Brian Townsend

26- year old Brian Townsend is a professional poker player who is based out of Santa Barbara, California. He has achieved credible success in the World Series of Poker this year, making it to the final table. He finished 13th and took home a total winnings of more than $172,000 that day. He is known as a No-Limit Hold ‘Em and Pot Limit Omaha specialist at Full Tilt Poker and normally plays under the alias ‘sbrugby’. His career earnings are in excess of $297,000 and he is currently ranked 1103 in the ProRank League 1.

Even though Townsend began playing at only $0.25/$0.50 blinds in Limit poker, continued success encouraged to up the stakes. Today he is amongst the players who put down the highest stakes in the online gaming circuit. Townsend today plays 200/400 no limit hold ‘Em and pot limit Omaha on multiple poker websites. He is not too active in live tournaments; even then he has made total winnings of more than $230,000 from live tournaments. These include his winnings from the WSOP event mentioned above and the World Poker Tour event where he made significant winnings in the no-limit hold ‘Em event. He was also featured on the GSN’s High Stakes Poker Show and NBC’s “Poker after Dark” where he won $120,000.

He has been playing professionally using his real name at Full Tilt Poker since March 2008. Almost five months later, he was charged with “multi-accounting”. “Multi-accounting” essentially refers to the practice of one player playing using more than one alias. This practice is currently prohibited under gambling laws. Townsend was deemed guilty of this malpractice and was not allowed to play inside Full Tilt Poker for more than six months. Finally he tendered an apology and also publicly acknowledged committing ‘multi-accounting’.

Apart from his poker pursuits, Townsend also writes periodically on the Two Plus Two Publishing forums using the alias ‘aba20’. He has also set up with fellow poker experts CardRunners, a website that doles out useful tips and outlines poker strategies using videos and literature. He is also actively involved in the day-to-day running of the website, often supplying content to much of the website’s pages and also using it as a platform to connect with his fans. Townsend publishes a blog on the website that has a wide following among the poker community as it talks about his experiences on the table and is often peppered with many real life anecdotes. CardRunners targets building an active and intuitive online learning community and have a following that spans from the poker player just starting out to established masters of the game.

Before his professional poker playing days Townsend was set to become an electrical engineer having graduated from the University of California in Santa Barbara. He has been playing professionally since September 2006. Townsend has stated in several forums that his ultimate fantasy is to win in a major live tournament. He has also been very vocal about his admiration for poker legends Mike Matusow and Patrick Antonius.