BY ERIC RASKIN

AT THE RISK OF OVERSIMPLIFYING THINGS, there are essentially two ways to become the sort of poker player who attracts television ratings: One is to entertain with your words, and the other is to entertain with your actions. The former is relatively easy, if you have the right personality type. You just wind the little handle on the back of someone like Daniel Negreanu or Phil Hellmuth and let those gums flap. But to keep people glued to the TV set without opening your mouth is a rare quality to find. Phil Ivey can do it. And as we’ve learned over the last couple of years, so can Tom “durrrr” Dwan.

That’s not to say that Dwan lacks personality or doesn’t talk enough at the table. He’s actually a fairly good talker and an affable guy whom everybody seems to like. But he doesn’t need to talk. He can just button his lips and play his cards, and by sheer force of the inimitable way he approaches the game, he locks you in as a viewer. There are very few players about whom you can say that.

There are some who have posited that the window for making new poker superstars closed around 2005, but durrrr is proving them wrong. He didn’t turn 21 until 2007 and didn’t begin appearing on TV until 2008, yet he’s probably one of the five biggest stars in the game right now. And he doesn’t even need to open his mouth.

On June 30, however, Dwan took time out of his insanely hectic World Series of Poker schedule to open his mouth exclusively for ALL IN. Dwan has been perhaps the most watched player at the 2010 WSOP, thanks to a series of bets he placed on himself to win a bracelet. The rumor mill swirled all summer as to how many millions of dollars he had at stake, and when he made it all the way to heads-up play out of a 2,563-player field in Event 11, $1,500 No-Limit Hold ’Em, the rails were packed with nervous pros praying for durrrr’s demise. Ultimately, Dwan finished second to Simon Watt, earning $381,885 but missing out on possibly millions more.

Of course, the World Series isn’t the only subject worth talking about when it comes to Dwan. There’s also his epic (and, to some, epically disappointing) “Durrrr Challenge” against Patrik Antonius, a 50,000-hand online heads-up battle that will see Dwan collect an extra $500,000 if he prevails but lose an extra $1.5-million if he doesn’t. There’s his disastrous run-in with the mysterious Swede “Isildur1,” which helped turn online nosebleed-stakes cash games into a popular spectator sport. And, for a guy who’s won and lost so many millions at age 23 that he makes Lenny Dykstra’s finances seem boring by comparison, there’s the simple question of how much longer he can keep doing it.

ALL IN covered all of these topics and more when we sat down with Dwan with just a few events left on the WSOP calendar and his pursuit of a bracelet and the massive payday that would go along with it rapidly coming to an end.

ALL IN: Without a doubt, the hottest buzz at the World Series this year has been over your bracelet bets. Some people, like Phil Hellmuth, play more for the bracelets than for the money. Does playing for the bracelet, being able to call yourself “WSOP bracelet winner Tom Dwan,” matter at all to you? Or when you were at that final table, was money your sole motivation?

Tom Dwan: Money is definitely the main motivation, for sure. Obviously, the bracelet has some worth, but the main motivation is the money.
Can you reveal exactly how many separate bracelet bets you made?

I would guess a total of about probably 35 or 40. I’m not quite sure, I’d have to check. It could be 50, it could be 30, but my guess would be around 40.

So do you have some master list lying around somewhere to keep track of who you bet with?

Yeah, I’ve got a few of those master lists, just in case.

In terms of the money involved, the reports have varied wildly. Can you disclose how much you stand to lose if you don’t win one and how much you stand to win if you do?

I’ll give you two guesses, and I’ll say “over” or “under” to your guesses. So take two guesses on what I win, and then because the bets are all roughly 3-1 or 2.25-1, you can extrapolate what I would lose. But just strictly talking about my bets based on what I do at the World Series this year only, I’ll give you two guesses and I’ll say “over” or “under.”

Okay, my first guess for what you could possibly win is $15-million.

(laughs) Under.

Then how about $10-million.

Under. (laughs)

Damn, I guess I’m out of guesses, huh?

