Doug Polk Says Tom Dwan Owes $30 Million!

Doug Polk has publicly said he has it on good authority that Tom Dwan owes an eye-watering $30 million. 

Dwan has been under the microscope over the last few weeks, with one creditor after another voicing their disapproval of his lack of urgency to pay his debts.

We all knew that there was a lot of money owed to many different people but we never had any idea it could be this much.

More worryingly, Doug Polk’s tone about what he knew portrayed a potentially dark situation.

According to Doug Polk, Tom Dwan owes $30 Million in gambling debts 🤯 pic.twitter.com/E10cvVLAN4

— Snoopdoug 🃏🧨💸 (@PuntingStacks) March 21, 2024

Who Does Tom Dwan Owe Money to?

The story of Tom Dwan’s unpaid debts reaches as far back as the pre-Black Friday days of online poker.

His famous Durrrr Challenge was legendary for pitting himself up against the very best heads-up cash players in the world. But then he ran up against Dan “Jungleman” Cates.

Jungleman was considerably ahead in the match that was to be 50,000 hands of $200/$400 heads-up cash. If the challenger won, then Dwan would hand over an additional $1.5 million.

Then Black Friday got in the way and Americans were put in a difficult spot to find a decent place to play.

Dwan took no end of heat for his tardiness in getting the match back on track, but we have heard that he paid plenty of penalties to Jungleman and he even got him invited to juicy high-stakes games in Macau.

But then other people started to put public pressure on Tom Dwan. Most recently Haralabos Voulgaris and Peter Jetten.

At least these were sums in the region of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s a lot, for sure, and we hope those guys get their money back, but it’s not a dent in $30 million.

Could Tom Dwan Owe $30 Million to the Triads?

Polk did an AMA on Reddit a few months ago and posted that he wasn’t expecting to see much of Tom Dwan in the future due to how many people he owes money to.

But could he owe most of it to one entity? There have been many murmurings over the years that Dwan is backed by the Chinese Triads.

No doubt this is mostly down to him playing the majority of his poker in high-stakes games across Asia.

It could, however, be true. Who is going to feel confident lending Tom Dwan $30 million? And in reality, it can’t be that many different people.

Dwan’s reputation has hit rock bottom but somebody is still bankrolling him. That person or entity must have some serious confidence that he will pay what he owes.

Just listen to Doug Polk’s tone when he explains why Dwan is so slow to clear up the smaller debts.

“Maybe the people with the bigger balances are people you would really want to make sure get paid.”

“The smaller ones might tweet about you but the big ones might not!”

“Do you understand what I’m saying, or not?”

Polk really does seem to have insider knowledge about this story and he is unlikely to be making spurious comments without reason.

Check out the video below for Charlie Carrel’s take.