Brian Townsend Has His "Red Pro" Status Suspended on Full Tilt Poker for Second Time

[J4bberW0cky]

Agree, terrible rule. And yeah. . . pretty dumb for getting caught. It'd be interesting to know how he got caught.

[LAPPIN]

He got caught because of stupid comments made by Brian Hastings. In a recent interview with ESPN, Hastings made the following statement.

"We've done quite a bit of studying of his habits. Honestly, I give most of the credit to Brian Townsend here. I mean, Brian is honestly the hardest worker I know in poker. He analyzed a database of heads-up hands that Isildur1 had played and constructed ranges of what Isildur1 was doing in certain spots. In a way, I feel bad that it wasn't Brian who got this win instead of me. Obviously I'm happy and I'll take it, but Brian did a ton of work. The three of us discussed a ton of hands and the reports that Brian made, so I'm very thankful to him and to Cole as well."

According to Tony G who knows Viktor Blom personally, Viktor is currently drafting an appeal to Full Tilt, citing a breach of the following Full Tilt Rule:

"The use of shared hand histories provides detailed information on opponents a player has little or no personal experience playing against, and is deemed to be an unfair advantage. Violating this policy is subject to the maximum penalties for prohibited software use."

This one is far from over...

[AdamS]

Nowhere in Hastings' statement does it explicitely say he broke a rule. Whose hand history Townsend studied is not given, only that the three of them discussed the results of the study, which is NOT illegal under the rules. Townsend has a better appeal than Krom.

Also, if Hastings can show that he has experience against Krom before the giant win, the rule is negated by its own language.

[LAPPIN]

Hastings had 0 hands recorded versus Viktor before this win.

[ThrillCory90]

There was nothing wrong about Brian playing on another account. He used the account for playing lower stakes against players he probabally knew nothing about so having a seperate account almost made it more fair since his opponents would already know a lot about him without him knowing anything about their games if he played under his normal account. And how is sharing hand histories even considered cheating?

[LAPPIN]

There is a lot wrong with what Townsend did. Multi-accounting is wrong. Players have a right to know the 'identity' (in this case 'online identity') of who they are playing against. In the live arena, you cannot 'be' someone else so your opponents can avoid you if they know you to be a good player with whom they do not wish to tangle. Players should be afforded the equivalent courtesy in the online arena. Townsend has admitted that his multi-accounting with the Stellarnebula account was very wrong.

On the issue of Hand History sharing, there is a significant difference between posting a hand on a forum such as this for the purposes of discussion and dumping accumulated data on one opponent (literally 10s of thousands of hands) from the accounts (experiences) of different players into one piece of software for the purposes of deriving more accurate hand range information on that opponent, information that should only be garnered by one's own personal experiences/interactions with the player.

Lets not be naive here about what happened. Viktor Blom was trapped. He was a mark for the Cardrunners cheating trio.

Brian Townsend took his hands versus Isildur1 and the hands of Cole South and combined them. Uploading that data onto poker-tracking software, he derived extremely accurate hand-ranges for Isildur1 (bigger sample=more accurate data). He and Cole then brought Hastings into the loop. Playing with their money, Hastings would sit into a high-stakes heads-up game with isildur1, appearing to the young phenom as a lower-stakes player looking to take a shot - seemingly too good to be true for Isildur1 precisely because it was. Over Hastings shoulder who I'm sure was relegated to button pusher were Townsend and South and on his screen was a HUD containing all the mathematical info needed to exploit Isildur's tendencies, mathematical info that a player is only permitted to garner through their own experiences.

There's a word for what they did.

Hustling.

[Chipless Wonder]

I agree with LAPPIN on this. Although I am a big Full Tilt supporter, I am offended that the punishment this time is only a thirty day red pro status suspension, which I equate to a slap on the wrist.