Player Focus: pbdrunks

By Philip Tuck

16 August 2007

Joshua VanDuyn aka "pbrunks" is as aggressive and fearsome on the online baize as he looks in real life...

One of the consistent winners in the high stake online mtts over the last few years has been Joshua “pbrunks” VanDuyn. His fearless and super aggressive style has taken him to the final tables of some of the largest and richest online tournaments.

VanDuyn has made the final table of the PokerStars Sunday Million (arguably the hardest tournament online due to the field size and standard of player) back to back – for a pay day of over $38,000. Not bad going for a tournament with a buy-in of only $215. These are not the only results of note on PokerStars – VanDuyn has won over $220,000 on Stars' MTTs in the last two years.

It’s not only PokerStars where VanDuyn has taken down serious scores. Since January 2006 He has made a profit of over $84,000 on FullTilt, $38,750 on UltimateBet, and $34,000 on PartyPoker. What makes these figures all the more impressive is the staggering return on investment VanDuyn has achieved on these sites: he runs at an ROI of over 150% on these three sites – much higher than some of the high volume MTT players who typically run at half this rate. Be warned - players with these sorts of figures will be extremely dangerous players if they are at your table, making few mistakes and fighting for every chip.

VanDuyn is also one of the emerging group of online players that have successfully transferred their skills to the live game. He has cashed in the World Series of Poker on three occasions in the last two years, earning around $40,000 for his trouble – including a 16th in the $1,000 rebuy event for $18,745. Easily recognisable with his spiked Mohican hair, he fits the part of the young, aggressive player that the internet seems to be producing in droves.

Despite all his successes VanDuyn has yet to win any of the major online tournaments, his biggest online wins have all been seconds or thirds, a point that probably explains why he has not broken into the super elite group of online players such as Imper1um, Annette_15 or jcamby33. Regardless of this point it is obvious that VanDuyn is a player to watch for the future. After all, it could be that the monster 1st place is just around the corner.

View pbdrunks' PVi Profile here