The ESPN article describing how Brian Hastings managed to take $4.2 million from Isildur1 in one session caused a lot of controversy in the poker world, and finally prompted Full Tilt Poker to investigate the matter to see if any rules concerning collusion and datamining were broken. Of the CardRunners trio, Brian Hastings and Cole South were cleared of any wrongdoing, but Brian Townsend received a warning and had his red pro privileges stripped for a month.


The ESPN article covering the strategy talks between Hastings, South and Townsend can be found here.

An interesting blog entry by Tony G, where he says that Isildur1 ("I am sure he is Viktor Blom," Tony states) is planning to process a formal complaint to Full Tilt Poker because he believes Townsend and South provided Hastings with all their personal hand histories. FTP rules state that it's perfectly OK to talk strategy against other players but players are allowed to use data only from their personal hand histories.

Finally Full Tilt Poker issued a statement on the 2+2 forum saying that they had investigated the matter and were satisfied that there was no collusion between Hastings, South and Townsend, and that the ESPN article "describing the three combining their hands into a shared database was inaccurate," as the statement says. However, Brian Townsend was punished for datamining, though the statement is a bit vague concerning this. So, Townsend receives a warning and gets his Red Pro status including 100% rakeback and other benefits stripped for a month.

This is the second time Brian Townsend loses his Red Pro status on Full Tilt Poker. The first time around it was for 6 months after he was found multi-accounting on mid stakes cash games.

So, another interesting and controversial chapter in online poker history... The reaction to the FTP statement is not very positive on the 2+2 forum, the general opinion being that FTP pros got away with a "slap on the wrist" after taking millions from their opponent by unfair means.