Bobby's Room at Bellagio: Ornate etched glass sheathed by mahogany walls capture two oval-shaped tables within the poker cathedral. Colorful images of poker's legendary knights hang suspended, and include the room's namesake, Bobby Baldwin, the 1978
World Series of Poker main-event champion and CEO of Mirage Resorts. The elegant room hosts the world's highest-limit cash games; a minimum buy-in of $20,000 is required to walk through the marble-floored entranceway and take a seat.
Sammy Farha, 48, sits at the end of one table, adorned in designer jeans, Gucci loafers, and a striped polo shirt. A diamond bracelet envelops one wrist, a Hublot diamond watch blings on the other. Charming, he is a high-stakes gambler personified. The two-time
WSOP bracelet winner stares straight ahead at his opponent, and checks.
Directly across the table, Brian Townsend, 25, leans across the back of a chair while a masseuse rubs his neck. Dressed in khakis, a T-shirt, and flip-flops, Townsend slides a pile of cranberry chips forward, a pot-size bet of $120,000 after an offsuit jack had fallen on the turn.
Just a few years ago, Townsend was playing the very small limits online. He quickly moved up the ranks and is now a regular in the online nosebleed cash games, where he can easily exchange six-figure pots hourly and score a $500,000 uptick in a day. Online success also brought an invitation to play on
GSN's highly rated television show
High Stakes Poker. Participation in "The Big Game" at Bellagio seemed a likely progression.
Farha stacks and restacks a pile of $25,000 chips. Townsend's bet is for most of the cash before him. Is he getting the right price to call with a draw? Does it feel right, and more importantly, does his opponent have a real hand? Farha weighs the possibilities, stares at the board, and continues to shuffle a tower of chips.
Townsend sits statue still, a poker assassin fully prepared to fire another bullet. Farha reluctantly folds and reloads. Townsend rakes in the chips. The end result in this single hand is meaningless to him; the dividends lie in correct decisions over the long term. At least that's the game plan.
Research the Target
Back in 2003, poker seduced Brian Townsend during the Moneymaker tsunami in his junior year at the University of Santa Barbara. With college buddies, he would play $10 sit-and-gos every Wednesday night and sometimes would check out the low-limit games at a local casino. Consistent success proved elusive for Townsend. A quest to improve consumed his days, nights, and thoughts.
Townsend found himself obsessed with poker's depth, intrigued by the game within the game. "I enjoyed chess and other games while growing up," he said. "I love the mental competition. I really prefer to have the best win rate rather than make the most money. The money is obviously great, but I would play even if I wasn't making money."
A relentless work ethic is part of Townsend's game plan: play thousands of hands, study, adjust, critique, and repeat. That formula developed within him an acute poker consciousness that would storm sbrugby (Townsend's online alias) toward the precipice of Internet legend.
Craig Tapscott: What limits did you begin playing online?
Brian Townsend: I deposited $50 into PartyPoker and started playing 25¢-50¢ limit, and eventually lost that money. When I deposited again, I had done some research and read some books, but mainly I spent a lot of time thinking about my game. Soon, I started beating those low-limit games and built up from there.
CT: You climbed the limit poker levels rather quickly.
BT: I was exclusively a limit player for the first six months. When I reached $10-$20, I could not beat it for the life of me. I would do real well at the $5-$10 limit, move up, and just get murdered. I guess I wasn't thinking enough about my game.
CT: How did you break through that sticking point?
BT: When I put my mind to achieving something, I get it done. I decided I was going to be great at this and do it right. Again, I kept reading and continuing to study more. I was always evaluating my game and thinking about every aspect to improve. Then after graduating from college in 2005, I moved to Vegas with about $8,000 for the summer. I rented a two-bedroom dumpy studio and paid rent up front - $3,000. I figured, I'm 22 and starting graduate school in the fall, so why not have a good time in Vegas for the summer and play poker full time?
CT: So, when did no-limit enter the picture?
BT: During this time, I'd really been struggling at the $10-$20 limit, as I said. So, I took $400 and played no-limit seriously for the first time at the Mirage. I sat in on a $2-$5 game, which was monstrous stakes for me at the time because I had only about $5,000 to my name.
CT: And you won $10,000 and the rest is history?
BT: Not exactly. I took a very bad beat for an $800 pot. That broke me. I walked out of the casino, head hung down, totally disheartened.
CT: Back to the books?
BT: I was always reading books, but my key was always thinking, processing, critiquing, and analyzing everything. I built up my bankroll again online playing $5-$10 limit, grinding it out. The next week, I took a $500 buy-in back to the Mirage. This time, I walked away with $6,000 after a marathon session, which was a great win for me. The next week, I brought a little more money and built my initial $500 up to $11,000. I had a huge pyramid of red chips and thought to myself, "This is awesome - I love no-limit." I ended up crushing the Mirage game, winning about $20,000 total for the summer.
