Someone Found Dwan!

Newspapers have ‘go -to’ stories that they use for filler articles when other news stories are a bit light. The ‘go to’ stories are the ones the editors know people are interested in and can be written based upon the loosest of speculation and hearsay. Poker forums are the same and in the past couple of years the ‘go to’ story has been speculation on the whereabouts and welfare of Tom “Durrrr” Dwan. There is even a hashtag on Twitter #SaveTom for those who want to support Tom’s return to the poker scene. It is not entirely certainly what they want to save him from, but more on that later.

Well the good news is he’s alive and well. On July 29th he took a selfie with Twitter user Luke @slaymerica. Here it is.

I just found durr tho pic.twitter.com/E8KsuumU6C

— Luke (@slaymerica) July 29, 2016

Luke has a very active and entertaining twitter account. He looks very pleased with himself as well he might having found the elusive Durrrr, who clearly had no issues taking a photo with one of his fans.

Durrrr is a product and perhaps the personification of the poker boom. ‘Durrrr’ was his online username which became a brand in itself as he played and battered the highest stakes games on Full Tilt Poker, starting as a low stakes grinder and even posting on the controversial poker forum Neverwin Poker. He continued to win. And win. And win. He just kept playing the largest games and made it right to the top. At this point he stayed there and remained profitable. Durrrr lived all of our poker dreams and had the guts to take the biggest swings and keep on fighting regardless.

When Cirque Du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte decided to personally fund the highest stakes poker players in the world with around $8 million of his own money during a frenzied period in the nosebleed stakes games on Full Tilt, which I guess in hindsight we would now consider the peak of their action at a time when it was cool to even be a railbird there, Durrrr, Patrik Antonius, Phil Ivey and Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies were the main beneficiaries of Laliberte’s ‘generosity’. I remember reading an article online that said Durrrr had amassed a bankroll of around $15 million at the height of the Laliberte funded games, but these were just educated guesses. What is a fact is that he became very wealthy and very successful. He was among the first names on the invite list to TV cash games series like High Stakes Poker.

What was interesting about Durrrr was that he was not that media friendly and had poor social skills, always appearing very awkward in interviews and not always forthcoming in providing nuggets of information about himself to satisfy the interest the poker world had in him. He just played for poker and with that came fame. Fame was not his initial goal, he just loved the game and the gamble and, if anything, fame was a bit of an unwanted byproduct for him.

Durrrr played to his own tune and did not let the poker world dictate his actions, neither needing or courting the public’s approval. The first ‘Durrrr vs Antonius’ cash game challenge captured the imagination of the poker world before petering out and then simply stopping 11,000 hands from the end of play without completion. It is thought Antonius bought out of the game when down $1.8 million to Durrrr. Then the Jungleman12 vs Durrrr challenge took place and the public got excited. Unfortunately the challenge did not complete and this time it was Durrrr who did not finish it. The poker forums have been very critical about this and it began rumors that Durrrr could not pay the agreed bet or did not want to. With no time limit on the match play has simply remained incomplete for many years now.

Then the poker effluence hit the ventilator and Durrrr vanished. There were lots of rumours and theories about what he was doing and then it was confirmed he was playing nosebleed stakes in cash games in Macau. Now when we say nosebleed stakes here we really mean it. There are reports of pots of millions of dollars with players playing for incredible sums of money, sometimes only having a tiny piece of their own action due to the sheer size of the pots.

Dan “Jungleman12” Cates was quoted as saying he witnessed Durrrr losing a $20 million pot when losing with set over set in Macau. There are endless rumors that he is down huge in make-up to Chinese backers and currently trying to make up his losses. There has been no confirmation on any of these rumors, but I’m pleased that Durrrr is still around, looking reasonably healthy and as we remember him, probably still in action at the poker tables.

In many ways the latest photo on Twitter played up to Dwan’s image. It was always about the game first, everything else second. In the photo Durrrr looks tired and could well be multiple hours into his latest long session. When super high stakes games were not available online he simply moved to where they were available. The online games were a means to an end, he had no particular connection to the online poker world other than accessing the games to win money.

It would be nice if he let us know how he was getting on, but either way we wish him well. What is certain is any time he is photographed the poker world will be very interested and even this article has been written off the back of one selfie! That speaks volumes about the ongoing interest the poker world has in this enigmatic poker player who was such a huge part of the folklore of the poker boom and continues, somewhere, to push the boundaries of poker as he has always done in his career.