Tom Dwan

Tom Dwan was born in Edison, NJ in 1986. If you've already done the math, then you've figured out that Dwan is one of America's youngest pros. Online poker gave a teenaged Tom Dwan an early start to what has already been a very promising pro poker career. While many poker rooms promote a policy of no underage gambling, young Dwan prevailed — as he has in so many scenarios — in his pursuit of profitable poker playing.

Dwan has openly stated that he started playing online poker as early as 17. He started slow but quickly gained momentum, and in addition to his online success also earned a respectable 12th place finish at the 2005 European Poker Tour's No Limit Hold 'em Main Event. Because it would be two more years until Dwan would be eligible for American tournaments, he continued to focus on online poker opportunities.

Dwan is also commonly referred to as “durrr,” a deceptively lame-brained name that also doubles as his online poker room persona. From his modest beginnings, Dwan quickly built up to his currently favored $500/$1000 stakes.

By the time that Dwan was legal for live American play, he had set the record for the largest online cash game pot ($723,938—which he rather unfortunately lost).

In 2007, he made a grand entrance to the U.S. poker tournament scene by taking home 4th in the World Poker Tour's No Limit Hold 'em Championship. That single win sent him home with $324,244.

While this sum is Dwan's largest live tournament win, it is paltry in comparison to the pots he regularly wins while playing online. In fact, rumor has it that in 2008 alone Dwan earned an impressive $5.41 million on the popular online poker room Full Tilt. In his first two years of legal American tournament competition, Dwan has racked up eight major cashes with top finishes at WSOP, WPT, and NBC Heads Up events. He has also become something of a poker reality star, appearing in four different poker-oriented internet and TV series.

At the beginning of 2009, Dwan made a bold attempt to assert his dominance in the world of online poker when he announced his own 50,000-hand, $1,000,000 challenge. Seasoned live and online pros Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius have already accepted the challenge. While the competition has yet to begin, Dwan insists that he is confident that his long and successful career in the online arena will give him the winning edge.