When my son was born in 2016, I took a big risk by naming him Dwan. After all, if half the rumors about Tom were true, he could be starting his life with the name of a failure. Glad Dwan has finally been cleared of wrongdoing and my son can once again be proud of his namesake.

lol close enough ;P

Tom talking about the games in Macau and Manila and his return to PAD

https://www.pokercentral.com/article...ampaign=buffer

Thanks for sharing. Smart, well spoken, and humble kid. I bet he is doing this at least in some part for brand management in China.

It is interesting how his tv time helped him in asia, funny world. He and Phil Ivey likely had the single biggest edge getting into the good games early

For a debt of millions of dollars, you guys seem awfully impressed at a 100k/year payment. That's like 3-5%.

Would you guys be so forgiving if Chino Rheem welched on a $45k bet and decided instead to pay $1.5k/year? You could actually just steal someone's money, stick it in a mutual fund, and pay out less than the return until the heat dies down.

I was never forgiving, as there was nothing to forgive, as the full details have never been made public and frankly its none of our business. Including those who had money on the line.

Jungleman has constantly alluded since day 1 that there are non public additional details that further explain Tom's actions. Surely not fully, but who I am to judge when Jungle has seemed calmer than Doug Polk on the matter.

The biggest issue that is publicly available is that Tom did not escrow. That was obvioisly a mistake, but again, i doubt it was done with malicious intent.

I also think magnitude, not percentage, should be the main "measurement of responsibility" of penalty payments. While it may only represent a percentage, obviously (using your example) $100k payments totalling $800k are a greater identifier of responsibility than $1.5k payments totalling $12k over 8 years.

Jungle has also commented many times that "in many other aspects Tom is great" I never understood what that meant but my speculation is that perhaps Tom helped jungle get into the right games in the beginning.

Finally, to my knowledge this is the only "black mark" against Tom. Posting Chino's name in this thread is something I'd expect Doug to do, not you.

I used Chino as an example to illustrate bias, because I felt some people are doing mental gymnastics on Dwan's behalf because they love him. I think you just affirmed that point. If it was anyone else in this situation, more people would see it for what it is.

Except I doubt chino has paid people he owes upwards of $800k over the past few years / gotten his backers and people he owes into big asia games where they can make a ton of money

Honestly if I was jungle at this point who gives a **** about playing hands just get dwan to pay another x amount of money and call it even. Full tilt doesn't even exist anymore why should the dwan challenge exist anymore. Odds are he didn't put up much if any of the $$$ odds he was giving people to challenge him, full tilt was.


fwiw I am not a dwan fan boy I just feel he was put in a super super ****ty spot just as much as jungle / people betting on the challenge (besides maybe saving a bit of money via not having to play 25k hands right away / ever vs a good HU opponent) with his reputation

@srsly

I believe I see what you are saying (that dwan's fame helps his support) but the comparison to chino is still sensational.

We hate chino because he is a proven scumbag who has scammed likely hundreds of people.

I think the comparison would need to be against someone with an otherwise clean record, who has won millions but is relatively unknown. Like if otB_RedBaron had backed out of a $5M prop or something. I think the fan bandwagon would turn to the hate wagon rather quickly. So you are right that dwan's fame has certainly helped his support in this regard.

Therefore I agree with you that in society celebrities often gain the "benefit of the doubt" edge simply because they are famous. However, that is not what is happening here, for me at least. I refuse to believe dwan is a scammer as long as the person he allegedly scammed continues to say he is not a scammer. I've already listed my other reasons above.

I do agree many fan boys blindly support tom and that is just as bad as the haters blindly hating. The truth is we're all a bunch of blind plebs and the only 2 people that know the full story are too busy losing $20M pots in manilla to care.

You are one of my favorite all time posters so I'll leave it here.

Maybe Tom sold Macau action to Jungle at a discount

I disagree that scale matters more than %s, especially when everyone involved are millionaires. I do see how Chino is a poor example to illustrate the point, perhaps someone more fan-neutral like Dan Colman or Andrew Robl would have worked better. I stand by the general premise though.

FWIW, I actually like Tom and look forward to seeing him on PAD again. I can separate that from my opinion that he has poor ethics and made some very irresponsible decisions, and I find it odd that so many other fans overlook this.

Cates said in his recent podcast with Doug Polk that in the past he had owed Dwan money and that Dwan had always been very cool about it.

That was a joke referencing Alec Torelli.

Yeah, I might be getting confused, but he said that Dwan had been reasonable with things going the other way, whatever that means exactly.

maybe i remember the challenge wrong but wasnt it 50k hands and if durrs opponent was up even $1 durr would pay an extra 1.5m. so they are about halfway through, durr is down, but jungle already has what he is up, so technically dwan doesnt even owe yet, but he has paid jungle roughly half that amount as penalties and you dont think thats a lot?

hi Tom

I already explained this, but I'll rephrase it. By not getting his $1.5 million seven years ago, Jungle has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, probably more than what Tom has paid. Even if you conservatively estimate that he would have gotten a 5% return on that money, the damage is $610k.

This also completely disregards the equity Jungle probably had in the remaining hands.

If you're financially deprived, the courts would add 8% in the UK.

However, realistically I'm not sure even 5% is likely given the state of financial markets over this period. Try like 1 or 2%.

Which markets are you talking about? Things like Vanguard Total Stock Market Index and Dow Jones have more than doubled over that period. I'm not particularly knowledgeable in this area, so I'll defer to your expertise if you have any, but the market seems to have been doing great since 2010.

I was thinking fixed interest, where rates have been very low.

You're right he could have put it into various stocks and might have gotten a better return, but that's not guaranteed and it's maybe a little bit unfair to say that's what he would have done and therefore he would have a return based on those markets.

There is another consideration that you haven't mentioned, though, and which I think is a stronger argument: inflation. $1.5 million seven years ago had a lot more spending power than it does now.

lol at this reasoning. if instead of an incredible bull run the last 8 yrs what if the markets/interest rates were negative overall instead? does that mean tom actually did jungle a favor by not paying him the full amount b/c the money jungle is owed if invested in the market would have a negative value today?

if I'm jungle screw the challenge i'd just take the 40k/month or whatever tom's paying him in penalties and hope he never agrees to finish/forfeit.

I know that sounds like being results oriented, but it's just an example. Note that I conservatively estimated the damage at $610k. If I were basing it on actual market performance, it would be more like $1.7 million.

In general, frozen money loses value over time. Not just from inflation, but opportunity cost. Do you agree, or do you keep your savings under your mattress?

Whether investing in himself as a player, or the market, or whatever else, that money would have grown over the years, on average.

Odds are just as likely that Jungle would have blown that money on another investment scam or an uninsured house that was washed away in a mud slide.

If Jungle, a guy with a temper at times, is cool with things considering he knows all the facts (and what benefits he has received in total) I don't see why anyone else should be even a little bit vexed by the situation. Move on.

Actually, that's a great point. Having more money is really just a liability. By withholding so much of it for such a long time, Tom's actually doing him a favor! Maybe he should be the one receiving payments.

Embarrassing how far your going to justify your daddy's shameless actions of running durrrs name through the mud without much info as means to help his "brand". These are a couple of the biggest gamblers in the world, notice how jungle doesn't seem to care much? I'd wager durr is the same way when owed tons by other big gamblers. Using the % return missed out on as an argument seems laughable in this situation, which I'm sure you know.