The Tom Dwan Fleecing

Okay, it wasn’t really a fleecing, in the sense that there was nothing illegal about how $3 million – which at the beginning of last week represented Tom Dwan’s property – found their way to Swedish mystery player Isildur1’s pockets by the end of the week. The weird thing about the whole incident was the fact that Isildur1 seemed to have popped up with the express purpose of taking Dwan to school. Anyway, Dwan did drop the money and all he can do about it now is to stew in his own juice, at least till the wheel turns.
He did already issue Isildur1 a challenge to take him on in a live heads-up match at the “durrrr” Million Dollar Challenge in London. Drawing the Swede out of his comfort zone this way would probably give Dwan a good shot at recovering some of his losses, while in the same time the world would find out who Isildur1 really is.
As far as I’m concerned, I’m hoping that he won’t ever reveal his true identity. Now I’m not saying this would be fair or even sportsmanlike, but if I were him, I’d take the money and just disappear into the sunset. I’m not rooting against Dwan or anything, it would just be a nice change of pace to finally see someone take some dough off those nosebleed tables and not give it all back a week later. If that someone was to be anonymous, I’d like it that much better. Nameless, faceless guy walks away with poker superstar’s stack. You’ve got to love it…
Anyway, here’s a breakdown of what happened during the 19,000 hands the two players put in just over two days last week (putting the 10 months of the durrrr challenge to shame without remorse).

The first confrontation between the two occurred on Sunday to Monday night. They played at 5 and 6 tables, all $500/$1,000 NL Holdem and PL Omaha ones. Pots were massive, scores of them breaking the $200k mark and some of them swelling past $500k. During that session, Dwan dropped a painfully massive $1.2 million. The largest pot that developed was a $574,000 monster, which ended up in Isildur1’s pocket. Dwan kicked off the preflop betting and the two of them were up to $12,000 when the Qc, 8d, 5d flop fell. Isildur1 put the pedal to the metal with a $15,000 bet, Dwan called it and they saw a 9c fall on the turn. Confident in his pocket cards, Isildur1 bet $36,000 and Dwan shoved all-in in response. Isildur1 called it, and turned over pocket Qs for the flopped top set. Dwan had a 2c, 5c for the 4 card flush, but the 3h on the river sealed the deal.

The following night, Dwan was back, looking to get some of his money back. What followed though was quite the opposite though. He dropped $616,000 in a 12,000 hand session, which came to show that Dwan could indeed walk the walk when it came to chasing his money. Durrrr did take down the largest pot of that session (a $498,000 one) but Isildur1 busted one of his bluffs soon after, reclaiming $453,000.

Isildur1’s pocket 10s were up against Dwan’s A,K and the board brought a bunch of blanks. Dwan moved all in at the end of it, but the Swede knew his game by then and swooped in for the kill.
Tuesday night, the two continued right where they’d left off. Isildur1 took another $858,000 off Dwan, after having been $1.7 million down at one point during the session. A $694,953 pot also went down in this session, one that was supposedly the third largest pot ever shipped in online poker. The two players shoved all their chips in preflop, as Dwan held an A,K against Isildur1’s pocket rockets. Not surprisingly, the New Jersey wonderkid failed to catch up and Isildur1s comeback was complete.

Despite the fact that he earned the majority of his winnings off Dwan, Isildur1 had no trouble rounding up his budget from Cole South’s and Brian Townsend’s bankrolls. He took about $200k from each of the two players and even managed to hit Patrik Antonious for a measly $6,500 in a hurry.
Seeing that it was more difficult to wring juice from these guys though, Isildur1 soon returned to his favorite “fish”, Tom Dwan. Sure enough, he relieved durrrr of another $705,000, completely dominating a 2,100 hand session and winning all 5 major pots involved.
The largest pot of this farewell session was a $343,000 one which was shipped to the Swede after his flopped set of 7s made short work of Dwan’s flush draw again. Having taken set-mining to the extreme against Dwan, Isildur1 ended the week more than $3 million up on the American pro. Busy with other things, it’ll take Dwan some time to get back to the table in yet another attempt to exact some revenge. Will he recover any money or will he drop some more? Another question on my mind right now is just how deep are this guy’s pockets? Can he ever be busted?