In a move that some are describing as inevitable, Tom “durrrr” Dwan has been signed by Full Tilt Poker to become a member of Team Full Tilt, the site’s sponsored poker team. Dwan spends most of his time on the site anyway either battling Patrik Antonius, hunting fish, or becoming one, so it made logical sense that they’d eventually try to recruit him.

Dwan is the kind of poker player that people tend to feel strongly about – they either love him or hate him. At 23, he’s one of the younger players grinding it out on the felt; although by no means the youngest: the 2009 Word Series of Poker was won by 21 year old Joe Cada. Regardless of his age, Dwan plays a mean game of poker. It must be noted that 2009 hasn’t been his best year ever: he’s down almost $2 million for the year compared to a 2008 upswing to the tune of almost $6 million.

But love him or hate him, one thing has to be acknowledged about Dwan: he creates buzz. His ongoing challenge against Patrik Antonius continues to draw serious traffic and attention from the railbirds, ever eager to see who’s ahead. If Antonius beats Dwan after 50,000 hands, Dwan has to give him $1 million.

At a press conference announcing Dwan as Full Tilt’s newest team member, Howard Lederer said, “Tom Dwan has proven, through skill and dynamic play, that he will be a force to be reckoned with for many years to come. We are proud to count Tom as one of our own.”

Today’s bad beat story is about a different kind of bad beat. If you’ve been following the poker press, then you’ll know that poker pro Nicole Rowe was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

Pokerstars.com will be hosting a charity event later this month in honour of Rowe, entitled “Bad Beat On Cancer.” It’s set to kick off on the 12th of November – that’s next Thursday – at 21:00 Eastern Standard Time. The event is being hosted to raise awareness around the issue of breast cancer, and to generate funds for cancer related charities.

This means that even if you take a bad beat while playing in this tournament, you still win because it’s all for a very worthy cause. And if you make it through to the end, there are some very tasty prizes in store.

The first place prize is a $10,000 subscription to deucescracked, a prominent poker coaching school. The second place prize is a VIP package that will allow the winner to attend tapings of the hit show Two Months, Two Million, and hang out with poker celebrities.

The third place winner will have the opportunity to win a two day training course at the World Series of Poker Academy. Fourth place will get to stay for two nights at the Atlantic City Borgata Water Club, with a seat to the Borgate Triple Play tournament thrown in.

The list of prizes runs on, and it sounds like Bad Beat On Cancer is going to be a huge success.

Online poker site Party Poker is one of the larger sites operating on the net. Typically you will find upwards of 30,000 players on the site, guaranteeing you some poker action.

The other major benefit of such large traffic numbers is that the site’s Bad Beat Jackpot tends to grow faster than most. Unlike some sites, Party Poker only harvests contributions to the Bad Beat Jackpot from specifically identified tables on its sites. When you play these tables, $0.50 from each pot will go towards the jackpot.

At the time of writing, the jackpot stands at $216,929.49 – and still counting. That’s a significant amount of cash – but it’s not the interesting story here. You see, the Party Poker Bad Beat Jackpot was last hit on Friday the 30th of October, for $323,380.50. That is, in and of itself, a story.

But as any old poker shark knows, online poker sites like Party Poker will always hold back 20% of the funds to seed the new jackpot. In this case, that would be $64,676.10. Since the Bad Beat Jackpot now stands at $216,929.49, this means it has grown by more than $152,000 … since last Friday.

This means that the traffic on Party Poker is at such a snapping level that their Bad Beat Jackpot is growing by an average of $38,000 per day – and if no one has the luck/misfortune to hit it, it should reach $1 million by around the end of the month.