Tom "durrrr" Dwan is no doubt one of the best and most famous high stakes poker players alive. But like many other high stakes poker pros, Dwan's introduction to the game of poker was fairly modest. Dwan began playing at the age of 17 after his father gave him a $50 birthday present. Little did Dwan or his father know, that initial $50 would spark one of the greatest online poker careers of all-time.
He took the $50 gift and deposited it in March of 2004 using the Paradise Poker bonus code. The move turned out to be a good one because the Paradise Poker bonus code gave Dwan just enough money to survive the initial downswing he suffered while playing $6 sit and go's. Down to his last few dollars, Dwan was able to stage a comeback and start beating the SNG's. Dwan kept moving up the SNG stakes, and he learned some valuable skills while playing these games including how to read poker players. Satisfied with his SNG accomplishments, Dwan started playing low stakes cash games.
He played a lot of Texas hold em hands at the lower stakes before deciding to move up to mid-stakes play. This also prompted a change in sites as Dwan was no longer making deposits with the Paradise Poker bonus code, but rather the Full Tilt code. It's at Full Tilt where he ran into several other good cash game players such as Frederick Halling and Prahlad Friedman. In all of his days spent playing poker on line and learning how to read poker players, durrrr had never went up against players like Halling and Friedman. Dwan became particularly obsessed with Friedman at the $25/$50 stakes, and played thousands of Texas hold em hands against him.
Initially, the results were bad as durrrr lost so much money that he was forced to drop down in stakes. A few thousand Texas hold em hands later, and a lot more time spent learning how to read poker players, Dwan came back to the $25/$50 stakes and finally beat Friedman. Of course, the biggest challenges that Dwan would face playing poker on line were yet to come as he ventured into the high stakes poker world.
It was the high stakes world that would see durrrr go through massive bankroll swings, which often included both winning and losing millions of dollars each month. While playing poker on line in 2008, Dwan managed to win an incredible $5.4 million! Unfortunately, he lost over $4.3 million in 2009, thus leaving his bankroll decimated. As he had done in the past, Dwan dropped down in stakes to play his Texas hold em hands against some lesser competition. Dwan was very experienced beating some of the upper-mid stakes players since he'd learned how to read poker players at this level a long time ago.
By the time Dwan had returned to play poker on line against the high stakes players, he had made $3.3 million in 2010. Since this time, Dwan has continued to play against the world's top poker players in both live and online games. And with the career that he's carved out for himself, there's no question that Dwan is happy with his initial decision to take a $50 birthday gift and deposit using the Paradise Poker bonus code.
