One year ago the biggest news at the WSOP was Tom “durrrr” Dwan and the millions of dollars he had riding on winning a gold bracelet.
Dwan came excruciatingly close to succeeding, finishing second out of 2,563 in a $1,500 No-Limit event and narrowly missing what he described as the biggest winning day of his career.
Despite falling short of the mark on his single-year bets for 2010, Dwan still has a ton of money riding on his performance at the World Series of Poker.
“If you just counted the overall equity of winning one bracelet it would be my biggest winning day ever,” he told PokerListings.com today in the back halls of the Rio in Las Vegas.
That’s counting a variety of bets he’s made including winning a single bracelet, multiple bracelets, cross-books and prize money bets.
“The money I would win straight up on bets if I won one bracelet wouldn’t be my biggest day but it would be pretty huge,” he added.
For Dwan, though, the motivation to make these bets was based on more than just the cash on the line.
“Almost all the bets I do are either cross-books, prize-money bets or bracelet bets because I either want to be playing to win or playing to have the most equity in the tournament,” he said.
Dwan has already had three deep runs this summer, finishing ninth in the $25k Heads-Up Championship, 16th in the $5k PLO and most recently fifth in the $10k HORSE Championship.
Perhaps learning their lesson with the close call of Dwan’s runner-up finish in 2010, players were reluctant to give him the same level of action in 2011.
“I have a lot less bets on winning a single bracelet this year because a lot of people didn’t want action,” said Dwan.
“I was pretty tilted about that a couple times in the last week but so far it’s worked out for me since I haven’t won a bracelet,” he continued.
Getting back to his reasons for putting so much on the line at the WSOP, Dwan explained the thought process behind the emphasis on winning a bracelet.
“It gives me more motivation to play,” he said.
“Obviously I wouldn’t have shown up the day after busting the $10k HORSE to play the $1,500 Limit Hold’em Shootout if I didn’t have all these bets,” he added.
But when you get right down to it durrrr’s thinking is pretty simple.
“I’d really like to just take one down and win all those bets,” he said.
“It would be sweet.”
To follow durrrr's progress and all the action from Las Vegas check out our 2011 WSOP Live Coverage section, brought to you by partypoker.
After reading this article, I immediately had a massive question that I wish the interviewer had asked. “How much did you make on your biggest day Tom?”