"SBRugby"...."aba20".....Brian Townsend's online handles are more than household names throughout the poker community - they represent one of the game's toughest competitors at any table. His meteoric rise to the highest levels in under 2 years is the stuff of legend. We sat down with Brian at this year's WSOP with one burning question: If a $250K loss doesn't affect his sleep, how much would it take?

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PokerLizard: How do you balance your life outside of playing poker?

Townsend: I try to get outside. Since I've been in Vegas it's been awful. I've seen the sunlight probably for five hours the whole time I've been here.

PokerLizard: Yes but, It's so fucking hot.

Townsend: Gross, yeah. But if you don't go outside you get so fucked up on these lights.

PokerLizard: Yeah. That's true.

Townsend: What was the question again?

PokerLizard: How do you balance your life?

Townsend: Just by doing a lot of exercise. Doing a lot of relaxing things. Get a lot of massages. Go to the beach. Play with my dog when I'm in Santa Barbara . Do a lot of other outdoor activities to try to keep that balance 'cause it is very important. It's very easy to let your health go and that will really affect your game. I mean, when you weigh 400 pounds and you can't move and you're energy level's down you're not going to play as well. And so that's why I try to stay active and healthy.

PokerLizard: That's for sure. What do you really want out of poker when it's all said and done? Fame? Fortune? Just enough money that you can do what you want to do?

Townsend: Yeah. I guess my goal was to be the best player in the world at everything. And I feel like I've done that in a couple of the games but there's a lot more games to go. So I want to master all games and get to the point where I feel like I'm the best or I'm happy. I have a lot of respect for the person who's better than me and I have no problem saying, "Oh, this person's better than me and I'll never be able to beat them 'cause they have a much stronger game." But I want to just learn every game and be the best that I can be at every game.

PokerLizard: What's your next game that you want to conquer?

Townsend: I'm going to do all the HORSE games next. I've been playing Razz. I've played a lot — well, a few thousand hands. So I need some more work on that. And then I'm going to do Omaha High-Low and then I'm going to get started on the Stud games but they're going to be tough.

PokerLizard: For somebody that plays so much online poker how brutal was it to play on High Stakes Poker? Didn't each hand take about an hour to play??

Townsend: Yes, live poker isn't even that bad when you have a machine and it keeps going quickly. It was awful 'cause the producer would stop between each card and the dealer would have to wait before they burn. It was so slow. We probably got 20 hands an hour, maybe not even that. It was so boring.

PokerLizard: So was it weird playing on TV like that? Or seeing yourself?

Townsend: No, not really. I'd been on TV before at the final table of the WSOP circuit event. I was on for five minutes, but that kind of got my feet wet. Got me used to it.

PokerLizard: The other day you pretty much put a spanking on Sammy Farha at the Bellagio lately. Is it kind of gratifying considering some of the shit he talked during High Stakes Poker?

Townsend: A lot of these guys they do stuff in TV and it's — you look at Mattusow. Mattusow's a nice guy. He doesn't act like he does on TV. They just ham it up a lot for TV. Sammy and I get along. We're cordial.

PokerLizard: Didn't he say something like, "You need to get a girlfriend, buddy." Or something? "You're looking at me funny." What did he say?

Townsend: I don't know. I think it was something like, "You're raising too many pots. You'd better be careful."

PokerLizard: "This isn't the internet, buddy."

Townsend: Yeah. And then some internet comment. I don't know.

PokerLizard: Now that you're getting a limited amount of fame, are you worried that somebody might try and jack you someday?

Townsend: Security's a big thing. I do have to be somewhat careful of that 'cause people might assume that I have a lot of money. I mean, I never carry money on me or anything. Not more than a normal person. People might think, "Oh, he's walking out of the poker room. He's going to have a million dollars on him." Which won't be the case. I would never walk around with that kind of money. Criminals are idiots and they might think that you would have that kind of money on you. It is a concern.