(laughs) Yeah. But you can see from your guesses, it’s not quite as much as what some people think. But the total number is also not so easy to gauge, because a lot of my bets are based on winning two bracelets in three years, and a lot of them are based on winning one this year. So if I somehow win two bracelets this year in the last three tournaments or however many are left, then I’d get a pretty nice little payday.

So, it follows that the rumor that you could potentially lose $9-million to Ivey must be an exaggeration.

(laughs) Yeah. I mean, I have a ton of different bets going on, but it seems likely that if I don’t win a bracelet, I will probably end up somewhere around—including the money I cashed for—within $300,000 or $400,000 either way, because I have a lot of various bets on prize money and stuff with other people. Obviously, I could still have a big final table cash and I could end up winning $500,000 without winning a bracelet, or I could end up losing that much. But it seems like it should end up around even. The thing is, I’ve been away from cash games for a month and away from what I might have won there, which kind of sucks.

Try to explain what it’s like to have that many people sweating you that intensely while you’re playing. Is that distracting at all?

Oh man, it would have been so sweet if I would have just gone through a 2,500-person field and won that bracelet. I would have done the happy dance. That would have been awesome. If a bunch of people were sweating me in the $25K, with a smaller field, it would have probably been different. But the $1,500 event, to win against 2,500-person field, let alone all the bracelet bets, that would have been just too awesome of a story.

So having all those people hanging around, nervously watching your every move, you were looking at it more in terms of the upside of the accomplishment rather than letting it distract you and affect you negatively in any way.

Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t distracting me in that tournament. It could, for sure, in the future, but it wasn’t then.

Is there a hand, or a decision, that you made against Simon Watt heads-up that you wish you could have back, or are you satisfied with how you played?

I just want to play it again, that’s all. I mean, there are no decisions I regret. Obviously, knowing the result, there’s plenty of decisions I wouldn’t have made, but I think all of them were well enough thought out that I have no regrets.

The cards just didn’t go your way, ultimately?

Yeah. Obviously, I ran amazing all tournament, but from five-handed on, I actually ran pretty terrible. Not that I can complain when I’m in the last two from a 2,500-person tournament. It was pretty retarded good luck, and no matter how good you are, you can’t go that deep without an enormous amount of luck. But that said, from five-handed on, I did run pretty terrible. I won one hand where I was 35-65 or something like that, with 9-7 versus A-Q, I think. But I just couldn’t pick up hands, couldn’t flop pairs, anything like that.

Is it true that you let Huck Seed buy out of the bracelet bets, but nobody else? And if so, why was the exception made for Huck?

Well, he actually bought out with other people. He just sold his bet to someone else. He didn’t actually buy out with me. If people wanted to buy out, I would have maybe done that if they wanted to do a pretty unfair price for them, but I didn’t really have time to work anything out with anyone because I was focusing on the poker, you know? But there were some people that I offered something that I thought was fairly reasonable, but there wasn’t really enough time to agree on anything with anyone.

Obviously, the position you were in then, playing at that final table, is very different than the position you’re in now a few weeks later. In hindsight, do you wish you had made deals to let people buy out?

Well, I mean, there’s like three tournaments left, I’m a huge underdog to win a bracelet. I still hope I can, but I mean … that’s a very Monday-morning quarterbacking kind of thing to do. But obviously, if I could, I’d go back and buy out because I haven’t won a bracelet yet.
But you still have the WSOP-Europe events too, right?

The Europe events only count as a chop for most of my bets. My bets are all similar, but some of them have slight differences. In most of them, if I win a bracelet in Europe, it’s a chop.

It was reported that you have a bet going the other way against Ivey—you betting against him winning a bracelet. When he won one a few days ago, was there a part of you that was saying, “Why would I ever bet against Phil Ivey in anything?” Did you have that moment? Or do you still feel it was a good bet that just didn’t pan out?

He’s just the sickest. That’s all I have to say about that. He’s the sickest.

Would you ever bet against his winning something again?

