Online Poker News
I’ve been out of the loop as far as any recent happenings in the high stakes online scene is concerned so I did a little reading up last night. I remember posting about a week ago that Isildur1 was rumoured to be broke but I just found out why. It turns out that Brian Hastings took $4M off of him in one session. An amazing feat to be sure but what’s even more amazing is the circumstances in which this happened.
It would appear that Brian Townsend helped Hastings by showing him his own hand histories from playing against Isildur1 as well as some analysis. Apparently Townsend poured over 50 000 hands to detect a pattern to Isildur’s game and shared this information with Hastings and Cole South. In an interview with ESPN.com, Hastings is quoted as saying “We’ve done quite a bit of studying of his habits,” Hastings said. “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 (South) as well.” This is called data mining and it goes against the Terms and Conditions (T&C) of Full Tilt. This is Townsend’s second violation against the T&C as he was also caught using multiple accounts. So far the only punishment has been a one month ban from red pro status and apparently Cole will receive the same. More on this later.
This brings up an interesting situation though. I don’t really see how it’s possible for Full Tilt to stop this sort of thing from happening outside of blocking all outsiders from access to hand histories. There’s nothing to stop a person from watching a person play, keep notes on them throughout, maybe even record a session if someone wanted to go so far. Talking about hands and strategies with someone is not bad and is something I highly recommend. But to actually get together and sort of try to gang up on one person seems unfair to the person being ganged up on. They didn’t do this to durrrr when he first came on the scene, dominating everyone like he was but Isildur1 might be a little crazier than even Tom Dwan. I don’t think there will ever be a way to stop something like this. The only reason they got caught in the first place is because Hastings opened his mouth. Why, is anyone’s guess. With technology the way it is today, it’s so much easier to analyze how people play and it doesn’t matter if it’s the big game or some $1/2 game that a guy is crushing, people can chat however they want about what to do about it. With hand history databases available now, it makes it easier to find holes in someone’s game and with so many better players than ever they’re going to find a way to exploit them. Full Tilt did make it so you can’t import hand histories of games you were observing, so now you actually have to be playing at the table. Sites like PokerTableRatings.com are still out there though and making stats available to anyone who logs on.
Now, did the punishment fit the crime? To be honest, I think in general this is pretty minor but since it is a violation of the T&C then I think the punishment should be a little more harsh, especially since this isn’t the first time that Brian Townsend has been caught in violation. One month? Big deal. My question is what if some random $1/2 player had done the same thing? Maybe he talked about it during a game where he just took a big amount from a $1/2 regular. What would happen to him? My guess is that he might have had his funds seized and his account closed. You can’t have a double standard just because one person plays at a higher level. I remember about two years ago a buddy of mine getting a chat warning for abusing players. He emailed Full Tilt back and asked them if they do the same thing for Mike Matusow when he goes off on people. They said that people expect that from Mike and it isn’t as big a deal. Well, that’s a horrible answer. He told them “Well, now people can expect that from me and it won’t be a big deal either”. Needless to say they didn’t go along with that and of course never heard back from them about the Matusow issue. They knew they had no argument after that. Bottom line is, the standard needs to be the same for everybody, no matter what limits they play.
