Tom “durrrr” Dwan is a man that certainly needs no introduction. As one of the finest and most feared poker players in the world, Dwan, 25, has become the face of the young poker generation, an online legend that has won and lost millions, played in the richest cash games in the world, and has earned the respect of just about everyone in the poker community.
Recently, Dwan made his first stop in Manila to compete in the 2012 APT Philippines Manila Millions Event. In that event, considered as the biggest in APT history, Dwan was joined in the felt by a number of other poker heavyweights, including Phil Ivey, Elton Tsang, Johnny Chan. Unfortunately for “durrrr”, his time on the table was short-lived after busting out second in the entire field.
In between hitting the tables at the 2012 APT Philippines, Dwan sat down with the eternally gorgeous Tatjana Pasalic of CalvinAyre.com to talk about a slew of important subjects, including his experience in Manila, the rise of the Asian poker market, the future of a pro poker league, and his thoughts on the state of Full Tilt Poker, the very site that gave birth to the “durrrr” legend.
As somebody that has been forced to leave behind online poker, Dwan has become a fixture on the poker road, having made frequent trips to Macau to play with some of the best Asian players in the world. It’s through these trips that Dwan has come to appreciate the rise of poker in Asia, something that he’s looking to be a part of.
“Definitely the amount and stakes in Asia are growing, where the amount and stakes in the US and Europe, if anything, are declining, maybe staying the same in some places.” Dwan said.
“In Asia stakes are getting bigger everyday and more people are playing everyday.”
Despite having made good money on live games all over the world, Dwan is still an online poker player at heart and the aftermath of Black Friday hasn’t been easy for him, forcing him to go out on the road to play poker a lot more than he’d prefer.
“I’m ready for some online play again,” Dwan said with an exasperated smile.
Dwan also said that the traveling for games can become a little too taxing and is something that isn’t a problem when playing online poker. He also talked about how its easier to play online because of the ease of access involved and the fact that you can sit on any table you want without having to wait too long for somebody to stand up.
“With live, it matters more trying to get into games whereas in online, you can enter any game by just clicking sit,” he said.
Tatjana also broached to Dwan the subject of Epic Poker, a series of poker events that had a pro league feel to it and carried a stringent requirement of being available only to onlyto poker players who have met certain qualification criteria for multi-million dollar lifetime earnings, multiple wins and/or cashes at high level tournaments. After three events, the people behind Epic Poker, Federated Sports + Gaming, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Despite the short-lived state of Epic Poker, the concept of a professional poker league is something that Dwan is optimistic will happen, if not now, then sometime in the future.
“The overall premise is something that 30 years from now, will almost definitely be happening,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if its going to be this iteration that’s called Epic Poker, but the premise of a pro league with money added is something people would like to see.”
As with any conversation that involves somebody that was previously involved with Full Tilt Poker, Pasalic asked what he learned from the FTP debacle.
“There’s a lot of possibilities that could happen that would depend on some things,” Dwan said. “Definitely, I’ll be a lot more careful on any site that I join in the future to make sure they have all the money and that there’s no risk for the players to not get paid.”
So is Dwan ready to rejoin Full Tilt Poker if, somehow, the online poker site comes back?
“Unless they have the money to pay the players, I would never rejoin the site.”
