Abstract: This paper gives an accessible (but still technical) self-contained proof to the fact that the intersection probabilities for planar Brownian motion are given in terms of the intersection exponents, up to a bounded multiplicative error, and some closely related results. While most of the results are already known, the proofs are somewhat new, and the paper can serve as a source for the estimates used in our paper on the analyticity of the Brownian intersection exponents (math.PR/0005295).