Tom Dwan Net Worth

Tom Dwan isn’t broke! If you beg to differ, you should definitely check out our PokerTube articles. From the ultimate question every poker enthusiast is asking - What happened to Tom Dwan? - to an exclusive analysis on Dwan’s finances - Has Tom Dwan Ever Gone Broke? - and a hunt that may never actually finish, we have it all. But what we don’t have is actually a ‘fair’ assessment of his net worth.

So how much money does durrrr really have? Is he a multimillionaire? Can he compare himself with his good poker buddy, Phil Ivey, who has a net worth estimated at around $100 million? Maybe not, but still Dwan can brag about a small fortune that could make any high stakes poker professional jealous. And, like always, we’ve got the numbers (and some PokerTube videos) to prove it.

Please note our ‘fair’ assessment that you’re about to read is based on some assumptions that may be true or false. Unfortunately, there isn’t much information available out there to help us determine his true net worth. Only durrrr and his accountant know the real numbers and since he decided to step out of the limelight, we can only speculate.

Source Income #1: Online Poker

This is how it all started: according to a Bluff Europe Magazine article, 12 years ago, a young boy from New Jersey by the name of Tom made his first deposit online. He convinced his father to help him jump start his poker career on Paradise Poker with just $50. Since the lowest games available were the $6 Sit & Go’s, the young Tom was left with no choice: he had to grind those stakes with a bankroll effectively worth under 10 buy-ins. Soon enough, he had only two buy-ins left. But he ended up winning both tournaments and you know what they say: the rest is history.

As soon as he had a decent bankroll, he transitioned to the shorthanded cash games. Several months later, the cashier was showing $15,000. In his first year at Boston University, he continued his hot run and built his bankroll to $100,000. Realizing that college wasn’t for him, Dwan dropped out and focused entirely on his poker career. That how the durrrr legend was born.

On Full Tilt, he made another smooth transition from shorthanded cash to Heads-Up No Limit. So in 2007, he took the nosebleeds by storm surprising everybody with his insane, ultra-aggressive style. He started that year up $1.5 million only to go down in a hurry in a two-month span to -$600,000. He eventually finished that year in the black: +$312,000. But that was just a warm-up; the following year, he won over $5.4 million at both No Limit Holdem and Pot Limit Omaha. In 2009, however, Isildur1 happened and in a span of a few days made him virtually go broke. Yet, he refocused and continued to play the highest stakes till the Black Friday of Poker.

After the Full Tilt Poker relaunch, he was one of the professionals along with his nemesis Viktor Blom. The deal lasted over a year with Dwan slowly but surely moving away from the online poker business.

Overall, according to HighStakesDB and in spite of all his major seven-figure downswings, durrrr is still one of the top high stakes winners of all time: he won over $2 million.

Tom Dwan Net Worth from Online Poker: $2,165,475

Source Income #2: Live Poker Tournaments

Although he’s American, Dwan had been involved in the live poker tournament world circuits long before he was actually 21. In September 2005, 19-year-old Tom traveled to Europe and entered the European Poker TourLondon Main Event. He ended up finishing just short of the final table, in 12th place.

Since he couldn’t participate at the WSOP at that time, Dwan and his poker buddy David Benefield staked promising players and profited. According to him, in 2007, he staked two players who won gold bracelets and many others with deep runs. ‘We did well,’ durrrr said referring to that particular year. The following year, as he was finally eligible to play, Dwan allegedly made a lot of prop bets with his friends that involved him and the coveted WSOP gold bracelet. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t win any WSOP events that year; he had two deep runs through, one in the 8-Game Championship (7th place) and the other in the Pot Limit Omaha Championship (8th place). The closest he got to winning a bracelet was in 2010 when he finished runner-up in the $1,500 No Limit Hold'em event.

For the last several years, Dwan gave up pursuing the WSOP bracelet and only participated in some Asian and Australian High Roller and Super High Roller events. His last major cash, according to HendonMob DB, was in 2014 at the Aussie Millions AU$250,000 Challenge where he finished sixth good for AU$500,000. Since then, he has participated in several other High Rollers but failed to cash in.

