Poker Pro Brian Townsend Quits CardRunners

About a month after Cole South left CardRunners, fellow pro Brian Townsend has announced he has followed in his good friend’s foot steps and also left the instructional poker site.
Written today in his poker blog, Townsend states, “as of June 1st I will no longer be a lead instructors at Cardrunners. I will still be around in the capacity that I was before I joined CardRunners as a lead instructor. You can find me in the forums participating in discussion as well as watching the videos.”
Just like South, Townsend said he needed more time to fully concentrate on playing poker and stated that being an instructor at CardRunners was “much more time consuming than I would have imagined.”
Brian Townsend is currently one of the biggest losers on  Full Tilt Poker for 2010, and is now down a massive $2,677,054. The year has not gone well for Townsend, who over the past few months has been suffering one of the biggest downswings of his poker career. He is now hoping his move from CardRunners will help provide the time he needs to re-assess his game and sharpen his poker instincts further.
Coincidentally, Cole South quit CardRunners after experiencing a similar downswing, although in his case he had to contend with seeing his $3 million profits for 2010 diminish to $633,000 by May.
In addition to the news of his leaving Cardrunners, Townsend has also said that he would no longer hold the status of “red pro” at Full Tilt Poker and would “return to playing under “sbrugby” at the tables” on the site.
Townsend has had his “red pro” status revoked on two occasions in the past, first in 2008 when he was suspended for six months for multi-accounting, and then in 2009 for the now infamous Isildur1 data-mining incident. The reason for dropping his “red pro” status this time round is as of yet unclear.
Whether Brian’s decisions will now pay dividends on the virtual felts remains to be seen, but in the meantime we wish him luck and look forward to seeing him in action as he attempts to extradite himself from his current downswing.