It is natural for all poker players to look up and admire the top players in the game. Players like Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth are legendary as a result of all their success and fame. But they came up in an earlier era where live play was their platform to success. The latest generation of poker player that is having tremendous success in the poker world came up by playing online poker. These select players are now playing for hundreds of thousands, often millions of dollars in a game we play for fun and much humbler stakes. Starting in their teens and excelling in their twenties, these players have scaled the highest games online and are now branching out to have great success as they travel around the world living their “balla” lifestyles.
Three players who exemplify this new generation of new poker superstars are Tom Dwan, Phil Galfond, and Brian Hastings. Each started playing low stakes online poker in their teens and each has gone on to tremendous success. Their stories are fascinating and inspiring reads.
Tom “Durrrr” Dwan
Tom Dwan is probably the most famous player of his generation. Known as “durrrr” (yes, with four r’s), the 25-year-old plays the highest stakes cash games and tournaments around the world, taking on all comers. His fame grew with lightening speed in 2009 when he dominated the best cash game players in the world on High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark.
Dwan started playing poker when he was 17 living with his parents in New Jersey. He began playing play-money tables on Paradise Poker. After building some confidence, he deposited $50 and started playing low-stakes Sit and Go’s. His infamous username was selected with the goal of annoying and tilting players. Dwan immediately began winning and building his confidence stating “I never really worried if I was good at it; I just thought everyone else was bad and it seemed like an easy way to make money.”
Within a couple months of playing for real money, Dwan switched to playing cash tables. That first year he made $15,000 in winnings and consistently moved up limits. At 18, he was playing $40/$80 Limit where he added another $35k to his winnings before hitting a losing streak. That $20k downswing caused him to question Limit poker and he switched to No-Limit Hold’em. He took his roughly $40k bankroll and started playing $5/$10 NL. Then he moved up to $25/$50 losing about $10k. He proceeded to move back down until about three months later when he had more money and has been gaining ever since then. He has risen to the top in a very short amount of time but Dwan is quick to downplay his success. “I run good, what can I say?” he said jokingly. Dwan attended Boston University as an engineering major before dropping out to pursue poker full-time.
Although Dwan was already an online legend and widely known on poker forums, when he turned 21 he started to focus on the live tournament circuit and live high stakes cash game world. He was distinguished by a lack of fear to take on any players for any stakes. Although preferring cash games, he has had success in the tournament world with a 4th place finish at the 2007 WPT World Poker Finals at Foxwoods for $324k, a 2nd place finish at the 2008 Aussie Millions $3k Pot Limit Omaha event for $90k, and 2nd place finish at the WPT Borgata Winter Open (NLH). His best finish was at the 2010 $1,500 NLHE World Series of Poker event that saw him win $381k, but narrowly miss out on a multi-million dollar prop bet with many of the top players in the game.
Tom Dwan has always pushed himself for motivation in poker. He is a notorious prop better and loves to issue challenges like his infamous incomplete Patrik Antonius and Dan “Jungleman12” Cates Full Tilt challenges. Dwan’s aggressive and loose tendencies have seen him lose and recover from many multi-million dollar downswings. Since the collapse of Full Tilt Poker, Dwan has been focusing much of his play in the massive private high stakes games in Macau.
Phil “OMGClayAiken/jman” Galfond
Phil Galfond is one of the most respected poker players in the world. He is reputed to have won between $8-$10 million in online poker over the last few years. His calm, always questioning and analytical style has influenced many players. He plays the highest stakes Pot Limit Omaha games online and has experienced considerable live success as well.
Galfond, similarly to Dwan, initially deposited $50 online and started playing Sit and Go’s. He didn’t understand bankroll management and immediately started playing $10 Sit and Go’s, winning a few, but going broke quickly. He deposited another $50 and never looked back. Very early on in his poker career he became friends with other young poker guns who were bringing attention to themselves by calling themselves the “Ship It Holla” crew that promoted their hard partying and successful poker lives. Galfond did go to the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he studied philosophy.
Galfond’s motivation in creating the OMGClayAiken username was so that opponents would be embarrassed to lose to him and he would be viewed as the opposite of most tough, macho and cocky usernames you often see used. His online legend grew so large that he was invited to play on three seasons of High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark.
Galfond helped run his own respected poker training site, Bluefire poker, until his departure in December 2011. He also funded the PokerStatic poker podcast site. One of Galfond’s contributions to the poker theory world is his concept of G-Bucks to estimate your cash equity against your opponents projected range of hands, rather than against their particular hand.
It was Galfond’s 2008 win in the prestigious $5k World Series of Poker PLO event against a talented field, winning $817k, which brought him tremendous satisfaction and respect. Although predominately a online PLO player, he has seven other money finishes and has won over $1 million in live tournament winnings. Galfond stated after his win, “I felt that I had already proven myself winning in the toughest games online, for a long time now, but I hadn’t really proven myself yet. For me it means that I’ve proven myself to everybody else.”
The 27-year-old Galfond who grew up in Maryland, resided in New York City for years before moving to Vancouver, Canada in the wake of poker’s Black Friday so he could continue his high stakes online poker playing.
Brian Hastings
Brian “Stinger” Hastings holds a special place in online poker lore. He remains the biggest single day cash game winner in the history of online poker. His epic match against the volatile Swede Viktor Isildur1 Blom in 2009, netted him $4.18 million in a single day. He would later win another $1.5 million in a follow-up session to effectively bust Isildur1 from the high stakes games on Full Tilt at that time.
The Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania native was introduced to poker by his high school math teacher who noticed Hastings talents and need for a challenge. Hastings deposited $50 in June of 2005, and diligently went about building his bankroll through Sit and Go’s, tournaments and cash games. He was one of the first triple threats for his ability to excel in all three formats of the game while he moved up levels. He was an early member of CardRunners training site and became one of their early instructors. He was heavily influenced by his friendships with other lead pros like Brian Townsend, Cole South, Taylor Caby and others at the thriving learning community.
Hastings had so much success in his high school years playing online poker that he was able to fully fund his college experience. It went a long way towards his parents fully supporting his decision to play. Unlike many other successful online pros, Hastings relished his college experience and graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Economics. His volume of play suffered during his college days, but he continued to have success and value his college years.
Despite his historic win, Hastings has also suffered big downswings. His biggest downswing was over $1.4 million soon after becoming a Full Tilt Red Pro in 2008. Hastings hasn’t prioritized his live tournament playing until recently, but in 2011 he won a $2k NLHE WPT regional event in Florida for $213k. He also took second and eighth in European EPT and WSOPE side events for a collective $140k.
Hastings has had more limited exposure, due to his youth, but he appeared on a special high stakes PLO episode of Poker After Dark that featured Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, Phil Galfond, Patrik Antonius and others. The 23-year old Hastings values traveling and investing in other ventures beyond his poker playing. He has also recently relocated to Vancouver, Canada in an effort to resume his online high stakes poker playing in the wake of Black Friday.