Player Update: durrrr

So how has everyone’s favourite internet sicko Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan been faring in 2009?

Well, the man who made over $5million at the Full Tilt tables in 2008 got off to an atrocious start to the year, giving back over $3.7million of these profits throughout January & February – more than $3.2million of this was in PLO and Patrik Antonius reportedly took him for more than $500,000 at the Aussie Millions ‘Million Dollar Challenge’ in January. He was even taking abuse from the latest young terror of the high stakes, Luke ‘__FullFlush1__’ Schwartz, who also won a 6 figure sum off him in this time. And he certainly wasn’t quiet about it:

__FullFlush1__: btw if u report me for any of theese very minor digs
__FullFlush1__: i promise il never come back and give u action ever
again
durrrr: get a job buddy
durrrr: u cant be stupid enough to think id ever do that
durrrr: least i hope u cant be
 __FullFlush1__: your the who actually is gonna need a job
__FullFlush1__: i might just go live on an island with the half a mil yourve
donked to me
durrrr: god u really need better insults

But we all knew it wouldn’t take long for one of the true online greats to come roaring back and after logging over 24,000 hands in March he emerged as the second biggest winner of the month, pocketing over $1.2million to put his downswing well and truly to bed. In fact, this figure actually be more in the region of $2million if his exploits on March 31st are taken into account, when he took the nosebleed games for more than $700,000 in a day – this $158,000 pot with Gus Hansen being the biggest of the day. The much vaunted ‘durrrr challenge’ is also coming to fruition, albeit very slowly, with Mr. Antonius – at the time of writing PA is up just $23,000 over around 7,000 total hands – when you consider that this is at the $200/$400 tables, that is an incredibly close match.

But although recorded at the back end of 2008, it’s Season 5 of High Stakes Poker that has got the poker world talking about ‘durrrr’ again – Gabe Kaplan described him as playing ‘almost perfect poker’ for the first few episodes as he proceeded to be the catalyst for some of the biggest pots ever seen on the show. My personal two favourites are this $548,000 pot with Barry Greenstein:

And this $237,000 pot, again with Greenstein as well as Peter Eastgate, which got all the forums talking:


(Check out the Poker Road discussion here, where all 3 players posted their opinion on the now infamous hand).

The list goes on with this brilliant $134,000 pot played against Howard Lederer that left the Professor stumped:



Seven figure swings now seem to be commonplace for Dwan & the big games are always more interesting when he is at the table – and after kicking his brutal downswing this month it looks like he is going nowhere for the foreseeable future. This is undoubtedly bad news for his high stakes opponents and good news for us mere mortals.