Overall, Tom Dwan won $2,661,781 in live poker tournament earnings and if we also add up his 2007 successful stakes, we can assume that the total number may be closer to $3 million. But since live poker tournaments also mean costs and fails as in tourneys where Tom was a loser, that $3 million will probably need to be halved.

Tom Dwan Net Worth from Live Poker Tournaments: ~$1.5 million

Source Income #3: Televised Poker

Besides the classic live poker scene, the poker prodigy also profited from more modern poker setups. Over the last decade, many TV poker shows left us in awe, among them, the notorious High Stakes Poker and Million Dollar Cash Games.

Feeling that he had an edge over the participants, Dwan participated in both constantly surprising his viewers and opponents with his non-stop, reckless aggression. He was part of the fifth season of HSP giving Phil Ivey a lot of headaches. He even hurt himself when he brilliantly bluffed Ivey out of a monster pot. Just look at his eyes:

According to an unofficial leaderboard of HSP Season One through Six posted on twoplustwo forums, Dwan is actually the biggest winner of all-time on the series with a staggering $1,756,500 in the black, almost double the second-place pro David Benyamine.

And that’s not all; he also hammered Ivey in the Million Dollar Cash Game winning the biggest pot in televised poker: over $1.1 million in a straight vs. higher straight showdown.

Taking into consideration all the footage plus the unofficial stats, we can safely assume Dwan won at least $2 million if not $2.5 million from the televised cash games.

Tom Dwan Net Worth from Televised Poker: ~$2.5 million

Source Income #4: Underground Macau Poker Games

And we simply cannot calculate Tom’s real net worth without the already famous Macau nosebleeds cash games. Most of the poker community assumes Macau is Dwan’s new playground and the main reason why he decided to give up playing online poker. Alongside his newfound poker buddy, Phil Ivey, durrrr plays the highest stakes in the world in Macau and sometimes in Manilla. The two were also the first to introduce to the world the new game Six Plus Holdem.

Many rumors surround these games not to mention some crazy stories revolving around unimaginable pots. Nobody really knows what is actually going on there and how much Dwan and Ivey are actually winning. We can safely assume, though, that they are winning and they are winning big.

Tom and some other nosebleeds players who attended those games provided us with some valuable clues that support our case. First, there was a tweet of Tom Dwan back in 2013 that in which he talked about his biggest loss in one day:

In taiwan for the 1st time ever... Not leaving the airport tho. Maybe next trip. Had my biggest loss ever yesterday

— Tom Dwan (@TomDwan) September 24, 2013

At that time, many speculated Tom lost several million dollars. Durrrr didn’t deny it but he did deny one rumor that said he actually won $25 million in a session:

ya so at the time of this bogus macau story 36hrs ago i was losing on my macau trip, and definitely hadnt won 25 million in a session.

— Tom Dwan (@TomDwan) January 18, 2014

However, many who played those games talked about multi-million-dollar pots ranging from $3.8 million to $11 million. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, but it’s also safe to assume that Dwan at least doesn’t play with all his money. Since the poker games run so high in Asia, Tom, and quite possibly all the other pros who play those games, may be very well staked in some form or another (Triads anyone?). Still, durrrr has played in Macau since the Black Friday of Poker, so we can speculate most of his present net worth actually comes from there. How much? Maybe $5 million or maybe closer to $10 million.

Tom Dwan Net Worth from Underground Macau Poker Games: $5million ~ $10 million

Dwan Net Worth: $10 Million To $15 Million

If we add up all those incomes, we can comfortably assume Dwan’s ‘small’ lifetime fortune is worth at least $10 million if not more, probably closer to $15 million or more. We can also take into consideration other income sources like the contract he had with Full Tilt after the relaunch, prop bets, and challenges. But at the top of the list, Macau will always stand tall above everything else. That’s where the bulk of Dwan’s fortune was built and that’s where he can also lose it all.

Yet we know Dwan and we know his poker capabilities, so going broke in a place where the biggest whales on the planet swim freely may be very well out of the question. Building that fortune of his even more though, that’s definitely the real challenge.

More or less? What’s your opinion on our Tom Dwan’s Net Worth Assumption? How much do you think he has won so far in Macau and Manila? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.