Tom Dwan at the WSOP
In early May, I happened to be hanging out with a poker playing pal of mine. He’s rich and smart and a highly skilled amateur. So, it makes sense that he would have no qualms about mixing it up with the world’s best card players.
Knowing that he’s played with Tom Dwan, I couldn’t resist asking, “What do you think is going on with durrrr?”
“Don’t know,” my friend responded. “But I can only hope that his social media got hacked.”
Sadly, that was not the case.
There are still a lot of questions about what led to a series of distressing posts on durrrr’s Twitter/X account. He wrote about being held against his will, about people “hoping I heart attack,” about requesting a bottle of “non-drugged water.” There was even a plea for Vice President JD Vance to step in on his behalf.
More recently, durrrr posted that he’s “feeling better” and was heading back to the US. He vowed to file “many complaints and a buncha diff lawsuits.”
In a recent conversation with the Argentine streamer Abril Zucchi, he revealed, “I definitely was processing some versions of details or reality wrong at some point. What I’ve been told and led to believe that means, is that I had what you would call an acute psychotic episode.”
A True Poker Talent
I’m happy that he’s thinking clearer and appears to be on the emotional mend.
Over the last 17 or so years, off and on, I’ve known the guy as a reporter, not as a fellow player or a friend (though we sometimes moved in some of the same circles), and I always liked him. Not quite front-page news here, but I find Dwan to be extremely intelligent, accommodating, and willing to suffer my lack of deep understanding about how he plays.
I last saw him a few years ago, at Aria, where Phil Hellmuth was hosting a baccarat tournament for high rollers. Somehow, Dwan occupied a seat in the freeroll.
During a break in play, I told him that I’d love to write about his life as an itinerant nosebleed-stakes gambler in Mainland China. He half agreed to do an interview, but he also laid down a couple conditions that the magazine (not Card Player) I wanted to write the story for could not get past.
The interview never happened and, from that point on, I wished that the magazine could have been more flexible. I understood the needs of Dwan and think I would have gotten a hell of a story.
Determined To Play Big
More recently, when Dwan publicly endured his emotional issues, I couldn’t help but wonder how it happened to the guy I first met in 2008. Back then, he ranked among a group of young guns who taught themselves to play poker online and deployed an aggressive style that allowed them to crush more seasoned pros. They understood the game in a new way and changed the manner in which poker gets played. They reminded me of the hip hop pioneers who figured out how to scratch records and rap in the basements of Bronx housing projects.
Back then, Dwan sometimes stayed with his parents in suburban Edison, New Jersey. Other times he blew to wherever the poker winds sent him. It seemed like a glorious existence for a 21-year-old who launched his high-flying poker career with a $50 online deposit.
On the spring afternoon when we met at a sushi place in the Soho neighborhood of Manhattan, he was fresh from an all-night Omaha/hold’em session that took place inside a room at the W Hotel in Union Square.
It was just Dwan and his laptop, playing online against the best poker pros in the world. He figured he’d be more focused in a pricy hotel room than in the bedroom he occupied as a little kid.
Dwan casually talked about scoring nearly $500,000 while guys like me slept. He wasn’t bragging; he was stating a fact.
At that point, I could not wrap my head around how such an unassuming guy, who looked like the wide-eyed college dropout that he was, could do such a thing. I still thought that winning poker players were salty old men who had asses of leather and played the game with physical cards.
He expressed a level of confidence that seemed outrageous. Dwan told me that if he played the $10-$20 no-limit games online, it would be virtually impossible for him to not earn $30,000 a week. Instead, of course, he chose to play for the highest stakes out there and take his chances while gunning for even more money.
He added that for him to buy in at the relatively meager stakes – which are still damn high for most everyone in the world – he’d need a million-dollar win-rate bet that nobody would make because he’d be so likely to win it.
Astonished, not yet understanding how truly gifted poker players think, I told him that, for most kids his age, earning a locked $120,000 per month would be reward enough.
“Yeah,” he responded. “But those people who so badly want to make $120,000 a month might lose $10,000 in a pot and flip out. Or else they’d go on tilt and stop playing even though they’re up against a bunch of fish.”
I was skeptical then, but I get it now. This is a guy who is just two years removed from winning a record $3.1 million pot.
When the check arrived, I went to grab it. But Dwan wouldn’t let me.
“I think I made more money today than you did,” he said with a crooked smile.
Tom, if you’re in the mood for another sushi lunch, let me know. This time it’s on me for sure. Welcome back, and I can’t wait to see you tearing up the high-stakes games again.
Michael Kaplan is a journalist based in New York City. He is the author of six books including The Advantage Players, and has worked for publications that include Wired, GQ and the New York Post. He has written extensively on technology, gambling, and business — with a particular interest in spots where all three intersect. His article on Kelly “Baccarat Machine” Sun and Phil Ivey is currently in development as a feature film.
