GPInterview: Chad Brown | Celebrating 20 Years at the WSOP

Twenty years ago – ten years before Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 WSOP Main Event – Chad Brown was collecting his first ever cash at the WSOP.

Plenty has changed since … 37 WSOP cashes, 0ver 1.2M in WSOP earnings and on the flip side, a public battle with cancer which he so bravely overcome.

To this day, Brown doesn’t look like a man who qualifies to play the Seniors Event at the WSOP, seeing him and how well he takes care of himself, you would certainly be taking the under on him being over 50 years old and you would lose!

I got the opportunity to speak with the Team PokerStars Pro just a few short hours ago:

Your first cash here at the WSOP was back in 1993 … my how have things changed since then, no?

In 1993 I wasn’t even a professional poker player. I had friends going to Vegas and I decided to enter a WSOP Limit Hold’em tournament and finished in 11^th position. I took two really bad beats at the end – otherwise things could have been different, it was a very soft field remaining.

Back then, like I said, we had 11 people left in the first big Limit Hold’em event and there were no top players remaining whereas nowadays, if you get down to the final 11, there may be one or two weak players but the rest of the field is going to be pretty tough.

I didn’t really start focusing on tournaments until 2004. Chris Moneymaker won in 2003 and I saw the writing on the wall that with Chris winning, endorsement deals would be coming, and the way you get endorsement deals doesn’t necessarily how good you are, it’s how you’re perceived. The people who are perceived to be great are the people you see on TV because companies will sponsor players that people like.

A perfect example of that was in 2006 when Chip Reese won the WSOP 50K Poker Players’ Championship. He was probably the best all-around cash game player yet no one outside of poker would even know who he was until he won the 50K.

That’s why you had to play tournaments; they were televising a lot. For example in 2004 I was at the Stud final table and ESPN televised the event.

You survived a health scare a few years ago when you were diagnosed with cancer, you look great, in great shape, and how are you feeling?

Well thank you for your kind words. The way it works with cancer is that when you’re “cancer free”, you’re cancer free from your last scan. With an aggressive cancer, you go for a scan every three months and you hope that, knock on wood, that the scan is clear and you’re still cancer free.

My approach to it is: hey, one thing’s for certain is that all of us, some day, have to go and for a number of us, it’s unexpected. So rather than ponder on the fact that I’m a favorite to die young, I don’t even give it any thought. I feel great, you said I look great and I appreciate that! Life is good now and whatever comes tomorrow you deal with it when you cross that bridge.

Is there one career moment that you’re most proud of?

As far as poker goes, the moment I’m most proud of was winning Player of the Year in 2006 because all poker players know that poker is a skill game but in the short run, there is a lot of luck involved. Over the course of 12 months playing 5K buy-in events and higher, you’re playing against, at that time, only the best players in the world so to end the year scoring the highest point total is an accomplishment I’m really proud of, it wasn’t just a one-shot deal.

You’re currently in the 5K Omaha Hi-Low Event – should you unfortunately bust-out, will you play the Seniors Event going on tomorrow?

If I don’t make Day 2 in this Omaha tournament then yes, I will be playing, that’s one of the easiest possible fields of the summer.

It’s funny, some people will look at it and say it’s unfair because of the easy field I tell them, for the sake of argument, if Phil Ivey is playing in a tournament, everyone is giving away their money as far as he’s concerned so it doesn’t matter, everything is relative to the situation.

Chad, we’ll leave you on this one – how did you get the name “Downtown”?

It’s actually really interesting. In high school, I played for Columbus High School in the Bronx; it was the #1 baseball school in New York City. The Bronx Press Review used to cover all of our games. I was the ace pitcher and was also one of the best hitters on the team.

One game I had pitched I had hit two home runs and won the game on the mound so the writer coined the phrase “Chad Brown Goes Downtown with Two Home Runs and Four RBI’s”.

But I never said to anyone in poker that I used to be called Downtown. When I made the final table at the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star in 2006 and Vince Van Patten just yelled out “Downtown Chad Brown” during the broadcast.

You can follow Chad on Twitter at @Downtownchad

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