The $10,000 buy-in event and the final table were adjacent to one another, so when players folded their hands they would run (literally run) over to see what was happening. Watt had more than a 2-1 chip advantage heading into heads-up play, but you would swear that Dwan had 90 percent of the chips in play. Dwan then doubled with the against the of David Randall, and two-dozen hands later, Kiwi Simon Watt busted Randall. The man known as “durrrr” didn’t eliminate a single player during the final table, and found himself with a short stack (19 big blinds and 10 percent of the chips in play) during three-handed play. Most of the players who bet against Dwan let it ride, but it looked as if he and Huck Seed cut a deal before the cards were in the air. When the final table was about to begin, Dwan was fielding offers for buyouts. His objective was to try and run up a stack so that he could continue playing on Day 2 regardless of the result at the final table, but all he really did was torment the players he was betting against. He told Gloria Balding at the start of the WSOP, that it would be his largest one-day win ever.ĭwan was the chip leader entering the final table, and on the one-hour dinner break before the start of play, he hopped into the $10,000 Seven-Card Stud Hi-Low Split 8-or-Better Championship. The amounts were never confirmed, but if Dwan won a bracelet, it was rumored that he would earn between $9-12 million. Prior to the 2010 WSOP, Dwan followed Phil Ivey’s lead and made a series of bracelet bets.

Looking back now, it was even bigger than that. This was only my second WSOP as a tournament reporter, first with PokerNews, and the only thing I could compare it to at the time was the play-down day in the Main Event. It was only early June, but the atmosphere in the Amazon Room was electric. Among the finalists were online tournament pro Eric Ladny, German pro Marvin Rettenmaier, bracelet winner Jason Young, and young phenom Tom “durrrr” Dwan. The 2010 World Series of Poker was still in its infancy when Event #11: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em reached an official final table of nine.

Before there was 'Isildur1', there was 'durrrr'.

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