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In a recent blog confessional, Cardrunners pro Brian Townsend has admitted to playing under two different poker accounts on Stars and Tilt. He had been using the aba30 and sbrugby names, then with the fulltilt deal, he switched to a red pro under his name. His ‘illegal’ aliases were: Stellarnebula on FTP and makersmark66 on Stars.

He offers an open, honest, and sincere apology about his actions. Frankly, while it is against the rules, this is probably the most common example of ‘bending’ the online poker rules. I’ve had multiple accounts on different sites, just because I didn’t like my screen name.

For a recognizable pro, the advantage to playing annonymously is understandably tempting. Also, in Brian’s case he was moving down in limits, and was worried what people would think about that. So to protect his ego, and get action at the lower limits, he played under different names.

He stated that his FT red pro status is being suspended for 6 months (meaning no 100% rakeback) and that he is contributing $25k of his ‘cardrunners distributions’ to a charity tbd.

He is a class act. This shouldn’t be that big of a deal. It speaks to a larger problem, with how easy it is to create accounts – set up different bank accounts, different names, whatever. I don’t know how you can address it outside of using social security numbers or something crazy to identify people.

For the full blog entry go to Cardrunners.