CT: Did you begin to crush the online no-limit games, as well?
BT: For some reason, I still wasn't ready to play no-limit online. I kept grinding online, attempting to beat the $10-$20 limit. Then, the summer ended, I moved back to Santa Barbara, and started graduate school.
No-Limit Reconnaissance
Townsend had neglected to set up housing before his return to the university. Friends offered a comfy futon, which he graciously accepted. By day, he attended classes, and by night, he schooled opponents online while working his way up to the $50-$100 limit.
Success in the no-limit cash games loomed beyond the horizon. In December of 2005, Townsend decided to give 25¢-50¢ no-limit a shot, having built up a $20,000 bankroll online. Still, he struggled, and continued to think deeply about his game, and that would change. Soon, the hard work began to pay off in megabytes. Within eight months, Townsend would be playing in some of the highest cash games online, successfully playing three tables simultaneously in the $200-$400 no-limit games.
CT: When did things change?
BT: I found the CardRunners poker-training site. Even so, I really struggled when I reached $2-$4 no-limit, learning the basic concepts. I didn't seem to move up very quickly. Then, all of a sudden, it just clicked. CardRunners had helped develop my game and I'd been studying a lot. Watching Taylor "GreenPlastic" Caby's game helped me grow as a player. Then, I progressed very quickly.
CT: Sounds too good to be true. There must be some secret that you're not coughing up.
BT: What's been missing in my story is the fact that I put in numerous hours living and breathing poker, totally immersed. I didn't care about school. During that summer in Vegas, I had no friends there, no women, no nightclubs, nothing but poker. I think back now, and it was a pretty depressing period. But when you put in that much time, things pay off. All that time, I was building up to this epiphany. Then, while I was playing $2-$4 no-limit, all of a sudden the game made sense.
CT: And CardRunners helped you achieve that?
BT: Undeniably. It was the number-one thing that helped me grow as a player - so much so that I recently became an investor and co-owner in the business. It's a phenomenal site.
Deciphering Gathered Intelligence
Townsend broke the game down to its basic elements, reassembling the pieces and reverse engineering concepts to fully grasp poker's bigger picture.
"Basically, poker comes down to this: You have a hand and your opponent has a range of hands," said Townsend. "Now, based on your hand versus his range of hands, you decide what the best action is. It's actually a very simple game. You know what you have, and you can approximate what he has based on his position, betting, and psychological mood he's in. Then, with that information, you can act and react accordingly."
Poker's distillation came down to mathematics for Townsend, applied from college degrees in both electrical engineering and material science. The "click" for Townsend was all in the numbers, including bankroll management and controlling the "tilt" factor.
CT: Share your bankroll-management thinking as you were ascending the levels.
BT: I would keep a 20 buy-in rule and maybe take a shot at the next level at 17-18 buy-ins, never 10, except when I first started in those live Mirage games. I moved up aggressively if I thought the game was good and I would have an edge.
CT: Legend has it that you zoomed through the smallest limits to the highest games overnight.
BT: Not at all. Sometimes I would lose a couple of buy-ins and would have to drop back down. I would build back up and just rinse and repeat, moving up, dropping down, moving up, and so on. It wasn't like I just raced through all of the levels without a hiccup. I have no ego about moving down in levels. I am prideful and don't like to move down, but it's part of it.
CT: How did you handle the variance along the way?
BT: During heads-up play, the swings can be as big as 40 buy-ins. Sometimes you lose; sometimes you get drawn out on. I just think about the hand, and if I played it the best I could based on the information I had at the time. Now that I have new information, how would I play it differently?
CT: I've read on the forums that you're just very lucky and run tremendously well.
BT: (Laughing) I don't believe in luck. It's all mathematics. Everybody runs the same. I believe in taking personal responsibility for my play. I see too many posts in which people say they run bad or are unlucky, and so on. I believe that you make your own results, and that everything comes down to your decisions. No one else is in control but yourself. People think that the cards have a role in the results, and they do in the short run, but in the long run, it'll all even out. If your results aren't good, it's most likely because you're not playing well.
Mano a Mano With Farha
Heads-up play on the Internet against the world's best players has drawn to Townsend an army of railbirds and wannabes. On any given day, he can be found battling online with hundreds of thousands of dollars before him, his opponents a murderers' row: Ivey, Antonius, Benyamine, Hansen, Reese, and so on. Still, he yearns for more experience and paralleled success in live games.
The match against Sammy Farha fell into place due to the timing of the
World Series of Poker. Both were in town to participate in the $5,000 pot-limit Omaha (with rebuys) tournament. Townsend was looking to play a bigger game than his usual $200-$400 no-limit online game. Within a few days of arriving in Las Vegas, his wish would be granted.
CT: How did the match come about?
