4 Deep Poker Lessons From ACR Pro Tom Dwan

If you somehow haven’t heard, poker legend Tom “Durrrrr” Dwan recently signed as an ACR Pro and returned to televised cash games by immediately taking part in some enormous pots. Here are 4 lessons I learned watching the return of Durrrr over the past couple of weeks.

1. Everyone underbluffs (the river)

I’ll admit I didn’t get to watch every last minute of action this week, so if I missed one let me know, but in the significant amount of time I did watch, I did not see a single bluff-raise on the river. Instead, in every pot where the river action went bet/raise, it was the case of a huge hand up against the actual or effective nuts. Watching the scenario play out the same way over and over again, the horrors of my very many unsuccessful hero/frustration-calls flashed before my eyes like some sort of war PTSD. The lesson was suddenly so obvious: if you can’t develop the ability to make big river folds, you may get to feel like a hero every now and again, but you’re going to catch a lot of strays in the process. And unless you have a Dwan-sized bankroll, you’re eventually going to catch one too many – and that will be it.

So the next time you find yourself thinking “Could he really have a better hand here?” – and I would guess this is exponentially more true the lower down the stakes you go – take a moment to count on your fingers all the bluff raises you’ve seen on the river in meaningful pots over your career, and once you realize you don’t even need to use your toes, let go of the feeling of injustice and just fold the damn hand.

2. Sometimes the best luck is the luck you fade

One of my favorite hands from the recent streams came when the man we used to call Durrrr was dealt the dream scenario, picking up kings in position against Santhosh’s queens. Unfortunately for Dwan, not only did his opponent flop top set, but the board ran out in literally the most innocuous way possible, bringing a rainbow 825 in addition to the offsuit queen. With the pot quickly approaching 600K, Tom was left with only a 1.3x pot bet left to lose, which sounds a lot less terrifying than 781K. When the hand was over, Dwan confirmed he would have indeed gotten stacked on any card but an ace or queen, but fortunately for the ACR Pro, the quad queen did mercifully fall on the river, saving him more than three-quarters of a million dollars.

Although the action itself was entertaining enough, the reason I loved this hand so much was because of what happened next, with Dwan (who I’ll remind you had literally just lost $270,000) flipped the dealer a $1,000 chip in gratitude for reminding us all of a very important lesson – that sometimes the best luck of all truly is the bad luck you fade.

And by the way, in case you’ve ever wondered, this is what the happiest man to ever lose a 580K pot looks like.