Tom “durrrr” Dwan was born on July 30, 1986, so every year, about two weeks after the WSOP wraps up, he celebrates his birthday. Before dropping out of college to play poker full-time, Dwan attended Boston University.
When Dwan was only 17, he put $50 of his birthday money his dad gave him in an online poker account at Paradise Poker and moved from the play money tables to real money online poker. That’s when he first began using the name “durrrr.” He thought that when someone lost to him, the name would irritate his opponents, further affecting their game and putting them on tilt. He first played sit n gos for $6. He lost $35. He was able to turn it around with his last $15, as he continued playing sit & gos. Once he found his stride and began winning, he moved to cash games, which is where he built up his bankroll after starting at low-staked games and working his way up. Eventually, he would go all the way to the top. He did have to drop down to lower-stakes again and again after losing for a few months to Prahlad Friedman in heads up play at the $25/$50 level until finally he was able to beat Friedman. By his 18th birthday, Dwan had made $15K playing online poker.
What is common knowledge when it comes to Dwan is the massive amounts he’s won and lost in his short career. By 2008, he had made $5.4+ million at Full Tilt, but in just four months, he lost $2 million but bounced right back once again. Then in January 2009, he lost $3.5 million and was able to recover that in only six months, but between October and December of that same year, he lost around $2 million to Phil Ivey and Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies and around $5 million to Viktor “Isildur1” Blom, which all together made for his biggest loss in the shortest amount of time to date, but he ended the year $4.35 million in the black. By the end of 2010, he was up $3.3 million after a $4-million loss he suffered in just three weeks of play. And these are only his online stats.
Black Friday through a wrench in every pro poker player based out of the US in 2011, and since Dwan was sponsored by Full Tilt Poker, like many others, he’s been left with nowhere to play online poker. Because of this, he’s been able to work on his live tournament game, and he’s been fairly successful with total live tourney earnings for 2011 exceeding $2.1 million.
