A Poker Life -- Andrew 'Browndog19' BrownA Rollercoaster Ride to the Top |
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To be great, a player must have unassailable self-assurance and be able present themselves with a certain air of confidence without a hint of vulnerability. Any weakness shown — a regard for money, traces of intimidation, or failure to show 100 percent trust in instincts — will be pounced upon in high-stakes games.
Andrew “Browndog19” Brown, a 27-year-old professional poker player who won the most recent $25,000 heads-up pot-limit Omaha championship on Full Tilt, was born with this sort of personality, and he brings it to the table every single time he sits down.
Class Rebel
Brown has always been a New Yorker. He went to school in Chappaqua, located in the district of Westchester, just north of New York City. Growing up, he had a fascination with cards, and played often with his grandparents, who taught him a plethora of games.
“My dad taught me war, my grandmother taught me gin. My grandfather taught me tons of games, but we mostly played bridge. Bridge is way harder than poker. The first time I played poker was in middle school,” remembers Brown.
Brown attended high school and was a happy, outgoing teenager until his two closest childhood friends moved away his sophomore year. After a year of bad grades and disgruntled behavior, his mother suggested he go to boarding school. Brown thought it was a good idea.
He applied to three institutions, with Pomfret School in Connecticut as his first choice. Brown was accepted into his second and third choice schools, but when the head of admissions called from Pomfret, she told him that he hadn’t gotten in. The confident teenager with nothing to lose proceeded to attempt to persuade the administrator otherwise for about 10 minutes, eventually getting his way. Just like that, Brown had talked his way into Pomfret.
When he arrived at boarding school, Brown reentered his sophomore year, and this time he had much more success. Sports, instead of being extracurricular, as they were in public school, were mandatory. Because of his tall, lanky frame, he was recruited to the wrestling team. Equipped with an advantageous body type and a one-time Olympic wrestler for a coach, Brown was able to outclass most of his opponents.
“At first I was scared of it, of the stereotypes and all that it entailed, but I did it and was really successful at tournaments and the state championships. I wasn’t good because I was strong, because I was a wimp,” Brown laughs, “but I was able to beat people who were a foot shorter than me and little gorillas in the same weight class because I think I was a bit smarter than them. I out-thought them.”
His knack for strategic planning and sense of balance, which he acquired from wrestling, served as assets as a coxswain on the rowing team. Brown was responsible for steering the boat, and for motivating and coordinating the power and rhythm of the rowers. The job may seem easy in concept to outsiders, but in the world of rowing, the high-pressure position is often celebrated for victories and blamed for losses.
With wrestling and crew to keep him busy, Brown breezed through the rest of high school. He admits to being quite the procrastinating student, but he pulled decent grades nonetheless. His cocky attitude toward school and his ability to achieve high test scores without class participation or study often upset his teachers.
After graduation, Brown set off for college at Rochester Institute of Technology. At first, he joined both the wrestling and crew team, but after a few meetings with the wrestling coach, he ultimately decided to stick with crew. As a freshman, Brown worked his way up the first-boat coxswain because of the superior experience he acquired in prep school. Despite his success at the sport, that too fell through.
“I did my job well in crew, but I ended up quitting. Basically, I got into a verbal argument with the women’s crew head coach. My coach didn’t back me up, and I thought he should have defended me.”
During the summer after his freshman year, Brown moved to New York City for an internship and worked at the front desk in the Marriott Marquee in Times Square. He also transferred to New York University to finish his hotel management/hospitality degree, but that’s when poker would intervene.
Hard Knock Poker
At NYU, Brown joined a fraternity, and he quickly rekindled his love for card games. The boys would play poker on a weekly basis, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy Brown’s growing yearn to learn and win money. Just after turning 21, he began traveling around New York City playing in underground games, losing at first and learning the hard way.
“I didn’t care what they were playing. I did what I had to do in order to play. If the buy-in was all I had, I’d use it. If had to short-buy so that I could lose a couple times but watch the good players for as long as I could, I’d do that.”
It was the live games in which he honed his skills in pot-limit hold’em, limit hold’em, pot-limit Omaha, and Omaha eight-or-better. It wasn’t until he began playing online that he really learned no-limit hold’em.
“Every week, my mom would deposit $50 in my bank account, and I would immediately put it online to play. I’d run it up to a minimum of $500 — but most of time to like $5,000 — and then lose it playing too high. I did that every week. Honestly, I didn’t know there was a cash-out button.”
Brown continued the busy cycle of going to class, playing live, and playing online, but poker was his clear priority. His grades suffered, and he rarely attended class. On the other hand, he was steadily improving at the game he loved.
“I finally started figuring it out. I started copying the good players, and then I started doing some thinking on my own like a big boy.”
After winning a small rebuy tournament on Paradise Poker for $7,500, he finally learned how to use the cash-out options. When the money became tangible and he realized there were major fiscal rewards from online poker, he became unstoppable.
With hours upon hours of study and play, Brown moved up in stakes with Ari Engel, his roommate at the time, watching his every move. By the end of Brown’s junior year, his poker career was booming, but consequentially, his schoolwork suffered. After taking a short leave of absence and missing a due date for paperwork to re-enroll, NYU denied his request to return to school.
With his parents furious, Brown had to explain his indifference to getting a degree. He’d been making more money playing poker than most salary jobs. Once school was clearly out of the picture, Brown moved out of the city back to Chappaqua so that he could focus 100 percent on poker.
