Old memories were drudged up late last week as one of online poker’s most successful players, Cole South (pictured), was interviewed by Joe “Chicago Joe” Ingram on his Poker Life podcast. The podcast was quite lengthy – about three hours – so there were plenty of topics discussed, but one of particular interest was about a controversial incident from more than five years ago that resulted in Full Tilt pro temporarily getting his “Red Pro” status stripped.

Turning back the clock to early December 2009, a mysterious player named “Isildur1” had exploded onto the high-stakes online poker scene, winning and losing six- or seven-figure sums with regularity. December 8th, in particular, was astounding. Isildur1 started out great, up at one point around $2 million, but as soon as Brian Hastings stepped up to the table against him, everything went south. Over the course of nearly 2,900 hands, Hastings won $4.2 million from Isildur1. It was incredible. Hastings could do no wrong.

Following the crazy day, Hastings was interviewed by Gary Wise on ESPNand gave much of the credit to his friends South and Brian Townsend. Hastings said, “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 comment generated a huge controversy, as people in the poker community accused the trio of friends of colluding against Isildur1, of inappropriately sharing private hand histories to bilk a mark of his money. Full Tilt Poker’s terms of service certainly state that players may not use hand histories for hands in which they did not participate.

As a result of his comments, Townsend, a CardRunners instructor at the time, had his “Red Pro” status stripped by Full Tilt for a month.

On his blog, Townsend posted his response to the allegations, saying that of the three friends, he was the only one to do anything wrong. Nobody shared their hand histories with him, but he acquired 30,000 hand histories to go along with the 20,000 he already had on Isildur1 to allow him to study up on his opponent. He acknowledged it was against Full Tilt’s rules, but stressed neither Hastings nor South gave him the hand histories. All they did was discuss his analysis with him.

Fast forward to 2015 and South, speaking with Ingram, backed up everything Townsend said. He explained that the only input he and Townsend had for Hastings(pictured) was the usual discussions poker playing friends would have. No collusion, no sharing of hand histories, just poker talk.

In his words, “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.”

South added, “What did happen was Brian Townsend bought some hand histories from PTR… He then just had some overall tips for playing against Isildur. It was not anything remotely, I hesitate to say, ‘useful’… ‘The guy’s aggressive in this spot;’ it was just like talking to your friends about poker. He sent an e-mail with three points on things he would do when he’s playing against Isildur. And I talk about my opponents’ strategies pretty frequently with people I’m playing. This was extremely tame, nothing I would remotely consider out of line.”

Whether or not people believe South, Townsend, and Hastings, it is interesting that this topic still comes up, more than five years later.

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