing to hide. If you wish to interview me on this subject please email [email protected] and we can set something up. I will also be answering questions in not only the CardRunners forum, but the 2+2 forum as well. I will not be hiding from anyone or any questions. Those are the pertinent facts. The reason why I created these accounts was because I enjoy anonymity when playing smaller and am very prideful in what I do. The past two years I have made a lot of money playing poker. This year I have been breakeven. For me it’s correct to play smaller when things aren’t going well. I have never played poker for the money; it has always been a byproduct of my play. Whatever I do I want to be the best at it. For me playing the 200/400 PLO games was not the right thing to do because my results haven’t been good. I think I am a winner in those games and I intend to prove to myself that I am one of the best poker players in the world. I believe what it takes is an incredible amount of focus and work to accomplish this goal. I intend to work harder than anyone to prove this, because I have not been playing my best for the past year. I have something to prove to myself. I have removed what I have online and left myself with 100K. From here I am going to play 25/50 PLO until I have 200K then 50/100 until I have 400K online then 100/200 until I have 800K online. From there I will play 200/400. If things don’t go well when I first move up I will move back down and rinse and repeat until I am at the 200/400 PLO games. I used to think that playing 25/50, 50/100, and 100/200 was a failure because I wasn’t playing the largest limits. I am smart enough to move down when things aren’t going well; I was just too prideful to make it public. Along with this I plan on continuing managing CardRunners and create the best poker instructional videos. I have put a lot of effort into my past videos and I want my partners to know that effort will continue, as well as the effort I put into running the company. I hope that people can look to me and not only learn about poker and bankroll management, but also how to do the right thing and be a good person. Poker isn’t about luck or how you are running. It’s about the work and effort that you put into it. I have not had good results this year because of my poor play and lack of focus, not because I have run below expectation. I want to prove that to everyone. If you follow my play as I move up you will see the trials and tribulations that I face. There will be days of intense frustration and times when I will doubt my game. But I know that with hard work I can accomplish the goal I am setting. I hope that people can not only look to me for poker education but also for the way to live their lives. I made a mistake and I am willing to take responsibility for it. I am willing to stand up and face the music. I apologize to entire the online community. I will never partake in this type of activity in the future. This post should act as a full admission of my guilt, and I sincerely apologize to anyone that I've wronged.

[Valiant23]

Re: Brian Townsend confesses multiaccounting I don't see as much wrong with this as what Sorel Mizzi and Jason Bonomo(?) did in their cheating. All Brian Townsend did was play under an anonymous alias. The only time this should be a problem is if he sat down at a table with more than one account. I suppose that any poker player who makes an income from products linked to the game should be whiter than white though, although I imagine that in the early days Amarillo Slim and Doyle Brunson may have used disguises to hide who they were from time to time.

[SteveO]

Re: Brian Townsend confesses multiaccounting I agree Valiant and it's happening day in and day out and theres nothing anyone can do about it. It's colluding and chip dumping that gets my goat.

[ubermonkey1]

Re: Brian Townsend confesses multiaccounting yeah i dont really have a problem with this and the fact that hes been very open about it shows he had no intension of cheating in any manner,in fact really he has just leveled the playing field if anything. the fact that hes playing omaha with his pro account would scare me as well. your bound to get a lot of action with people going after you and if your running bad in omaha that can be very costly at those levels:loon

[Nade]

Re: Brian Townsend confesses multiaccounting No intension? That's total BS. Why else open a new account but to gain an advantage over his opponents. To the ordinary person who doesn't play these stakes it might seem 'ok' but think if you were playing those high stakes against an 'unknown' random player then it turns out it's in fact a world famous player very good player it would be totally different. Townsend's name tarnished forever more and CR will suffer too.

[goater14]

Re: Brian Townsend confesses multiaccounting I suppose its no different then Phil Lak disguising himself as a old man to play this years wsop main event.

[SteveO]

Re: Brian Townsend confesses multiaccounting Good analogy that Goater.

[pokerjace]

Re: Brian Townsend confesses multiaccounting

I suppose its no different then Phil Lak disguising himself as a old man to play this years wsop main event.

Might just be me but i've always thought Phil Lak is a bellend!

[slapdash]

Re: Brian Townsend confesses multiaccounting

I suppose its no different then Phil Lak disguising himself as a old man to play this years wsop main event.

There's one rather important difference, which is that playing in disguise is not (as far as I know) against the rules of the WSOP, whereas what Brian Townsend has admitted doing is against the rules of FTP and Pokerstars. Not that I think what he did is as bad as what Sorel Mizzi did, which in turn is not as bad as what Justin Bonomo did, which in turn is not as bad as collluding or marking cards. But it was wrong.

[GaF]

Re: Brian Townsend confesses multiaccounting looks like he's been up to no good again - from his blog http://blogs.cardrunners.com/Brian

Allegations I wanted to clear up some allegations about Brian Hastings, Cole South and myself. First Brian H. Cole S and myself never colluded. Collusion is nearly impossible HU but there was always one person playing and never any ghosting occurring. In fact the only person to break the T&C of FullTilt Poker was myself. I had about 20k hands of play on Isildur and I acquired another 30k hands. This is against the T&C of FullTilt Poker and because of this violation I am going to have my red pro status suspended for one month. Of the three I was the sole one to break the T&C of FullTilt. The three of us never shared hands where mucked hands were shown besides a few hands I posted on weaktight.org, and in fact all the information I received could be taken from watching the game. This is not saying what I did wasn't wrong as FullTilt is very clear in its T&C, rather to clear up they type of wrong doing I partook in. As for the accusations of team play Cole Hastings and I live about 3000 miles from each other. I have never played on Brian H's or Cole S's account. As for "conglomerating hand histories," it's simply not an accurate statement. I analyzed the database I put together, and the three of us chatted about my analysis, and optimal strategy against Isildur. According to Full Tilt's T&C this is a permissible discussion as it's super common for players at all stakes to discuss strategy and certain players tendencies. Any discussion we had occured away from the table when we were not playing a session.

[swampster]

Re: Brian Townsend confesses multiaccounting :spank:spank:spank

[glceud]

Re: Brian Townsend confesses multiaccounting ""I analyzed the database I put together, and the three of us chatted about my analysis, and optimal strategy against Isildur. According to Full Tilt's T&C this is a permissible discussion as it's super common for players at all stakes to discuss strategy and certain players tendencies. Any discussion we had occured away from the table when we were not playing a session."" Discussing "strategy and certain players tendencies" is some what adrift from analyzing and comparing databases. Adding that any "discussion we had occured away from the table when we were not playing a session" is pretty rich considering his involvement with cardrunners. I do admire his honesty though:ok and as soon as he is reinstated at full tilt I shall play no were else.:eyes