Brian Townsend is looked up to in poker circles as an ultra-high stakes online player.

Hence it came as a surprise to many when in his blog he confessed to operating multiple accounts on two of the largest online poker rooms, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.

In his confession BrianTownsend said, “I wanted to have come forward and make this public sooner, but unfortunately because of certain business relationships I could not do that.

What I did was wrong and I am going to be punished by Full Tilt Poker by having my red pro status revoked for six months. I am unsure what action, if any, PokerStars will take.”

The reason Townsend gave for his multi-accounting for the last six months was that he was compelled to play at lower stakes due to continuous losses but did not want to make this public, as it would affect his standing as a nosebleed player. Therefore he created other accounts to maintain anonymity. The revoking of the red pro status at Full Tilt Poker will hurt him financially because he would now no longer be entitled to the hourly rate and rake back. As further atonement for his actions and in order to restore faith Townsend will be donating $25,000 to a charity yet to be chosen.

Townsend is conscious of the hit his reputation will be taking because of his multi-accounting and wants to clear the air. Hence he started a thread in the popular 2+2 forum and invited questions from forum readers. The thread ran into 18 pages and did reveal some additional information. Townsend had used the account named ‘Stellarnebula’ that belonged to an assistant.

On being asked why he used that particular account, Townsend replied that his assistant was a poor poker player. Elaborating on his need of maintaining anonymity while playing at low stakes Townsend said, “…I felt like playing 25/50 and 50/100 stakes meant that I wasn’t a good poker player.” Some questions pertained to the delay in his coming clean. To this Townsend said that he had to discuss the issue with Full Tilt Poker and CardRunners because of his involvement with them and take them into confidence. Many people writing at the forum expressed a view that Townsend has got away lightly. They felt that the removal of the red pro status was not something that would affect Townsend to any significant degree.  

Lee Jones, the COO of CardRunners, with whom Townsend was associated, had this to say: “I think we can agree that CardRunners was harmed by his actions. We, the CardRunners managers, felt that we needed to convey a clear message that we didn’t approve of what he had done. We considered a straight fine (loss of normal company distributions), but ultimately chose the charitable donation instead. The fine is being debited from Brian’s distributions but will be sent to a still-to-be-decided charity.”

Multi-accounting is a problem that is running deep in online poker. In 2006 Justin Bonomo was caught using multiple accounts in tournaments. Josh Field, who plays online as “JJProdigy”, has been repeatedly caught multi-accounting but apparently continues to do so.