About Brian Townsend

Brian Townsend, a Full Tilt Poker red pro, recent admitted in his blog to having used his personal assistant's FTP account to play online at stakes below what he had previously been accustomed to, thus making it less than obvious to opponents who he was. He did the same on PokerStars with a second account, though I have not seen any information on how he got a second account there, or, if it belonged to somebody else, who that may have been. (Maybe it was the same assistant. I just don't know.)

I read about this first on Pokerati. Their post is here, with a link to Townsend's confession. The comments are worth reading, too, both on Pokerati and on Townsend's blog post. Townsend also started a thread on twoplustwo.com to address questions that people might have, so that he wouldn't be accused of hiding anything. Although he initially promised to answer all questions, he declined to answer some (such as details of how much he won under the disguised accounts) and ignored others. After a couple of days, he announced that he would no longer participate in the thread.

Let me address that aspect of this mess first. It was probably unwise to make a blanket promise to answer all questions, because some questions aren't worth answering, some people will keep coming up with slight variations on questions just to be pests or because they haven't paid attention to what has been said before, etc. I don't think he anticipated the number and tone of questions. I don't really blame him for eventually disengaging from it when it appeared that some people just wouldn't be satisfied no matter what he said.

My impression was that he was unusually and admirably candid. He obviously didn't hire a PR person (he even says so explicitly). As Townsend admits, his language skills are not particularly good, and it shows, kind of awkwardly, in his personal posts, in a way that no PR person would have allowed. But I found it refreshing. It's not often that a public figure who has screwed up opens himself to questions from whoever feels like posting one, and responds personally, even knowing that readers might make fun of his flawed grammar and spelling and inelegant language.

He even admitted that, had opponents not gotten suspicious of his identity and posted their evidence in online forums, he would likely still be using the secret accounts and would not be admitting to it. He admitted that the $25,000 to charity was not his idea, but was imposed on him by CardRunners, the poker training company for which he is one of the most prominent instructors.

He said--believably, I thought--that his reason for starting to use anonymous accounts was not to get an edge on opponents, but because he was embarrassed to have to drop down in stakes due to an abnormally bad year so far. He also said emphatically that he never used multiple accounts to sit at the same table or enter the same tournament. I assume that this is true, because it would have been trivially easy for the sites to check this.

Predictably, opinions expressed in the twoplustwo thread, and in a bunch of blogs I checked for alternative viewpoints, are all over the map, ranging from a call for a lifetime ban from FTP and Stars plus personally reimbursing every cent he won to all opponents he played while using the second accounts, to, basically, "This is no big deal, it happens a lot, nothing need be done about it." Some say he got preferential treatment because he's a big-name star. Others argue that when ordinary folks get caught by FTP opening a second account (most commonly because they want to enroll in a rakeback program), all that happens is that the second account gets cancelled and its funds moved to the first account, and by that standard, Townsend got punished a lot more severely than anybody else. (He is losing his red pro status for six months. Stars will only say that they have handled the situation, but will not state publicly what specific measures, if any, they took.)

My sense is that it is a stretch to label this as "cheating." It's not clearly erroneous to do so, because there was at least a small edge gained, at least temporarily, that would not have been present had the rules been followed. But it's worlds away from using software to look at opponents' hole cards, or collusion, or taking multiple seats at a table or in a tournament simultaneously, or going deep in a tournament and then selling the seat to a "closer." I just can't bring myself to slap Townsend with the label of "cheater."

As others have pointed out, some online sites openly allow changing one's screen name. I remember that Party Poker used to allow a name change every six months, and I changed mine a couple of times--not because I wanted to hide or disguise myself, but because I got tired of them, or thought of ones I liked better. I'm told that the Cake network allows screen name changes even more frequently than that--every week. So using a different screen name is not violating the fundamental rules of poker in the same way that collusion is.

It might be useful to consider whether playing under multiple accounts (not simultaneously) on a site where doing so is against the terms of service is, as the ancient distinction puts it, malum in se or malum prohibitum; that is, inherently wrong or wrong only because it is against the rules. I'd have to put Townsend's "crime" in the latter category. It is a thing prohibited by some online sites but allowed by others.

That doesn't make it OK. Assessing the degree of wrongness is a lot more complicated, I think. Maybe it would be helpful to list the reasons that what he did was wrong, along with the possible consequences, on several different axes:

1. It was wrong because he promised not to do it. He promised this, first, when agreeing to the sites' terms of service upon creating an account. He also presumably made a second contractual agreement, when CardRunners entered a formal business arrangement with FTP, that he would play only under his real name. It is generally wrong to break one's promises, and violate one's contracts, absent compelling countervailing reason to do so.

2. It was wrong because it gave him an advantage that could not be matched by his opponents, unless they, too, broke the rules in a similar manner. That is, opponents he had played before were known to him, but, asymmetrically, he was not known to them. Had this occurred on a site that allows screen name changes, this would not be a consideration, because shifting/hiding identities would be equally available to any who chose to use that option.

However, this is mitigated by the fact that he was still playing at games and stakes that are populated almost exclusively by very savvy, experienced players. Such people will not long be fooled by a wolf in sheep's clothing. He was "outed" by several means acting conjointly, but primary among them was that his smart opponents simply recognized his style of play, and noticed that this new player appeared at the same time as "Brian Townsend" disappeared from the higher-stakes games. In short, any edge he gained by disguising himself did not last long--perhaps as little as a couple of hours of playing time against any reasonably perceptive opponent.

Again, though, it is worth noting that the edge, if any, was not Townsend's motivation--if you believe him on that point, which I tend to do.