I still think it was a good bet. That particular bet was made on High Stakes Poker, so it’s all right for me to get into specifics. Most of the bets, I don’t like to discuss because I don’t know if the other person wants me talking about it, but obviously he doesn’t really have that choice since he said it on High Stakes Poker. And it was him giving me 2-1 on either of us winning a bracelet this year. If he won one, I’d pay him an amount, and if I won one, he’d have to double that. And if we both won it was a wash. And I think that bet is pretty fair. It just doesn’t look like it’s too fair right now, since he has one and I don’t.

Big-picture question about the World Series: Has it been fun so far? Or has making all these bracelet bets been more trouble than it’s worth?

I mean, it has been pretty fun. Obviously, it seemed pretty fun while I thought I was going to win a bracelet, then I ended up not winning and being a little tilted. I’m not sure how happy I’ll be to do it all again next year. You know, I’m kind of frustrated that I didn’t win a bracelet, but I don’t regret having made the bets.

Switching to a separate topic: your online cash games. Do you foresee the Durrrr Challenge ending sometime soon? In other words, do you and Patrik have plans to get back to it seriously after the WSOP?

Yeah, it should end right after the Series probably.

Do you expect to start another one after this, or have you found that it just takes too long to bother with it again?

Well, this one took a really long time, but future ones should be way faster. So I do plan on doing other ones.

Would you do them with different parameters, in terms of, say, fewer hands required?

Well, obviously everyone in the world would play one hand against me getting 3-1 on the bonus payout. So there’s a line I have to draw somewhere, where we have to play a certain amount of hands for me to believe it’s a good deal. Initially I said 50,000 hands, and I don’t plan on going lower than that at any point. I think 3-1 is a sick enough offer that no one should complain about that. And 50,000 hands, if we play 500 hands an hour, we should be done in 100 hours. And we should be able to play 100 hours in a month, or a month and a half at the worst. I mean, I won’t do the next Challenge until we’re both in a spot where we can play 100 hours in a month. Hopefully I’ll crank one out in a month or two, right after the Series, to let people know it doesn’t have to take as long as with me and Patrik. We’ll see.

And you know, a bunch of people have said that I have the one with Patrik locked up, but that’s definitely not true. Hopefully they haven’t jinxed me and I can still win that one. Obviously, I like my odds now, being up $1.8-million. But there still are like 8,000 hands left and we still need to post something around like $2.5- or $2.6-million in blinds, so Patrik still definitely has a chance. I’m, for sure, a favorite, but it’s not as big as some people seem to think.

Have you thought about, when you get down to the last couple hundred hands, if your lead is big, whether you might just fold your way to locking up the victory?

Well, say I have 100 hands to go and you pay $300 in blinds per hand, and I have a $30,001 lead, I’m obviously going to fold every hand. Where that exact line is—with 8,000 hands to go, I can’t think about it yet. If we get down to 3,000 hands to go and I’m up like $200,000, I’ll probably be playing just a little tighter than normal, but I still won’t be able to fold every hand. So I might play very, very slightly tighter than normal and that’s it. There’s a bunch of different situations that could come up, but hopefully I’ll just keep doing well and win by like $2-million and not have to think about it.

Let’s talk about your pal Isildur1. People claimed last year that he wiped out your bankroll. How close was that to the truth?

Obviously, I lost a lot of money. But I wouldn’t have been playing if I had any concerns about where I was going to find my next meal. So somewhere in between there is where the truth really was, but I don’t really feel like delving into the specifics of my bankroll.
Suffice to say he did not leave you broke and living on the street.
I was not on the street, no.

Not that you have to name a name, but can you say with 100 percent certainty at this point that you know who Isildur1 is?

I think I know who he is, but I’m not 100 percent sure.

Some people have speculated that your signing with Full Tilt was possibly connected with the downswing against Isildur1, in the sense that you were looking for a steady source of income to combat the variance at that moment. Is that true, that the two were connected?

No, I mean, Full Tilt is a good fit for me, I’m happy that I signed with them, but me signing with them or not signing with them had nothing to do with Isildur1. It might have happened like two days earlier than it would have because I was tilted and wanted something good to think about, but one basically had no impact on the other.

