Poker Blog

Tom Dwan gets Married in Private Ceremony

Tom Dwan aka Durrrr gets married in Las Vegas in a private ceremony. The millionaire poker pro married a cocktail waitress that he met in the high stakes poker games in Macau.

Here is a pic of his new wife Sarah Dwan:

Little is known about his girlfriend except that she is a model and she doesn’t know anything about poker. She was dating A-Rod a few months ago but broke it off.

Here is camera video from the ultra expensive after party in Las Vegas:
Tom Dwan Wedding Video

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The first match of the “Challenge durrrr” promotion kicked off on Sunday with Tom Dwan screen name durrrr facing off against Full Tilt qualifier inorej in four heads-up PL Omaha Sit-N-Go tournaments. If inorej won a match against durrrr, he would get $25,000. Two matches would win in $50,000. If he could take down three out of the four matches, he would get a hefty sum of $150,000. Finally, if inorej could somehow shock the world and take down all four Sit-N-Go events against durrrr, he would win the grand prize of $1.5 Million.

Sadly, it did not take long before we would find out that inorej would not take down the grand prize. In the very first match, inorej was down to just 2,235 and after raising to 90, durrrr raised to 270. Inorej then four-bet to 810 and durrrr made the call. With just 1,425 left, inorej shoved on a flop of Js-8d-5c. Durrrr made the call and inorej found himself in bad shape. He had Kd-Kc-7d-2d for a pair of kings while durrr held Qd-Jd-Jh-10d for top set and a straight draw. The turn and river missed both players and the first match went to durrrr.

Unfortunately, the 2nd match did not end much differently. The final hand of this match saw inorej down to just 2,910 of his initial stack of 6,000. He and durrrr got into a raising war pre-flop that resulted in inorej being all-in with Ah-Kh-9s-8s. Durrrr was holding Ac-Ad-6d-4h and had the lead. The flop fell Qc-Qh-2h to leave durrrr in the lead, but now inorej had outs to a flush. The turn 4d helped neither player and the river Kd was useless to inorej. As a result, durrrr was up 2-0 in the challenge match, and fans were wondering if inorej could even pull of a single match victory.

After the end of the 2nd match, it took quite a while before we had another all-in. Inorej lead in Match 3 by a considerable margin at one point, but durrrr retook the lead after catching the nut flush. From that point, it was all durrrr, all the time. Finally, inorej was down to just 1,200 in chip and decided to put them in with Kd-Qd-Qh-9c. He was actually in decent shape against durrrr, who held Ah-3h-5c-10s. The flop quickly put durrrr in the lead when it fell Ac-4c-9h. The 2c on the turn gave durrrr a wheel and the nuts. Durrrr moved up to 3-0 in the match and inorej had just one more shot to take down $25,000.

The final match of this challenge was never saw either play with a dominate lead. Both had held slight leads, and that was the case in the final hand with durrrr up 6,838 to 5,162 of inorej. Durrrr three-bet to 900 pre-flop and the two saw a flop of 4h-4d-4h. Durrrr bet out 800 and inorej called. The turn then fell the case four and durrrr bet out 1,140. Inorej made the call to see the river of the 7s. Durrrr then moved all-in, and inorej called with his last 2,322. Durrr showed As-Ad-5d-2h and inorej mucked his hand.

With that final victory, durrrr sweeps the first match of the challenge durrrr promotion. To say that inorej “got durrred” was a bit of an understatement. Unfortunately for him, he had to win a match in order to take away any cash. Unlike isildur1’s challenge against DodgyFish72, durrrr actually tried to play a great game and proved to players around the world that you better have game if you want to challenge durrrr.

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There have been many poorly kept secrets over the years. Among those include wrestling being fake, Richard Nixon’s criminal past, and even Clay Aiken’s homosexuality. Now, the worst kept secret in poker has been confirmed. On Saturday, PokerStars revealed that recently signed pro Isildur1 is indeed Viktor Blom.

Viktor Blom Photo

Pokerstars had initially told that the announcement would be made at 7 p.m. EST and would subsequently play Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier in a 100 hand heads-up match. Both players played with $10,000 in cash with Blom walking away the victor. After his match with Elky, Isildur1 would face “OU THE NICK” in a similar matchup. OU THE NICK won his right to play Isildur1 in an online qualifier on Pokerstars.

