Best known for his Full Tilt Poker, aka ‘durrrr’, Tom Dwan was born in Edison, New Jersey on July 30, 1986. At just 23 years old, Dwan has become one of the most popular poker players in the world. world, earning millions. playing online and appearing on Full Tilts ‘High Stakes Poker’ TV shows, but how did one teenager change the face of online poker and win millions?

As a teenager he played regularly for fun with his family, but when he was 17 he decided to try his hand at online poker. He created an account at PokerStars under the alias Holdem_NL and deposited $50. He started playing $6 sit n gos and nearly blew it all when he found himself with about $14 left in his account. However, he hit a streak and soon increased the $50 to several hundred and decided that cash games were where he could make the most money. He became a member of Two Plus Two (the popular poker forum) and began playing low stake cash games. Dwan was a regular winner and was rapidly raising the stakes as his bankroll skyrocketed.

Soon, Dwan found himself playing $10/$20 No-Limit Hold’em and was sweeping the games, which were the largest stakes available online at the time. Being such a prolific winner in the biggest games available brought Dwan a lot of attention and soon the entire poker community was talking about him. At this point, the $10/$20 stakes just weren’t high enough for Dwan and he went looking for bigger online poker games, which is when he found European poker sites offering $200/$20 tables. $400 heads up. Once again Dwan proved to be the biggest winner of the games, however the action dried up and no one wanted to play him, forcing him to find another new room to play.

He soon discovered that Full Tilt Poker had begun hosting the highest stakes games available online and immediately created an account, this time under a new alias. He decided to use the name ‘durrrr’ in hopes of inclining his opponents when they lost to him. As usual, Dwan began to succeed in No-Limit Hold’em games, however, there was a lot of high stakes Omaha action and Dwan found himself losing his winnings. However, Dwan persisted and soon began winning in PLO games as well, making him the biggest earner in online poker.

Despite taking online gaming by storm for years, 2009 has undoubtedly been its most exciting year. In addition to his continued success playing online, he announced the now famous ‘durrrr challenge’, challenging anyone (except his close friend Phil ‘OMGClayAiken’ Galfond) to play it heads-up over four tables at stakes of $200/$400 for 50,000 hands or until someone folds, and the opponent has the option to choose the game, either NLHE or PLO. Dwan has offered 3:1 odds for his opponents, if he wins they must pay him $500,000; however, if his opponent wins, Dwan must pay out $1.5 million, all on top of the winnings on the 50k hands! Finnish high stakes poker player Patrik Antonius was the first to take up the challenge and opted to play PLO, and his game is still going on due to scheduling conflicts.

In addition to this, he set up a live version of the challenge, with English player Sammy ‘Any Two’ George being the first to accept. The live version has a $500,000 buy-in with $500/$1,000 blinds and will last for 500 hands or until someone decides to fold. The challenge is scheduled for December in Las Vegas.

He also made history by winning the biggest jackpot ever televised: $1.1 million. He won it while filming the fourth season of Full Tilt Poker’s ‘Million Dollar Cash Game’, and Phil Ivey was the player who paid his straight.

And at just 23 years old, Dwan was considered for poker’s highest honor this year, being shortlisted for the WSOP Hall of Fame. Although Dwan was not inducted, he shows the impact he has had on the world of poker, especially online, and will no doubt be a Hall of Famer in the future.