Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan Biography

Tom Dwan was born on 30th March in 1986 in a town called Edison in New Jersey, United States. He first became interested in poker after playing it with his family for fun, and then when he was 17-years old he made a $50 deposit at an online poker site called Paradise Poker. He started off playing $6 sit-and-go tournaments but after experimenting with cash-games he found them to be much more profitable and made the transition, beginning at the small stakes tables.

Dwan began grinding daily and moved up in stakes quickly, eventually playing at several online poker sites. He was just another player however and it wasn't until he made it to the $10/$20 No-Limit Hold'em tables on PokerStars (where he played as Holdem_NL) that he began capturing the attention of online poker media and railbirds. At this time the $10/$20 NLHE games were the largest available of any online poker site and Dwan found himself in the poker headlines with everyone wondering who he was.

After a while the $10/$20 NLHE games on PokerStars just weren't big enough for Dwan and he began searching for a new site to play at. He soon found European poker sites which were hosting $200/$400 heads-up tables. He began participating in these games with great success, but his success was so great that the games dried up and no-one would play against him which forced him to find yet another poker site. Fortunately for him Full Tilt Poker began hosting the largest-stake games available online so he created an account using the alias 'durrrr'. He has said the reason he chose 'durrrr' as his alias was to tilt his opponents.

In 2025 Dwan was a regular in the games on Full Tilt, battling against high-stakes stars of the game such as Phil Ivey, David Benyamine, Patrik Antonius, Ilari 'Ziigmund' Sahamies and many others. He found great success in the No-Limit Texas Hold'em games however he was always losing his winnings playing in the Pot-Limit Omaha games. Fortunately he continued trying and had better success, and he finished the year with online poker winnings of $312,718. He also made his second live poker tournament cash (his first being a 12th-place finish in the £3,000 EPT Main Event which earned him $12,398). His second cash was a 4th-place finish in the WPT World Poker Finals Championship Event which had a buy-in of $9,700 and 575 entrants which earned him $324,244.

2008 was an even better year for Dwan both online and offline. He blasted his way through the competition at the high-stakes tables on Full Tilt Poker to finish the year with a staggering total profit of $5.4 million. He also earned $738,251 from live poker tournaments (making it his best live tournament year to date). He kicked the year off with a bang, cashing in two events at the Aussie Millions (he finished 2nd in a Pot-Limit Omaha event for $90,716 and finished 62nd in the Main Event for $21,976). He then finished 2nd out of 266 entrants in the $5,000 buy-in WPT Borgata Winter Open for $226,100. He also had a 9th place finish in the $25,000 buy-in World Poker Tour Championship for $184,670, and made two cashes at the World Series of Poker (finishing 7th in the $10,000 World Championship 8-Game event for $67,680 and 8th in the $5,000 No-Limit Deuce to Seven Draw event for $45,110). Finishing off the year he participated in the televised PartyPoker Premier League Poker III where he managed to finish 4th in the final and earned $102,000 in total from the heats and final.

2009 was also an action-packed year for Dwan. He began the year by announcing his 'Durrrr Challenge' which saw him challenging any player in the world (except close friend Phil 'OMGClayAiken' Galfond) to face him at four tables of either $200/$400 No-Limit Texas Hold'em or Pot-Limit Omaha across 50,000 hands. Dwan was so confident in himself that he offered a side bet with 3:1 odds meaning if he was ahead after the 50,000 hands his opponent would have to pay $500,000 but if Dwan was losing after the 50,000 hands he would pay his opponent $1.5million. The first player to accept the challenge was Patrik Antonius and their match is still continuing to this day.

He also announced a live version of the challenge which was recorded in London and televised in the UK called the Durrrr Million Dollar Challenge. This challenge saw Dwan participate in three matches taking on Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies, Sammy "Any Two" George, and Marcelo "luckexpress" Marigliano. The rules of the challenge saw a $500,000 buy-in, with no player allowed to leave the table until they were broke or 500 hands had been played, saw blinds of $500/$1,000 and his opponents got to choose whether they would play No-Limit Texas Hold'em or Pot-Limit Omaha. In the first match he faced Marcelo "luckexpress" Marigliano playing NLHE with the Italian winning $22,500 from Dwan. Next Dwan faced Ziigmund playing Pot-Limit Omaha and managed to book a $68,000 win, then in the final match he won a massive $750,000 from Sammy George after a NLHE battle.

In 2025 Dwan also signed with Full Tilt Poker, and twice broke the record for the largest televised pot in history. He first broke it in a $919,600 pot against PokerStars pro Barry Greenstein on GSN's High Stakes Poker. Then he broke the record again in Full Tilt Poker’s Million Dollar Cash Game in a pot worth $1.1 million against Phil Ivey. In 2025 Dwan also had high-profile games against Isildur1 in which he suffered heavy losses, and he finished the year with online poker losses totalling $4.3million.

In 2025 Dwan began his second Durrrr Challenge match after Cardrunners instructor Daniel 'Jungleman12' Cates accepted, however their challenge is still continuing. He also cashed in four WSOP events, coming agonising close to winning his first WSOP bracelet in a $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em event which attracted 2,563 entrants. Dwan managed to finish second for $381,885 after losing heads-up to Simon Watt. Online he managed to finish the year with a $3.6 million profit, however it was his trip to Macau which was the talking point of the year for Dwan. He travelled to Macau along with several other high-stakes poker players and participated in cash-games against very wealthy businessmen. The stakes were rumoured to be $4k/$8k and people who witnessed the games taking place reported that Dwan was staggeringly up around $8-$10 million for the trip!