Tom Dwan Experiences $6.4 million Bankroll Swing In 2009

Anyone who has played poker for any amount of time will be familiar with the volatility of the game that makes playing it so exciting if not a little testing at times.The upswings and downswings which are regularly experienced by players is taken as part and parcel of the game but as you progress higher up the stakes some of those downswings can be hard to endure even for top pros.
Brian ’sbrugby’ Townsend was on the receiving end of big downswings of $3.5 million back in 2007, for example, and recently confessed that “the thought of losing everything I made this year or in the past year on such a downswing sickens me.”
Tom “durrrr” Dwan has had to contend with a huge downswing of his own this year and had dropped $4 million by the end of February. A loss of such a magnitude might have been enough to break a lesser player’s bankroll or convince them to drop limits. Tom Dwan, however, carried on regardless and one month later had regained over $3.5 million, only to lose $2.3 million in the following two weeks.
All told, by July Tom Dwan had gone from $4 million in the red to $2.4 million in the black for a remarkable turnaround of $6.4 million.
Winning, it is said, is the easy part of poker but losing is what makes or breaks a player. Prolonged losing stretches can leave a player feeling frustrated and even physically sick with each bad beat and outdraw heaping extra pain on the victim. ‘Swing sickness,’ as it is sometimes called, can weaken the spirit of a poker player but Tom Dwan has shown that he has great fortitude and the heart of a true champion to be able to deal with the huge ups and downs the game has thrown at him.