Tom Dwan's Financial Struggles: Fact or Fiction?
Last week, one of the most popular in media poker pros, Douglas Polk, held a little question/answer session for his followers on Reddit. The day before, he lost about $200,000 on one of the poker shows, but he was still in good humor and promised to answer even uncomfortable Inquiries.
After several standard questions, readers saw the main message of the evening. Polk was asked if he thought Tom Dwan was a better poker player than him. The answer did not take long.
"Tom Dwan is a legend. He is not a better poker player than me. I think we might not see him too much in the future but time will tell," Polk replied.
After that, the poker player was asked to explain why he thinks Dwan will soon "disappear". Followers even offered some reasons, e.g. because he is not interested in playing the most expensive games or he will just start losing and leave.
"Owes way too many people money at this point," added Doug.
This is a very powerful statement. Polk didn't say who or how much money Tom owes, but given his history with Dan Cates, it could very well turn out to be true.
Back in 2009, Dwan organized the legendary Durrr Challenge – the poker player promised to pay $1.5 million to whoever could beat him in heads-up on NLH or PLO discipline. As you know, first he defeated Patrik Antonius, and then faced Dan "Jungleman" Cates...
Due to the well-known events of Black Friday, the competition with Cates was suspended. After 20,000 hands, Dan managed to win about $1,200,000. Since then, he's been chasing Dwan trying to get the debt out of him, but over 10 years he's gotten only about $700,000 – Tom doesn't want to give him the whole amount (or simply can't do it).
It is too early to judge Tom Dwan, because for now only Polk reported on his large debts. But, if he really owes money to a lot of people and can't settle, it could become one of the loudest scandals in poker history.
Julianna Svyrydenko
