Durrrr

Durrrr-dur-Durr-durr-Durrrrrrrrr. The sound of that collective exhaling are the biggest and richest poker players in the world sighing in relief. Tom "Durrrr" Dwan finished in second place at a final table at the World Series of Poker. In perhaps, the most heavily sweated final table ever with far more action on the side than in the event... eclipsing even the prop bet madness of Phil Ivey's final table at last years Main Event, Tom Dwan came in second. Tom Dwan played the casino to the other top players in the world betting against him and the casino almost won.

Phil Ivey is rumored to be on the hook for 9 million dollars if Dwan wins a bracelet this year. That's right 9 million dollars, that's more sweat then he gets playing craps or any other high stakes casino games. Durrrr set the odds at around 3 to 1, 3.25 to 1 that he'd win a bracelet and many of the high stakes regulars took him up on it. Given that it's estimated he would have won more that day than any other day in his career, and it's rumored the sidebets would total almost 15 million (bigger than any Main Event payday), the biggest action was around the table and not on it.

Afterall, the kid's niche is No Limit Hold'em and Pot Limit Omaha, and his biggest successes are in cash games, and most of them are online not live. Those are the two varieties of poker most commonly played and at this years World Series ensured huge fields for both types of events. So perhaps, the big game players recognized a good opportunity when they saw it. Afterall Durrrr would have to navigate through massive fields, countless coin flips, and still win.

The fact that he would stretch himself thin just playing all the events to give himself a chance to win the bracelet would only make his live "Durrrr" challenge all the more harder as time went on. Phil Ivey last year made some bracelet bets and then promptly won two and had a shot at the third, but Ivey's wheelhouse is not that of a standard player. He plays every game well.

Thus, for Ivey he'd have a great chance at any type of poker. He honed his game playing stud in Atlantic city when he was underage, and already had a slew of bracelets and tournament wins in live poker, so Ivey's bet made more sense.

Tom Dwan, is never one to back down from a challenge, or to fire in a bet when the odds seem long for him to win. The kid has incredible self-belief and seeing how Ivey's prop bet fueled him last year, Dwan decided to seek the same motivation to make him relevant in the tournament scene.

This is a guy, after all, who made the Durrrr Challenge, just to get action, and everybody laughed at him laying three to one odds--he's currently beating up on Patrik Antonius and seems all but a lock to win the challenge. So what if some of the poker tournaments he'd be playing in would be relative new games. Dwan's all about instant excellence and surpassing expectations and limitations. His whole career has been about ostentatious self-belief and a quiet fire to win every pot possible.

As a relative nobody, except to online poker insiders, Dwan chastised Phil Hellmuth and challenged him to a duel upon making his debut to the televised poker wold, and hasn't stop challenging the establishment since. So what if Dwan might not have won his first bracelet, and his inexperience in closing out a poker tournament might bite him in the ass through the rest of the world series, but Dwan has a way of doing the unexpected, so much so, that it's almost expected these days.

Eventually, his action will dry up. Many players after last year said they'd stop betting against Phil Ivey doing anything when it comes to poker. If Dwan wins a bracelet this year, Phil Ivey might start saying he'll stop betting against Durrrr doing anything.