Tom “durrrr” Dwan is an internet poker superstar, and a man that basically needs no introduction if you care enough about poker to be reading this blog. While we’re used to hearing stories of him tearing up the high stakes tables at Bovada Poker and pulling money from his many opponents like they’re giving it away, we’ve recently learned that Tom Dwan has been on the receiving end of $300,000 not from other players, but from UB, a poker site on the Cereus network.
The Cereus scandal, for those who weren’t around or who are repressing the memory, took place a number of years ago when a hired consultant by the name of Russ Hamilton ran a scam cheating players out literally millions of dollars. He and a select few of his friends were able to see the hole cards of other players on the tables, and through this cheating took the unsuspecting Cereus community for a staggering $22 Million.
Tom “durrrr” Dwan is of course now known as a Full Tilt Pro and to the best of my knowledge plays almost exclusively on the site, rather than spreading himself around. This has not always been the case, however, and for a time between the beginning of 2005 until the end of 2007 when the scam was taking place, Dwan could be found at Ultimate Bet mixing it up with other high stakes players. Of course swings come with the territory of poker, but it’s now been announced that not all of Dwan’s losses during the time were merely the result of bad luck or bad play.
One session in particular, in which he played $50/$100 Pot-Limit Omaha, Dwan dropped approximately twenty buy-ins to a player who he says was playing “absolutely crazy”, but the reality of what this meant clearly hasn’t hit home until just recently. UB presumably was recently able to establish that Dwan was indeed one of the players scammed out of money by Hamilton, and have compensated him to the tune of $300,000.
It’s truly a pity for online poker that this whole scandal was able to take place, but it’s a really great sign that even so long after the fact UB is still working hard to tie up the loose ends and do right by the players who were wronged at the time.