I don’t mean to be a smart ass but I predicted on my blog weeks ago that the top players on Full Tilt would be plotting against Isildur. Anyone who doubted that has absolutely no understanding of how online high-stakes poker works or is very naïve…..or both. So the latest Brian Townsend scandal and Isildur losing an estimated $5 million dollars is certainly no surprise to me.
That’s like being surprised to look out of your living room window in January and seeing snow when you live in Scotland. We are talking about millions of dollars here and when a player puts himself into that situation then he has to expect counter moves from the top players on that site.
Personally I think that Isildur has been somewhat foolish in hanging around. He was reportedly around $5 million up mainly from Tom Dwan but that didn’t prove that he was going to be a winning player long term... that merely proved that he had found an angle on Dwan and was exploiting it.
For Townsend, Hastings and Cole South to share and discuss hand histories is breaking the terms and conditions of Full Tilt Poker. So FTP suspended Townsend for 30 days which I think is laughable to be quite frank. But in no way is this a one off. I would not touch the high-stakes online games with the proverbial barge pole unless I was both playing the game full-time and that I could also guarantee that I would be operating exactly the same as every other player on that site.
Top players share information, that is a given fact and the only remaining question is in who shares information with who and what. It is almost like a “firm” in the high-stakes games where if you are not part of a network then you are painfully exposed. I really do not think that being a great poker player is enough in online poker.
Isildur proved that he is a great player, but he is down around $2.5 million as we speak and no longer playing on Full Tilt. He lost $4.2 million to Brian Hastings in a single day of play purely based on the information that Townsend had provided. Both Townsend and South also took Isildur for substantial sums of money and all of this could end up in court with such massive sums at stake.
If it all goes to court then the entire world will know who Isildur is but his real name is starting to leak out anyway. I can also state that was has happened on FTP also happens at lower levels as well. I know of professional players who share database information on players as low as $10-$20 no-limit and $30-$60 limit.
Even $30-$60 limit is a serious game if you are playing heads up or six handed in online poker. You could be making hundreds of dollars an hour in these games with the right opponents. Playing poker at the upper end of the middle limits and the high-stakes games should be a full-time occupation. If it isn’t then you are already in serious trouble before you even start.
You simply must give the players at these levels an awful lot of respect and playing in these games on a part-time basis without devoting yourself to them full-time will be simply courting disaster. As soon as Isildur became a face in the high-stakes games then he would be being watched very closely. The only way that this wouldn’t happen is if he spewed his roll from the get go.
But he didn’t and he took some very big names and some very good players for considerable sums of money. So whatever bankroll he had was swelled to the tune of around $5 million. When that happens then the sharks were always going to come calling. What I can’t understand is why Townsend would volunteer such secret information with at least two other players if they were not working as a team?
However the only thing that really shocks me is that so many people are shocked by it. This sort of thing happens and it will go on happening until there are no more high-stakes online games… since that is not very likely then I guess that it will keep on happening. The fact of the matter is this, when you combine human nature with vast amounts of money then there can really only be one conclusion unfortunately.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson is sponsored by Poker Loco and can be seen at
www.pokerloco.com/thedean
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