The other entity you signed with around the same time is Poker Royalty. How has that changed your life and career, having an agency representing you?

You know, I’ve been good friends with [Poker Royalty CEO] Brian [Balsbaugh] for—I’ve known him probably three or four years now, and been good friends with him for the last year and a half or two years. And I’ve consulted with him for quite a while now, on certain situations that come up. So it was just a matter of having them formally represent me. The whole agency is just full of people that are great to work with and very smart, and Brian’s such a great guy. So I have nothing but good things to say about them. I’m super happy that they’re representing me. But Brian was already giving me advice before I signed with them, so it wasn’t a drastic change.

There have been some changes in your life in recent years that have been drastic. Your life obviously changed very drastically from 2004 to 2007. You went from being a normal kid finishing high school and starting college, to a wealthy professional online poker player. The biggest change from 2007 to now would appear to be the fact that you’re now a poker TV star and a celebrity of sorts. Has that been a difficult adjustment for you at all? Have you gotten used to the idea of strangers knowing who you are and approaching you and starting conversations?

I would say that that’s not much of an adjustment, really. I mean, if I happen to be inside the Rio, or inside Caesars for the Heads-Up Championship or something like that, then sometimes it is a little bit like that. You have to take a deep breath and get used to it. But usually, when I’m outside the casinos, it doesn’t happen to me that often. So it’s not a big change.

So you can walk down the average city street and not necessarily have anybody recognize you.

No. I mean, obviously, since I’ve been on TV it does happen, but not much. It’s no big deal.

Do you actually watch yourself much on TV?

Not too often. Sometimes, someone will say, “Hey, watch this, it’s funny.” Or, “Watch this hand for something this guy did versus you,” whatever. Or sometimes I’ll just want to see what someone had in a hand.

More than anyone else, it seems like you really understand your opponents’ mentalities, with regard to them not wanting to make bad plays on TV or get bluffed by you with the world watching. Is that something that you think about very consciously when you sit down to play a televised cash game?

I mean, I try to factor in every little detail I can, just to make as good a decision as I can every time. A lot of the times I’ll notice things that suggest whether someone is playing different because it’s on TV. So I try to be as conscious as I can of all the things that might affect someone’s decisions.

The other thing is you seem to know how much money it will take to intimidate each of your opponents. Is that something that you make a point to try to figure out before you even sit down—what everyone’s breaking point is?

Like I said, I try to be conscious of every factor I can, and that’s obviously an important one. But some people, with their last money, will put it in too light because they are worried of getting bluffed off their last money. That can go both ways.

Getting away from poker-specific questions for a moment, where do you live now? Are you in Vegas full-time?

I’m here more than anywhere else, but I still have places in Boston, San Diego, and Texas. I don’t go to those places anywhere near as often. I’m here so much for poker lately, but probably at some point in the future I’ll be here a lot less.

Do you actually own a place in Vegas?

No, everything is retardedly overpriced, so I think renting and then buying later is cheaper.

It seems to the outsider like all you do is play poker, either live or online. And I guess this month that’s pretty accurate—
For the last month and a half, that is for sure true. I’ve woken up, played poker, come back, spent maybe an hour with my friends. I might play a quick game of ping-pong, and then go to sleep and do it again.

Well, when not in the middle of World Series craziness, what do you typically do with your time when you’re not playing poker?
Play ping-pong, play a bunch of foosball, and whatever I feel like doing, you know?

Looking at the big picture, you’ve already done so much in the poker world and you’re not even 24 years old yet. Where do you see yourself going from here? Have you thought about how much longer poker is going to be this big a part of your life?

I’ve thought about it some. I don’t really know what the future holds, but I don’t see myself getting fed up with poker anytime soon. Well, I mean, I’m fed up with it right now. I definitely want to take like two weeks off at the end of the Series. But otherwise, I have no immediate plans to cut back.

Do you ever see yourself holding a 9-to-5 job instead of being a poker player?

That’s pretty unlikely. I don’t know that I’ll be a poker player forever, but holding a regular job? That’s pretty unlikely.