3. It was wrong because the revelation of it is an embarrassment to a lot of people and entities Townsend is associated with: CardRunners and its owners and employees and his fellow trainers, as well as FTP. They are all tainted to some degree because people will necessarily wonder how much they knew and when they knew it, and, fairly or unfairly, criticize them for perceived silence/approval/inaction/complicity/conspiracy. He also presumably hurt their wallets, as the businesses will probably take at least a small hit from players who choose StoxPoker or PokerVT or PokerXFactor instead of CardRunners because of the scandal.

4. It was wrong because the associated publicity will undoubtedly convince other online players that this is really not a big deal, and the whole industry may become harder to police. At least some percentage of such players will subsequently step over a line that Townsend himself would not cross, and start playing at cash tables or entering tournaments as two different screen names. In short, Townsend set a bad example and may inadvertantly prompt others to do the same or even worse.

5. It was wrong because it hurts the entire industry to have another scandal when we are trying to convince Congress, state legislatures, courts, national media outlets, and the general public that poker, including online poker, is and should remain an honorable and legal pasttime and tradition. Events such as this may increase the chance that, sooner or later, we will have to endure a horrible litany of governmental regulations just to prevent this kind of thing, making online poker more cumbersome for all and less profitable for the better players.

To his credit, Townsend probably would admit to all of the above, and has said most of those things either explicitly or implicitly in his apology and answers to various questions.

With the possible exception of the first item, all of the wrongs on my list gravitate toward the malum prohibitum side. They would not be issues on a site or network that openly permitted name changes.

Did Phil Laak do wrong by playing the first day of the WSOP Main Event in disguise? There is no rule against it. There is arguably a difference in that in his case it simply leveled the playing field (i.e., nobody at the table knew each other's styles from reputation or previous experience), as opposed to Townsend's situation, in which he was suddenly "cloaked" to opponents, but opponents against whom he had played previously were not "cloaked" to him. But it's not at all clear to me whether being a well-known pro in an event like the WSOP is an advantage (because amateur players shy away from tangling with you) or a disadvantage (because they come after you more, hoping to be able to brag to their friend about who they knocked out). Either way, the point is that this seems to me the functional equilalent of what Townsend did, though his actions were extended longer over time. The point is that Laak wearing a disguise was not unethical, because it was not against the rules, and Townsend's adopting a "disguise" was unethical, almost exclusively because it was against the rules.

There's an interesting comparison case from earlier this year: Jonathan Little was stripped of his FTP red pro status permanently for allowing some friends to play under his name. Townsend's punishment is less harsh. One cynical poster on twoplustwo attributed this to the fact that Little injured FTP directly, while Townsend "only" injured its customers, and FTP obviously takes the former type of infraction much more seriously. Even I am not that cynical, however. I think the more obvious explanation is the prominence of the promise that was broken. FTP makes playing and chatting with the pros its primary advertising hook. If it turns out that the players using the red pros' names are not actually who they say they are, FTP loses its main claim to fame, and presumably a lot of business. Conversely, if it were to become known that occasionally a red pro played under an assumed name, for whatever reason, I don't think the site's customers would feel the same degree of betrayal and consequent mistrust. Discovering a "ringer" is not the same as discovering that you've been openly lied to.

Of course, a thing being malum prohibitum does not make a violation trivial. But it does or should make one view it in a different light than things that are malum in se. Those who in blogs or forums have blithely lumped Townsend together with the UltimateBlecch/AbsolutePuker crimes, or even with multi-accounters who have confessed to or been caught using multiple accounts at once, or selling accounts, are, in my view, simply not thinking clearly about the situation. They are not the same thing at all.

The English-only rule at poker tables is there to prevent problems. It does not mean that everybody who violates the rule is colluding at the game. The vast majority of the time, they are talking about matters wholly unrelated, and the actual integrity of the game is not compromised. Nor do the violators have any actual mischief in their hearts, even if they know that they are in technical non-compliance with the house rules. The rule needs to be enforced, though, so that nobody at the table has to wonder whether they are being cheated right under their noses. I think Townsend's violation is somewhat similar. It was not done with malicious intent and was not intrinsically a threat to the game's integrity. However, when the rule is in place at a site, it does need to be enforced, (1) so that all players are on a level playing field, (2) to reduce the risk that multiple accounts will be used nefariously, and (3) to prevent general loss of confidence in the game's integrity.

I think Townsend's remorse is sincere, even if it was triggered more by growing public suspicion than by an internal soul-searching. Yeah, he screwed up, but it was in a way that was far more stupid than it was evil or corrupt. I've done plenty of things that could be so categorized. He was embarrassed to be seen having to step down in limits after a nasty losing streak. What poker player cannot empathize with how that feels? Obviously that doesn't make how he decided to handle the problem right, but it's a hell of a lot less venal than setting out to rob people. We have, sadly, plenty of examples of online scandals involving precisely that. I think it is terribly misguided to lump Townsend in with that lot. There are degrees of wrong, and Townsend's simply does not compare with the major scandals of the last couple of years. If he got a "slap on the wrist," as some have complained, rather than the death penalty, it's because that punishment better fits the crime, and reasonable people who are making those decisions are getting it about right.

What Townsend did does not affect me in any direct way, and only in the remotest indirect ways. Since I was not injured by his actions, it is not really my place to offer him forgiveness.

But I offer it anyway.


Addendum, September 3, 2008:

Commenter Kinston reminds me of a point I intended to make in the original post, but then forgot about while writing it. Lee Jones, among others, has suggested that sooner or later online poker sites will implement systems by which users can adopt a one-session anonymous identity in order to escape being tagged by the various player databases. See his interesting commentary here.