Brian Townsend Cashes Out Bankroll, Quits PLO

It’s been a bit since Brian Townsend has made online poker headlines. The one-time whiz kid has kept his head down over the past year after losing his FTP red pro status (and getting the boot from PokerStars) for multi-accounting in online cash games. Townsend, known better to some as ’sbrugby’, took about the best approach someone in his position could - he admitted his mistake, apologized and focused on improving his game.

Fans of silver linings will appreciate what happened next: Townsend sharpened his PLO game to the point where he says he is “playing as well as anyone in PLO right now”. According to his blog, he’s pulled down 2.5 million from PLO games over the last 11 months, starting with a bankroll of just 100k. Further indication that he’s at the top of his game: 2 million of that win has come in 2009.

So, what do you do when you’re beating the upper echelon of PLO games? Well, if you’re Townsend, you apparently just walk away. Not just from the high stakes, but from PLO entirely.

In an interesting twist, however, Townsend isn’t walking away from poker forever. Instead, he’s set his sights on mastering mixed games, increasingly popular online. His plan: drop down to a meager (by his standards) bankroll and small (again, relatively speaking) limits:

“Because of my desire to learn these mixed games I have withdrawn everything and have begun grinding the 20/40 and 40/80 games which in terms of big bet poker is playing 5/10 or 10/20 blinds. One of my friends asked me why I don’t learn the mixed games on the side while playing PLO when good games where running. I replied that I felt like I couldn’t play my best at the mixed games while playing so much larger at PLO. So I left myself 50k and want to grow this into enough to play the 1k/2k and 2k/4k mixed games.”

It’s probably reassuring to several readers that even the nosebleed players aren’t immune to the fear of variance that cripples so many at the lower limits. While some might imagine that players like Townsend have proverbial ice water running through their veins, another excerpt from Townsend’s blog suggests just the opposite:

“The thought of losing everything I made this year or in the past year on such a downswing sickens me. Although its unlikely with what I feel my edge is in those games, I still don’t have a massive edge and no one really does [...] To be honest I guess I am getting a bit older and am not willing to take the risks that I once was. I used to not mind the thought of losing a lot and grinding back up, but now I have no desire to have those swings in my life as they are incredibly stressful.”

Read the whole thing here.

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