As juvenile as it may sound, Tom Dwan’s screen name “durrr” was originally created when he first started playing online poker at the tender age of 17. He made the username when he registered at Paradise Poker with a $50 birthday present from his dad. By his 18th birthday, four months after he started playing poker online, Dwan had amassed a $15,000 bankroll. In 2008, he earned more than $5 million at Full Tilt Poker.
Did his choice of obscure screen names have any effect on his success? He admits to choosing the name “durrrr” to intimidate his opponents. He thought that if he won, his screen name would anger his opponents, putting them on tilt and further increasing his chances of winning more pots from them. And while durrrr has lost a great deal of whopping pots, he’s won some of the biggest online poker pots in the history of online poker.
Now 25, he’s branded himself with the name durrrr and still proudly used it at Full Tilt Poker up until Black Friday on April 15, 2011 when the US Department of Justice shut Full Tilt Poker, as well PokerStars and Absolute Poker/UB.com. Only PokerStars would survive and even now no longer accepts US players, thus, leaving Tom Dwan’s sponsor site, Full Tilt Poker, not in operation to this day. A pending buyout has been in the works for months now as negotiations between Groupe Bernard Tapie are not finalized.
While Dwan is still in limbo regarding where to play online poker and has made a few appearances at various live tournaments over the past nearly year, it is not likely that he will ever quit poker, retire, or even take a long-term break, though he does go MIA once in a while. He always shows back up somewhere though.
One more interesting tidbit about Dwan’s screen name is that it really is a Hebrew name; well “Dur” with one ‘r’ is anyway. And what makes it even more ironic is that in Hebrew, the name Dur means “Accumulating.” Durrrr has been “accumulating” poker chips now for nearly eight years; some may think this is a bit ironic. Others probably believe it’s just a coincidence. Call it skill, good luck, or a predetermined destiny—whatever you call it, durrrr has it.