By the suggestion of a friend, Brown and Engel deposited onto Bodog, a site which had been know as just a sports-betting site before poker was added. With the popularity of poker on the rise and a player pool made up of mostly sports bettors, Brown and Engel — who’d later become known as BodogAri — killed the games.
“The two of us just destroyed the site for hundreds of thousands of dollars inside of two years. We won all of the money, and we did it playing the biggest stakes at the time, which was nine-handed $2-$4 no-limit and $15-$30 limit.”
With extra money to spare, Brown began betting sports on Bodog, but he began losing money in chunks. After blowing through $160,000, he was able to quit, plugging the life-leak early, and he says he hasn’t place a sports bet since.
Brown spent the next few months living and breathing poker. When he wasn’t playing online, he’d take the train from Chappaqua into the city to play days worth of live games, often sleeping on the couches, too tired to go home after exhausting sessions. Without major responsibilities, and with an unrivaled passion for learning through experience and playing with the best — which required him often play above his bankroll — Brown admits to going broke several times over.
Lacking a sustainable bankroll, but equipped with sure-fire talent, Brown never had a problem getting in a game. He pushed himself and learned to exploit several forms of the game. His Omaha eight-or-better skills were honed through a mentor, while his pot-limit Omaha game was sharpened playing on European-based poker sites. All the while, Brown never questioned whether or not he would become one of the best.
In 2008, Brown won his seat into the World Series of Poker main event online. He had a backer at the time, and since he already had planned to go the Las Vegas for the main event, he decided to play in a few preliminary events, as well. That inclination led the New York kid to his first bracelet. He wound up outlasting a field of 551 players in the $2,000 Omaha eight-or-better event, snagging $226,000 and a gold WSOP bracelet.
“It was a massive thrill. I played amazingly, and I don’t think anyone took me seriously; especially Ted Forrest, who I beat heads up. At first, I was intimidated, but I didn’t find the players in Vegas particularly good.”
Soon thereafter, Brown also cashed in 19th place in the $1,500 razz event, but he was unable to make it out of day 1 in the main event. After a successful summer and new accessory on his wrist, Brown returned to New York, but his issues with poor bankroll management continued to haunt him.
“I would run my accounts up and then lose it playing in higher stakes all of the time. Once they opened up bigger stakes on Full Tilt, I could never hold onto my money. I was so stupid. I would play like two buy-in poker.”
Recent Turnaround
In April 2009, Brown won a $2,000 pot-limit Omaha with rebuys event during the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker for $166,000. He says that since then, he’s learned to be more responsible with his money.
In November, Brown took down the latest $25,000 heads-up pot-limit Omaha championship on Full Tilt, outlasting an elite field of PLO players — but to Brown, it wasn’t that tough.
“There really were no tough opponents until my final match, and I know that sounds really arrogant and egotistical to say that. I got lucky, not with the cards, but the other way you can get really lucky in a heads-up tournament — getting easy draws.”
Brown was one of only three matches that were forced to play round one. After winning, he went on to play in round two, and he got a controversial win by blinding out his opponent who timed out.
“He wasn’t there. He obviously wasn’t there for the first-round bye, either. He probably forgot about the tournament or satellited in and couldn’t un-register. When I saw he was sitting out, I took his blinds, and anyone who gives me shit — what did you want me to do? He wasn’t there! I could have waited an hour, and he still wouldn’t have been there.”
After four more rounds, Brown claimed victory and nearly $400,000.
“Josh Arieh had me on the ropes and had 10,500 in chips when I had 1,500, and he couldn’t seal the deal. He was not playing correctly when I was short. He should have been pushing me around, but he wasn’t. He was being a wuss. I think Justin Smith is a good player, but I don’t think he made the correct adjustments against me. I expected him to be my toughest opponent, but he wasn’t. I beat the next guy in 25 hands, and then I played “UgotaBanana” [Harry Kackza] in the finals. He’s an excellent player, but he didn’t play great in the final. I think he probably played better in every single other match. He beat Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, and Cole South on the way to losing to me. They all played poorly. I didn’t play anyone who played well.”
Since his win, Brown has been playing high stakes PLO cash games and has even taken on “Isildur1,” a player who has been stirring up the nose-bleed stakes online with his massive million-dollar swings. Brown played him at $200-$400 stakes, which he admits is just slightly above his roll. Fortunately for him, he got the best of his opponent.
“I give the guy quite a bit of credit. I think that he’s done things strategically — which I can’t go into — for the game of pot-limit Omaha [that are] completely new. I think he has some major leaks, and he might be a little young and inexperienced in certain psychological aspects, but he’s done things that are tremendous for the game that some people have adapted to, and some haven’t.”
Browndog
When he’s not playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars, Brown is a regular 27-year-old who loves sports, traveling, and watching HBO and Showtime shows. And for those who were wondering — yes, he does have a brown dog. It’s a tenacious French bulldog named Nebraska. Brown is also working as an instructor for Deepstacks University.
Brown may come off as arrogant, but opponents will rarely find a chink in his armor. The unwavering confidence is no doubt an attribute to his game. With money on his side, and feeling at the top of his game, Brown is looking forward to continuing his run, and sustaining his bankroll.
“I can be responsible. I can be an adult. I can really take care and manage my money, because this time I’ve just made so much that I don’t think I can screw it up.”
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