In “real life,” five years is not a particularly long time,* but in the online poker universe, it is an eternity. Therefore, to me, at least, it seems odd that a five-year old topic that affected very few people was recently drudged up, but it was, and here we are. Cole “cts687” South recently appeared on the Pokerlife podcast, hosted by Joe “Chicago Joey” Ingram and, among other things (it was a three-hour chat session), he discussed the 2009 incident in which a couple of his poker pro friends won millions from the then-unknown Isildur1 and proceeded to be accused of cheating by many in the poker community.
It was December 8th, 2009 and a shadowy figure known as “Isildur1” had taken the high stakes online cash games by storm, winning and losing six and seven figure sums of money on just about a daily basis. Nosebleed stakes players need to have at least a little bit of a disdain for money, but Isildur1 seemed to treat money like it was totally disposable. And nobody knew who he was.
That day, he had been doing well, seeing his bankroll increase by as much as $2 million. He was still up over a million dollars when Brian Hastings came along for a dance. Less than 3,000 hands later, Hastings had won a mind boggling $4.2 million from Isildur1 (we have since come to know him by his real name, Viktor Blom), leaving online poker’s newest star searching for answers.
Sometime later, Hastings was interviewed by ESPN.com and gave credit for his great night to his friends, saying, “Obviously I’m happy and I’ll take it, but Brian [Townsend] did a ton of work. The three of us discussed a ton of hands and the reports that Brian made, so I’m very thankful to him and to Cole as well.”
That seemed innocent enough, but it turned into a total shit storm, as the three started being accused of sharing hand histories and effectively colluding against Isildur1. Brian Townsend, the one who Hastings thanked for putting together reports on Isildur1, had his “red pro” status on Full Tilt Poker taken away a month. Townsend addressed the issue on his blog, saying that while he did purchase 30,000 hand histories to go along with the 20,000 he already had, he did not share them with his friends. He simply discussed strategy with them. He acknowledged that he should not have bought the hand histories, but adamantly denied doing anything else that was against the rules.
In the podcast, Ingram asked Cole South to talk about what happened, as his name was mentioned by Hastings in the ESPN interview. He backed up Townsend’s story, saying that all they did was talk poker like any friends would. Townsend did have hand histories, but he did not give them to either South or Hastings; he simply shared any tips he might have. Friends do that sort of thing. To quote:
Stinger [Brian Hastings] gave an interview with ESPN – Gary Wise, I think was the reporter – and said something to the effect, or at least Gary thought, that we merged our hand histories into one database and then used that to come up with some strategy against Isildur, which absolutely did not happen. I’ve got my hand histories, I’ve never sent them to Stinger or Brian Townsend, and I never received any of theirs. Stone cold, zero of that.
What did happen was Brian Townsend bought some hand histories from PTR [PokerTableRatings.com]…he then, just like had some overall tips for playing against Isildur. It was not anything remotely, I hesitate to say “useful”…the guy’s like aggressive in this spot, it was just like talking to your friends about poker. He sent like an e-mail with like three points on like things he would do when he’s playing against Isildur. And I like talk about my opponents’ strategies pretty frequently with people I’m playing. This was extremely tame, nothing I would remotely consider out of line.
At this point, February 2015, I doubt anybody really cares about this anymore besides maybe Viktor Blom, but South talked about it, so there you have it.
*Then again, if you think of five years as about six percent of your life, it does seem pretty significant. I’m getting depressed just thinking about it.