BT: The match started when I was at dinner with Brandon Adams, a cash-game specialist, and some other players. They were discussing Brandon's match a few months earlier with Sammy. After the pot-limit Omaha tourney was over, I got in touch with Sammy and he was ready to play.
CT: You switched between hold'em and pot-limit Omaha. The blinds were $500-$1,000. Were you bankrolled for this high a game or just taking a shot?
BT: For $500-$1,000 and later $1,000-$2,000 blinds - yes. We eventually increased it to $1,000-$2,000 blinds and were straddling at times for $4,000. The game was so big, it's amazing, and the swings were massive. It was probably the biggest poker game that's ever run. And it was an uncapped game. I really like playing uncapped, as it's much more challenging to have money to bet on all three streets.
CT: You were down seven figures during the middle of the second day before rallying back by day's end. In total, you were still down almost half a million dollars for two days.
BT: That's true. The first day, I didn't play very well. It was after the pot-limit Omaha tourney and I had been up for 20 hours. He definitely outplayed me that first day. We took a day off, slept, and came back.
CT: Why play this high? It has to be out of your comfort zone a bit, especially live.
BT: I believed I had an edge, so I chose to play. But even after the results of three days of play and the number of hands we saw, the results are very meaningless. If I had lost, I would say the same thing. In heads-up play, there are lots of swings and close decisions. It takes a long time to determine who's better.
CT: Was live play at this level that much different than online?
BT: People overexaggerate the differences between live and online play. It's the same game. They overvalue live tells. It's not like you're going to look into someone's soul and see that he has aces and fold your kings.
CT: When you began focusing on heads-up play instead of ring and six-max games, was it an easy transition?
BT: When I first started to play heads up at the higher levels, I didn't adjust very well. I had some real big losses during that learning curve. It took a lot of practice, nothing special, just a lot of play and adjusting.
By the conclusion of the heads-up match with Farha, Townsend would walk away a substantial winner. Word of the high-stakes brawl had spread, drawing some of the world's best cash-game pros later that evening. Townsend would continue raking in massive pots over the next 36 hours as additional players came and went.
Patrik Antonius, Bobby Baldwin, David Benyamine, Nenad Medic, Johnny Chan, Minh Ly, Brandon Adams, Rafael Amit, and John Hennigan all sat in at one time or another. Townsend ran over the game, leaving Vegas with a profit of more than $2 million.
"I was very impressed with Brian," said Brandon Adams. "He's clearly a player with a lot of nerve. Online, it's not unusual for him to fire off a bluff of $100,000, but (playing) live, it might be that as of that match, he'd never fired off a bluff of $200,000. For Sammy, that's an every-week occurrence."
Farha confesses to never having played a match like the one versus Townsend, in which hand after hand, all the money was shoved into the middle. "He's a very strong player, very aggressive. The guy is not afraid to put a lot of money into the pot on a bluff or on a draw. He's a unique player, like I've never met in my life. That's the problem. I'm strong, also. When two aggressive players meet, there's a conflict."
Cover Blown
Townsend turned down requests for an interview repeatedly, preferring to maintain a low profile and let his game do the talking. Only recently did he pull back the curtains on his game and personal story. The reason: his investment in CardRunners.com and a sincere urge to give back.
"I've always been a teacher," stated Townsend. "All through college, I was a tutor and thought I was going to be a professor. You achieve a higher level of understanding when you have to teach. I also wanted to contribute to the poker community that had helped me grow."
CT: Your opponents can watch your poker-training videos at CardRunners and pick up on ways to crack you. Is this intimate sharing of your strategies cause for concern?
BT: I'm not really concerned about giving away my secrets. Here's an example: I noticed in the big games that I was folding a lot to reraises preflop. A lot of the good young players started taking advantage of this by reraising me more preflop. All I did to adjust was call more preflop, float them on the flop, and take the pot away from them. I believe I adjust and adapt well.
CT: What does the future hold for Brian Townsend?
BT: I've already set up a nice retirement package, which makes my mother very happy (laughing). For the near future, poker is my focus and my career, but there are more business opportunities forthcoming. I also could see myself funding the Ph.D. program I was involved in as a start-up company.
CT: Any parting advice?
BT: I had success mainly because I immersed myself in poker completely and had no ego about moving down in levels. Even when I had a big downswing in pot-limit Omaha and had to move down and refocus, I got re-motivated and rethought my game.
CT: Thanks for your time, Brian, and for inviting Card Player into your home.
Townsend is a self-made millionaire who loves his work. Each morning, he awakens to the sound of waves crashing below his home perched on a cliff in Santa Barbara. Inside, a desk loaded with two flat-screen monitors faces a panoramic ocean view, a peaceful backdrop for mentally preparing to skirmish daily online. To warm up, he slips on his shorts, T-shirt, and flip-flops, and takes his dog for a run on the beach below.
Life is sweet when a plan comes together for a killer poker player. 