PokerLizard: Besides joining Card Runners what advise would you give a player to improve their game?

Townsend: To move up? Just play a lot. Play a lot. Think about your game. Eat, breath, sleep poker and you'll improve. You'll get better.

PokerLizard: How do you analyze your game?

Townsend: I'm actually becoming a little lazy about that recently just because I've been really busy, but I look at old hands and review and think about hands. And when hands come up I think about how they were played and what should be done, stuff like that.

PokerLizard: Do you use poker tracker or anything like that?

Townsend: Yes. I do use poker tracker too. I have all my hands that I've played for the last two years on my computer.

PokerLizard: How many hands is that? Do you have any idea?

Townsend: I don't know. Millions.

PokerLizard: Really?

Townsend: Let's see. A year and a half, averaging 1,000 hands a day. So not quite a million.

PokerLizard: How many hours a day do you play?

Townsend: It really depends but now I've been playing way too much. Probably 16 hours a day which is way too much for me. But when I'm back home in Santa Barbara, I spend about two or three doing that and then another two doing Card Runners related stuff.

PokerLizard: You graduated from college or did you drop out?

Townsend: Yes. I got my bachelor's, dropped out of a PhD program.

PokerLizard: Well, lot of people do that.

Townsend: Yeah. That's not a big deal.

PokerLizard: So what if somebody you knew wanted to drop out of college and play poker? What would you tell them?

Townsend: Go for it.

PokerLizard: You're the first person to ever say that.

Townsend: I mean, you know it's not going to be easy. You're not just going to magically be making millions of dollars a day but if you work hard and you work on your game you can definitely succeed in this industry. There's a lot of money to be made. So I would say go for it and if it doesn't work out it doesn't work out.

PokerLizard: Who do you think are better - the online players or the live pros?

Townsend: I think that distinction is getting really gray now. I mean, look at a guy like Patrick Antonius . He plays as much live as he does online now. Is he an online player? Well, he started playing online but I think in the future it's going to be very common for people to start online 'cause it's so much less intimidating than going into a casino. You don't have to come to Vegas. You can just kind of try it out in the comfort of your home. I think that distinction is just going to be really gray. But as for ‘best in the world', it's kind of hard to say. In no-limit hold 'em, without a doubt, the online players. I mean, just they're years and years ahead of the live players. Live game no-limit hold 'ems are very weak. And Pot-Limit Omaha online is much, much tougher and bigger. And then limit hold 'em is much stronger online.

But in the HORSE games, the live players are way, way ahead - a year or two ahead of the online players. But once those games get online you'll see a big gray area and it'll all come together. And one thing I found was even these live players are playing online now. I mean, there are very few people who don't play online. Very few big online players never play live. As the years go on that distinction will just fade away, I think, and it'll just be considered poker instead of live and online.

PokerLizard: So who would you say is your toughest competition right now?

Townsend: The games I play, Patrick Antonius is very good. He's a very, very strong player for both no-limit hold 'em and PLO. There are a lot of good players and there are a lot of players that people don't know about really, like Urindanger. Brian Hastings is great. There are just a lot of good players out there and the distinction between the low end and the high end is very, very small. Phil Ivey plays great. I've been playing Bobby Baldwin a lot. He's really played well. Really, really tough opponent.

PokerLizard: Now that you've got some money are people always bugging you to lend them money or stake them?

Townsend: Yeah. It's kind of funny. Last summer I came out and I brought maybe $100,000.00, which is a lot of money for me. And I did really well one night — a quarter million or even more when I was playing some 200/400 no-limit. And a lot of the live pros were just giving me shit. Nobody knew who I was. They were just generally just assholes. One guy challenged me to a heads up, freeze out, dick waving competition, bring a million dollars, whole thing. And then this summer I come out and he's like, "Oh, can I have a loan?" And he was totally sucking up to me and you just gotta realize some people are like that and deal with it accordingly.

PokerLizard: Thank you very much for the time, Brian!

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