Better known by his Full Tilt Poker alias 'durrrr', Tom Dwan was born in Edison, New Jersey, on 30th July, 1986. At only 23 years old, Dwan has become one of the most popular poker players in the world, winning millions playing online, and appearing on Full Tilts 'High Stakes poker' television shows, but just how did a teenager change the face of online poker and win millions?
As a teenager he regularly played for fun with his family, but when he was 17 years old he decided to try his luck at online poker. He created an account at PokerStars, using the alias Holdem_NL, and deposited $ 50. He began playing $ 6 sit n go tournaments, and almost blew it all when he found himself with around $ 14 left in his account. He had a good run however and soon grew the $ 50 into several hundreds and decided cash games was where he could earn most money. He became a member of Two Plus Two (the popular poker forum), and began grinding at the low stake cash games. Dwan was a regular winner and was rapidly moving up in stakes as his bankroll ballooned.
Soon Dwan found himself playing $ 10 / $ 20 No-Limit Hold'em and was crushing the games, which were the largest stakes available online at the time. Being such a prolific winner at the biggest games available brought lots of attention to Dwan and soon the whole poker community was talking about him. At this point the $ 10 / $ 20 stakes just were not high enough for Dwan and he went in search of bigger online poker games, which is when he found European poker sites which offered $ 200 / $ 400 heads-up tables. Yet again Dwan proved to be the biggest winner in the games however action dried up and no-one wanted to play against him, forcing him to search for another new room to play at.
He soon found out that Full Tilt Poker had began hosting the highest stake games available online and immediately created an account, this time with a new alias. He decided to go by the name of 'durrrr' in the hope of tilting his opponents when they lost to him. As usual Dwan began crushing the No-Limit Hold'em games, however there was lots of high stake Omaha action and Dwan found himself losing his winnings. Dwan persisted though and soon began winning the PLO games too, making him online pokers biggest money earner.
Despite crushing the online games for years, 2009 has been without doubt his most exciting year. As well as his continued success playing online, he announced the now famous 'durrrr challenge', challenging anyone (except for close friend Phil 'OMGClayAiken' Galfond), to play him heads-up multi-tabling four tables at $ 200 / $ 400 stakes for 50,000 hands or until someone quits, with the opponent having the choice of game selection – either NLHE or PLO. Dwan has offered 3: 1 odds for his opponents, if he wins they must pay him $ 500,000 however if his opponent wins Dwan must pay $ 1.5 million, all this on top of the winnings over the 50k hands! Finnish high stakes poker player Patrik Antonius was the first to accept the challenge, opting to playing PLO, and their match is still continuing because of conflicting schedules.
As well as this, he set a live version of the challenge, with English player Sammy 'Any Two' George being the first to accept. The live version has a $ 500,000 buy-in with blinds of $ 500 / $ 1000 and will last for 500 hands or until someone decides to quit. The challenge is set to take place in December in Las Vegas.
He also made history by winning the largest pot ever televised – $ 1.1 million. He won it during filming for the fourth season of Full Tilt Pokers 'Million Dollar Cash Game', with Phil Ivey being the player to pay off his straight.
And at only 23 years old Dwan was considered for pokers greatest honour this year, being shortlisted for the WSOP Hall of Fame. Although Dwan was not inducted, it shows just how much of an impact he has had on the poker world, online especially, and he will without doubt be a Hall of Famer in the future.