PokerNews did a brief interview with Blom regarding his reveal and he stated that once he had signed with PokerStars, he felt the time was right to let the world know who he was. He also said that he felt he was the best heads-up NL Hold’em player in the world. Blom revealed that one of his goals is to take down an EPT event sometime in 2011. When asked how he improved his game, Blom jokingly stated, ” Nothing. I just lose a lot and that helps me learn.”

For those of your living under a rock on in a cave in Afghanistan, Isildur1 made headlines in 2009 when he burst onto the online scene taking Millions from top pros, most notably Tom durrrr Dwan. Then, within a month Isildur1 lost all of his winnings plus an additional $2 Million. Most of those went to Brian Hastings who used a strategy devised from using hands compiled from his and other player’s PC’s. This ended up getting Hastings red pro status revoked for a month and fueling the debate against data mining hands online.

Isildur1’s style is described as both dangerous and reckless. As his high stakes play has shown, he is prone to massive swings in both directions. His live record is somewhat lacking as his style has yet to catch on. He was famous for a massive bluff shove during the 2009 WSOP Europe that resulted in his elimination. Adversely, he proceeded to make the money and run deep in the 2010 WSOP Europe. One of Blom’s goals when he first signed with PokerStars was to improve his tournament play. If Blom can adapt his tournament style, he could prove to be a very dangerous live player.

Now that Blom’s “secret” has been revealed, more players will consciously gun for him both in live and online games. Blom himself says that he expects that subsequent SuperStar Showdown challenges will become more spirited now that the players know his identity. Now that players and fans know his identity for sure, it is safe to say that Blom could be PokerStars has found their answer for durrrr.

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It was announced a while ago that the next official challenger to Tom Dwan screen name durrrr in the Tom Dwan Million Dollar Challenge would be Dan Cates screen name JungleMan12. After a bit of speculation and hype by poker sites all over the world, the official start to the 2nd installment of the Million Dollar Challenge began early Friday morning on Full Tilt Poker.

As most everyone knows already, in order to take part in the Million Dollar Challenge, someone must put up $500,000 as a prop bet and then play durrrr in 50,000 hands of heads-up poker. Players must play four heads-up session at a time and must risk their own money. At the start of the session, a player must pick either PL Omaha or NL Holdem as their game, and that is the game that will take place throughout the challenge. At the end of 50,000 hands, if Dwan is ahead, he takes the players $500,000 in addition to the money won during the challenge. If the challenger wins, not only do they get the money won while playing, but they receive $500,000 from Dwan, plus an additional $1 Million bonus.

In this edition of the Million Dollar Challenge, the game of choice is No Limit Holdem. As you may recall, Patrik Antonius chose PL Omaha. Phil Ivey is the holder of the $500,000 from each player. Also, there are a couple of rules added onto this challenge. First, players need to add on if their stack is below 75 big blinds and can get up anytime effective stacks are greater than 250 big blinds. Also, all-ins will be ran twice in order to cut down on variance. In addition, the players agreed that they can play as many as six tables at once.

The first session between these two players began at 12:35 a.m. EDT Friday Morning and the first session between the two lasted about 2 and a half hours. At the end of the session, the players logged in 1,651 hands and Dwan emerged ahead $129,888. A two hour break then ensued and Dwan returned around 5:15 a.m. to start session two.

The second session lasted around seven hours and during that time Cates went on a massive heater. He rebounded from his $129k loss to pull even before going ahead about $150,000. Then, during the last hour of play, he ran a massive heater to pull ahead a total of $518,191 after 5,829 total hands played.

After one night, Dwan and Cates have over 11% of the challenge completed. It took Dwan and Antonius over a month to pull this off in their challenge. At the rate this challenge is going, we might be done by September. We had no clue when Antonius will finish his challenge.

Many give Cates a big advantage over Dwan in this one. According to PokerTableRatings, Dwan has lost more than $1.4 Million lifetime to Cates going into this challenge. So far, Cates has continued to dominate Dwan. Can he continue his domination? Stay tuned as we bring you more from the Million Dollar Challenge.

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